Pleasure Principled

Revealingly Articulate Idol Worship

I was once a happy young lad with a good set of morals which I lived by. I was already into Hello Project at that time, but with the mindset that when it came to the opportunity of liking their younger members I would have none of it. I made it a personal mission to stop myself getting carried away with their innocent smiles and their naïve behaviour.

For a month this avoidant behaviour carried on and I inevitably got teased and mocked about it consistently by friends who made it their mission to make me like the younger members. Soon enough I carelessly stumbled onto a blog which had extremely arousing photos of a certain U-15 idol, and her name was Saaya Irie. My eyes quickly fixed to her unnaturally large breasts, which soon became my gateway to little girls.

It was hard to understand what I was going through before I started to like junior idols even though it has now been a whole year since I began liking them. But even within one year, it has totally changed me. Whether the nature of this change is a good or a bad thing, is up to one’s perspective. While I can joke about having paedophilic attributes with friends, I wouldn’t dare to announce “I LIKE LITTLE GIRLS” on the main street in fear of being castrated or stabbed. Being public about liking junior idols in a Western society is just not the same as if I was living in Japan.

I think living in a Western society which has a huge responsibility to protect a child’s innocence has something to do with my resistance to liking junior idols. I see women pose in bikinis for men’s magazines at the bookshop but never will I see Irie Saaya or any other U15 idol on the cover of a men’s magazine because it just simply isn’t right. Imagine conservatives complaining about how they are exploiting the innocence of a young girl just because of her “assets”. Parents from all over will rage after hearing their daughters ask they want to be like an idol like Saaya and protest at “how dare they use a girl at 15 years of age on a men’s magazine cover”. The amount of public rage will be unthinkable just because it is simply out of the norm. And to like something which is a taboo in the society I live in was something I didn’t want.

The idea of exploiting young girls for their innocent looks, their pure image, their untouched beauty ran deep within my veins when I heard there were little girls performing. To this day, it still does because I think that these girls shouldn’t be marketing themselves like this, and the producers should have more responsibility for the way these girls are placed upon the public. Yes, I totally understand how these girls love to sing and dance and whatnot. But is having numerous girls dancing and singing in a bikini really necessary? Sure, I have to admit it’s extremely arousing but showing girls who have barely hit puberty  in bikinis on national television is vile and disturbing for people who haven’t experienced such things or who have daughters at that age. Reactions such as “what sick parents would let their daughter go on television with only a bikini on at that age” would fill the minds of people and such comments are extremely justified. Even though the girls love to dance and sing, there should be limits on how these girls are marketed.

By that time, I realised what “wotaku” meant and by watching a few videos of these “wota” I was terrified. I was terrified because I knew they listened to idol music and if I listened to the same music…I was going to turn into one of them. Their obsessive behaviour, their ridiculous chants, their glowsticks put me off completely because I was not familiar with this type of behaviour. The audience that these junior idols cater for is very different from the Western world. Hannah Montana, High School Musical and all that Disney stuff is catered for children, mostly girls. Hearing music which is catered for a slightly older audience, which is loved intensely by middle-aged men, but sung by girls within the same age group of the Disney stars… it frightened me. I always thought younger girls would have audiences of around the same age group. I was like a butterfly which just came out the cocoon. I was so enclosed in my box that I never thought of venturing outside and when I did, I just couldn’t handle it and thus refused profusely to be shown these “junior idols”.

Having being forced to watch C-ute’s “Tokkaiko Junjou” for the first time didn’t help break my wall, in fact it strengthened my desire to avoid these junior idols. Girls which were showing excessive amounts of skin especially at that age reinforced that these producers used something as blatant as that to market the song and the girls. In contrast, if I was forced to watch Berryz Koubou’s “Piriri to Yukou” instead, things may have turned out much differently. Because the sight of these girls singing and dancing in a different environment and with actually a genuine smile on their face is a sign that perhaps maybe, things are actually different. But these young idols were not auditioned to have fun; they were auditioned as something which could make money. So possibly my borders would have still existed because their smiles may be synthetic and the joy on their faces may be artificial.

