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MINORUPHONE RECORDS
VICTOR RECORDS
Yamaguchi was only thirteen when she showed up to her first recording session in a sailor-style school uniform. She raised eyebrows in 1973 with songs like “Unripe Fruit,” peppered with raunchy lyrics such as “You can do whatever you want with me,” and “It’s alright to spread rumors that I’m a bad girl.” The suggestive songs she sang were in sharp contrast to her age, and the more conservative acts of other idols. The thrill for male fans was in the power of suggestion and her coquettish schoolgirl image.
JAPAN RECORD
For these idols, image was everything, and everything was controlled as the idol grew into her role. The clothes. The hair. The likes and dislikes. Idols were the girls girls longed to be, and the girls boys longed to be with. According to media specialist Tatsu Inamasu, idols appear to be very pure, but they are actually doing something very impure: trying to get money from people’s pockets. “The fans understand that the act is a lie,” says Inamasu in his book Idol Engineering, “but they enjoy it. The whole thing is a fantasyland game.” It doesn’t matter if the idol can’t sing. To be worthy of idolatry, the singer’s talent doesn’t have to be perfect—she has to be. It’s easier to develop a strong attachment watching a pure, awkward young woman become an accomplished performer than simply seeing the final product. Fans want someone to root for, to cheer on. There’s an emotional investment and gradually an I-knew-her-when nostalgia emerges.
The so-called Schoolgirl Trio had hit on a nerve. Throughout the 1970s idols appeared in print magazines and on record covers in their sailor suits—like on Nana Okada’s 1975 top ten single “Jogakusei” (Schoolgirl). In the following decade the schoolgirl trend continued with the likes of TV star Tsukasa Ito, and her 1981 debut album Shojo Ningyo (Girl Doll). The title couldn’t have been more apt. Ito was thirteen years old and, of course, appeared on the cover wearing a sailor-style uniform. Her name was scrawled on the album cover in childlike writing and when she appeared on music programs to promote the album everyone knew what she would be wearing.
A perfect schoolgirl storm was brewing. And it hit hard in 1985 when Fuji TV’s late night program All Night Fuji—which had been using college-aged girls as eye-candy—hosted a special on high school girls. The program’s producers created a schoolgirl band dubbed Onyanko Club (Kitty Cat Club) with a logo of a pussy cat bent over, flashing her bloomers. The bonus pun? “Nyan,” is Japanese for “meow,” and “to do nyan nyan” was 1970s slang for sex. None of this was lost on the show’s predominantly male viewers.
The group’s sound was heavily influenced by early 1960s American girl acts like the Ronettes, but instead of the Wall of Sound, Onyanko Club had the wall of schoolgirls. At their debut, there were eleven of them. Their first song, “Don’t Make Me Take Off My Sailor Suit,” was a top five smash, with blunt lyrics that didn’t beat around the bush—the song contains doozies like “I want to have sex before all my friends.” If the subject matter did happen to be lost on listeners, the “nyan nyan” refrain in the background would have clued them in. All this was coming from a gaggle of regular looking schoolgirls who didn’t exactly ooze sexuality—which is exactly what the fans found so damn charming.
Even though most of their matter-of-fact lyrics were written by a man, (Yasushi Akimoto, who went 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
