Very interesting. I remember walking into a shop in Akihabara, I think, several years ago and seeing these sorts of idol videos amongst other types of pornography and couldn't help but feel a pang of indignation. I mean, elementary school children? That's perverse. The very fact that the government hypocritically permits this sort of deviant behavior while censoring a grown woman's pussy in normal pornography (forgive me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding, anyway) just seems really bizarre. I'm curious to know the history behind this trend. It seems even more unusual that they would tap a girl with that sort of reputation to host a show on NHK, though.

Andrew - We've been over this: These photobooks are sold in mainstream book stores all over the place, go walk into your local Kinokuniya and you can find one.

It is no way a career hurter to do these(photobooks seems to be perfectly culturally acceptable, as just a thing female idols do?), in fact evidence only points to it being a great starting off point in Japan, as I think it would give you the starting skills you need to gain confidence and get more talent/exposure.

The situation could be argued to even be improving and the government has done things to stop the more extreme versions.

I mean look at a star I see all over the place today: Chiaki Kuriyama, the book she got her start in(doing nude 13-year old modeling) more then 10 years ago stopped being sold because of the anti-child porn laws that went into effect later on. To the industry, it was just a photo book on her resume that showed she had experience and helped her get more roles. You think a huge amount of copy-cat parents went out and sold their children because Kuriyama got famous?

With the amount of publicity that Irie had, of course it was only a matter of time before she moved on to something else.

Also just one other point: Look at that various Low-Teen Magazines out there (Melon, PichiLemon, Hanachu, Nicola, etc) most of the magazines in their pages have photos that look almost exactly the same (even their model descriptions on the website have all their vital info, besides 3-sizes) as thoese you see on the pre-website and on the tamer photobooks, young girls playing around looking happy in swimming suits and other gear.

Based on really really quick basic research(just quick google checking on my part), I can find a bunch of models that now model for Pichilemon, that have thier own photobooks and even some that have also modeled for PURE PURE(a 7 year old magazine which most certainly is not targeted at low-teens).

If you want a model for your low-teen magazine, it shows you've done work and can handle the job. Just like for any model, once I you get one runway jobs/magazine job all the other auditions suddenly seemed so much more eager to take you.

So yes Marxy Marxy is right, it does seem like a perfectly acceptable way to launch your career.

Forgive me if I missed something, but Saaya Irie seems to have gone a route that's a lot different than a lot of the other younger models that have photobooks etc. They were managed by some of the more traditional companies and at least started their careers at age 14 or older. Saaya started at age 11. Plus she and her cohorts were featured on a for-pay website for leerers to get their jollies, something that until recently wasn't an option

I will say this, Kuriyama Chiaki did not come to fame as a nude youngster. Saaya is already famous as being the "11 year old with huge boobs."

Note to everybody.

a)NHK is not "State's"public Television.It is run by the special body in a commitee in the diet, and the budget is coming from the wallet belong to those willing to pay for the program(at least for now),not from your tax.

b)NHK Education is also using ex-porno actress Reiko Hayama for Spanish language program.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%91%89%E5%B1%B1%E3%83%AC%E3%82%A4%E3%82%B3
Though she was the nation's most famous porn queen,she did start her career in the world of showbiz as a small roll in NHK educational drama"Juniorhigh Diary" according to the Wikipedia.
So she was on NHK with her cloth on and went to XXX and coming back to NHK by putting her cloth on again.
Livin' la vida loca!

P.S
Adamu,what the hell happened to your blog,trouble?

"NHK is not "State's"public Television."

Not technically, no. It is "public," though.

"So she was on NHK with her cloth on and went to XXX and coming back to NHK by putting her cloth on again."

We can only hope that Saaya Irie will have an equally prolific and varied career.

You know - Aceface's correction kind of nullifies the title. This blogging thing is hard!

"This blogging thing is hard!"
ネタがこのネタだけに"sexed up"しちゃったのかもね。

My co-editor is cherrypicking the intelligence. And so on...

NHK isnt a state channel like the Ground Self Defence Force isnt an army.

Maybe you guys are right that NHK isn't a state broadcaster. Abe seems to think he owns it...

Chris, I've seen a GSDF base with bilingual signage labelling it a "Japanese Army Base." Whoops! Who let the honne out of the bag?

to hell with my crappy local tv, i won't get to see her! would you mind to record every episode of it on vhs, for me? i'm ready to pay.

Ground Self Defence Force isn't an army,You know better,Chris.
What kind of an army needs bodyguards from another countries army to be protected in the combat zone.They were shit scared to be captured by the Iraqi insurgents and their heads being chopped of in front of the camera.Japanese Imperial Army had done the reverse with joy in
the better days.

Brown:
Perhaps Abe may have a very liberal idea on sex on the public broadcasting compare to his idea on history.....
but the last I "heard" is Abe,Nakagawa-NHK summit did not happened on the issue relating the comfort women and I have my reasons to believe this.
1)Not to say NHK do not kiss LDP's ass,which they do.However they choose whose ass they are kissing and there is a very distinctive choice for that.Both Abe and Nakagawa is not exactly belong to the postal telecommunication tribe郵政族 the group holding NHK by the neck.Abe is a Bunkyo-zoku文教族 Education tribe and Nakagawa is a Nolin-zoku農林族Agriculture tribe.Neither have any beef with NHK.

2)If they had a chance to see the NHK's preediting materials of the program as the Asahi writer proclaimed,they will most certainly demand NHK to dump the program.