But to put this simply, I was simply too comfortable in my box. I never tried to experiment further than I needed to. I was comfortable listening to music I’m accustomed to. I was happy with liking women older than me. My beliefs and principles restricted what I was “allowed” to experience.

Saaya’s unnaturally large breasts must have done something crazy to me. Within days, the walls that I’ve built up to protect myself from these junior idols came crashing down. But oddly, the girls didn’t get their sledgehammers. The music was the main stepping stone which helped me get more in touch with these junior idols. I realised that these idols were not just girls that you just look at, but they were singers first, idols second. This put some sense into me by realising that they were auditioned to sing and dance rather than be idolised by people. Their music wasn’t necessarily groundbreaking or complex, but it was awfully catchy. So I judged them as singers rather than idols, which in hindsight, was twisting my principles.

Being in an online community of overseas wota who were also extremely fond of these girls was another step which provided justification that these junior idols were “fine”. Members of this community consists of people of different genders, ages and nationalities, but knowing that these individuals are living in the same society that I live in but like these idols, calmed my nerves. It was like “monkey see, monkey do” perhaps.

But while I slowly became more fond of the H!P Kids, I still had reservations about idols who were only modelling. I couldn’t justify myself into liking gravure idols because they weren’t associated with music. With music, I could hide the truth to myself that they are only singers. I still couldn’t understand why people like girls at that age to model. Conversely, I downloaded a few photobooks of H!P kids but intuitively avoided the photos which showed a good proportion of skin. I still couldn’t pull myself into going “the whole nine yards”. I would joke about putting Hagiwara Mai into my basement and doing unspeakable things but I wouldn’t look at Maimi in a bikini.

After Airi’s third photobook was released, I finally realised that these girls were not just singers and dancers, but they were something more. The system that they signed up to not only allowed but provided the girls a foundation to be idolised. Photobooks were only at the tip of the iceberg. T-shirts, blowup dolls, life-size posters, towels, mass number of photos, handshake events helped build the identities of these singer-dancers into idols. I’m sure when they auditioned to be part of the company, they knew what they were going to get into. I scrapped my idea of these girls being singer-dancers which overshadowed their idol status. Before, I jumped into the idol scene with gumboots protecting myself from the truth, but now I jump in bare feet because I feel there is nothing wrong with liking a bunch of girls who aren’t afraid of doing what they do. Why should I be afraid of liking these girls when they feel no shame of being who they are?

I figured folks within Japan would be against these younger idols but then again, idolising young girls would be frowned upon everywhere. Idolising young girls isn’t exactly the most elegant of hobbies and while it may not be appreciated with the public, it is something I enjoy and cherish. They are just like any celebrity out there so I see no difference with guys liking older women, or even girls liking younger boys. The treatment of men liking younger female idols when compared to women liking younger boys such as Hey! Say! Jump is hard to comprehend. I can’t understand why one gets looked upon negatively while the other has barely any opposition.

It’s been just a year since I’ve discovered these junior idols. I wouldn’t say my life revolves around them, but they’ve made a pretty impressive dent in my life. I enjoy idol culture a lot but it’s times like these that I need to slow down and stop it swallowing me whole. I’ve decided to moderate myself on idols because I know I can easily get addicted and obsessive very quickly. When I initially started to like junior idols, I feared I would take this fondness too far. So to counter this trait of mine, I had to moderate my thoughts and the intake on how much I am allowed to buy. Lately, with the find of Maeda Yuuka’s glistening pearly white stomach and Captain Shimizu Saki’s exotic dancing moves, it hasn’t gone so well.

My experience has gone through its rough times but it has always turned out well in the end. While my morals and principals were questioned, they were always answered by examples and self-realisation. It’s hard to idolise someone which is typically forbidden or looked down upon, but if one looks further than just what sits on the surface, then liking little idols really isn’t too bad. It’s something that I might cherish when I’m older.

But then again, reminiscing about having fantasies about Maeda Yuuka’s stomach isn’t something I would tell my children.