Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential - Brian Ashcraft

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on to found AKB48), and seemed to be aimed at legions of leering male fans, there was something oddly empowering about Onyanko Club. They didn’t dress trashy, and they definitely did not let anyone take off their sailor suits. They sang about telling their teacher to stop putting the make on them, or about calling out some pervert on the train.

      PONY CANYON

      They were good girls, ones you could admire, emulate, and dream about. But to make sure they stayed pure in the eyes of the public, Onyanko Club girls had to abide by a rather conservative set of rules: no boys; no dance clubs; no skipping school; no smoking. Normal high school stuff, you’d think, but these weren’t normal high school girls. They were idols, and if they broke the rules the consequences were harsh.

      COURTESY OFFICE WALKER

      The no-smoking rule cost a handful of the group’s original members their jobs. Two weeks after the first episode of the group’s hugely popular after-school variety show Yuyake Nyan Nyan (Sunset Nyan Nyan), six of the original eleven members were embroiled in a smoking scandal. A weekly tabloid caught the underage girls puffing away at a coffee shop near their recording studio and all but one of the girls got the axe. The “Tobacco Incident” became a taboo topic of discussion—it would be bleeped out if it was brought up on air.

      Suddenly, one of the remaining members, Eri Nitta, was thrust into the spotlight as the group’s leader. While numerous celebrities start out as idols, many are reluctant to talk about their time as an idol, as if they are ashamed of how they made their careers. Not Nitta, who chats openly about her Onyanko Club days. She was seventeen at the time and had originally only auditioned because the five thousand yen a day paycheck (about twenty-five US dollars during the 1980s) was better than some dopey part-time gig after school. “I didn’t set out to be an idol,” she says, “but, before I knew it, I had become one.” Even as the group was poised for superstardom, she had been mulling over leaving. But with the smoking scandal, the number of members dwindled to half; if Nitta quit there would only be a few left. “I wanted to be professional,” she says about her decision to stay and see how things turned out.

      Things turned out well. Really, really well. Onyanko Club churned out hit singles and had a hit TV show. Each Onyanko was given an ID number, and the group had a song in which each girl would introduce themselves by number. Nitta was number four but always went first—something she says she didn’t like: “But I suppose being at the top of the heap is better than being at the bottom.” The newly minted star found herself juggling normal school-girl life with being an idol. “Things got difficult when Onyanko became famous,” she says, “but my classmates didn’t suddenly change on me. They protected me, they supported me.” The number of Onyankos swelled, and fifty-two girls became members over the course of the group’s two-year lifespan—though not all at the same time.

      PONY CANYON

      Seiko Matsuda

      POP MUSIC IN JAPAN can be divided into two epochs: Before Seiko Matsuda and After Seiko Matsuda. She was a new breed of idol, an über idol of sorts, and was dubbed “burikko,” which means a woman who acts young and girlish to appeal to men.

      Making her debut in 1980, she caused a sensation, belting out a record-setting string of twenty-four number one singles in a row. Her bobbed hairstyle was the most influential hairdo of the day with schoolgirls clamoring to get the iconic “Seiko-chan cut.”

      CBS/SONY MUSIC

      Onyanko Club were a step towards the “real” idols that populate Akihabara today. People could identify with them, and cheer them on. They weren’t the most polished singers, and they weren’t the best dancers—heck, they weren’t even good dancers—in fact it sometimes looked like the group had just learned their dance moves backstage. Besides the obvious appeal of school-aged girls singing about sex, Onyanko Club was popular because it was comprised of fairly normal young women. They were slightly awkward and seemed genuine, or at least, slightly more real than the previous generation of polished, overly controlled idols. The greener the better. “Before us, idols were dolls,” Nitta says. “Today’s idols are human beings. We were somewhere in-between.”

      In order to keep the group sown with fresh faces the group’s TV show ran “idols wanted” notices, and new members would audition in what could be described as a beauty pageant of sorts, complete with swimsuit and talent competitions. To make room, Onyanko Club regularly “graduated” members in surprisingly depressing episodes of Yuyake Nyan Nyan—all before a studio audience of grown men.

      Graduating members were marched out on stage, given flowers, and told to sing their way through Onyanko Club’s standard showstoppers, a difficult task through the shower of tears and sniffles. Then, to a background of “Auld Lang Syne,” they’d say goodbye to their cohorts. For the Fuji TV producers and managers, the hope was that these girls would then go onto be successful solo artists. A few did stay in show business. Others simply assimilated back into society, working as office ladies, becoming mothers, or even teaching yoga.

      Two-and-a-half years after debuting, Onyanko Club called it a day, and the remaining members hung up their sailor suits. The final concert was held in September 1987 at Yoyogi National Gymnasium with present and former members alike. Everyone graduated, and Eri Nitta was the last member to leave the stage. It was a dramatic, fitting end to Onyanko Club after setting a trend for groups hoping to capitalize on the schoolgirl craze. Not surprisingly, the blueprint Onyanko Club drew up would be mastered by the biggest girl group act of the following decade, Morning Musume.

      COURTESY UP FRONT AGENCY

      In 1997, the pop impresario simply known as Tsunku —who writes his name with the Mars symbol—held live TV auditions to find a new singer for his band Sharam Q. He found her, but he also found five other girls who intrigued him but didn’t make the cut. Their consolation prize was to be a founding member of the biggest idol group of the late twentieth century, Morning Musume (Morning Daughter). Before that was to happen, though, there was one condition: the girls had to sell fifty thousand copies of their first single in just five days. It was grassroots-marketing-meets-reality TV, with camera crews following the girls around as they tried to promote their then unknown group. The public couldn’t help but root for them, and with live concerts held in the cities of Osaka, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and Nagoya, Morning Musume finally broke the fifty thousand mark.

      COURTESY UP FRONT AGENCY

      By 2003 the group had expanded to sixteen members, becoming so successful that

      Tsunk quit his band to focus on managing these girls. But while the dapper Tsunku was the public face of the band, the real mastermind lurked in the shadows. As the media-shy talent agency president Naoki Yamazaki said in a rare October 2001 interview with print magazine Cyzo, “I entrust all the music stuff to Tsunku. But which members graduate and who enters the group is all decided by me. The real producer isn’t Tsunku, but me.”

      Idol thoughts

      So what do the Morning Musume girls think being an idol is all about?

      Junjun:

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