3)Asahi have been keeping silence over this matter after NHK demands to present tape recording of the inteview of whom the ASAHI reporter had claimed the interviewee had confirmed the LDP intrusions.(the interviewee is denying he'd ever said that)and ASAHI had removed the very reporter who wrote the supposed to be a scoop for the decade from Social section to lifestyle and town info section.Rather odd for a paper supposed to be getting all the evidence.

But then again someone might come up with new evidence or we may have some whistle blower of somekind.My judgement on the issue is open to the possible new outcome,but until then,I consider it as a hoax at best.

Mutant Frog is down due to hosting problems. It should be back up tonight, but no promises.

I know you're gonna be sore at me for asking, Marxy, but why oh why has the entry on the ganguro debacle been extirpated?

Did Rory make you do it? Damn you, Rory! What the hell, Wakeboarder, you're supposed to be funny, not a blog-entry-remover. I was hoping to see "the Don" chime in. Now I have to read all these comments about NHK and stuff instead.

P.S. My NHK payments are automatically made from my bank account each month. Seriously.

MAYBE tonight, but definitely within two days or so. It all depends on how long it takes for DNS servers to update with our new location.

"I know you're gonna be sore at me for asking, Marxy, but why oh why has the entry on the ganguro debacle been extirpated?"

It was cursed.

"Forgive me if I missed something, but Saaya Irie seems to have gone a route that's a lot different than a lot of the other younger models that have photobooks etc. They were managed by some of the more traditional companies"

Okay, I give you that Although Goro Aida isn't just some random nobody and is a bit famous. his website is interesting to look at for a perspective: www.garoaida.com has some of his more explicit work right next to the U-15 work(which from peeking at it right now is the most explicit U-15 in legal domain I've ever seen. this can't be argued to be just normal photobooks or imouto.tv).

But I believe my argument still stands that Junior and low-teen semi-sexualized idols aimed at men are something that has been around since at least the late 90's with plenty of these people going onto careers. And mid-teen photobooks obviously aimed at men since even before them. I'll have to look into it more as management of these photobooks.

But another point: if you look at her listing of work she's done at least 3 mainstream films, 4 mainstream tv programs and been a voice actor for an avex-produced anime already, she had already escaped from her low-teen idol only status.

I'm in ur Throwaway Mega-Development munchin ur Subz?

"It was cursed."

Yipes.

Aceface, you are right on the money with your description of the GSDF in Iraq. They knew if there was going to be any "hundred head contest" this time, it was going to be the other way around. Hell, even the goofball "peace statue" that they made a big photo-op out of building got blown up for being in some way blashphemous- Such an ignominious end for state-funded public art! As has been said by others, there were only two reasons for the GSDF to be there: creating the spectacle of the "coalition of the willing" and creating fait accompli for constitutional revision (i.e. "Article 9 must be scrapped to reflect reality.")

I'll bow to your superior knowledge about the NHK comfort women documentary affair and consider the case not yet closed, but in a wider sense I think we could say that there is zero ideological contradiction between downplaying (the coercion involved in procuring) comfort women and being pro-Irie Saaya.

Now, I'm not saying Abe was on the phone demanding "more coverage of North Korean kidnappings- and someone get that delectable little nymph Irie her own show!" But are these stances elements of a "liberal" attitude towards sexuality, or aspects of a far-right patriarchal mindset? Consider the right-wing stances taken on the role of the family in society and its relation to the state, gender discrimination in employment, access to the birth control pill, sex education, etc. I think it would be far too charitable to consider Irie on NHK as evidence of a "liberal" attitude towards sexuality. In fact it may demonstrate exactly the opposite.

[Off-topic: I had to eat some serious crow when NK admitted to the abductions. I'm certainly no Pyongyang apologist- far from it- but I had thought all along that the abductions were paranoid right-wing propaganda nonsense. Turns out I was flat wrong.]

PS: Adamu, Mutantfrog gambatte!

We'll be able to safely put it down to a "'liberal' attitude to sexuality" when pics of Kamiki Ryunosuke in speedos with a precocious bulge make it into the pages of Josei Jishin.

Photographs of Asian girls in panties, underwear, bikinis and school uniforms are only sexualized in the eye of the beholder.

Saaya Irie is a shrewd person no matter how young her age. She caught on early to what was happening and managed to keep from being exploited. She'll be a mainstream star and never look back. Copycats aiming for the same 1 in a million chance of fame are as common in Japan as anywhere else in the world. It's just the rules of the game that vary slightly from place to place.

The 1 in a million odds are always the same...

"low-teen semi-sexualized idols aimed at men are something that has been around since at least the late 90's with plenty of these people going onto careers."
May even in the late70's?The name Brooke Shields suddenly come into my mind.She happens to be the imaginary darling of the crown prince back in the day.

Brown:
"think it would be far too charitable to consider Irie on NHK as evidence of a "liberal" attitude towards sexuality. In fact it may demonstrate exactly the opposite."
What you wrote is worth of looong answering post and I may wonder whether Duffy wants to know full version of it.

No.These sexual representations on media does not mean "liberal" attitude toward sexuality,rather "neoliberal" sort of attitude of exploiting women's sex freely as the demands of the market.So yes it has some connections with foundation of the comfort women and it's downplaying in the conscience of the post-war Japanese mind.

Gender discrimination in employment was an integral part of corporate Japan to maintain the male oriented lifetime employment and provide workforce that can be thrown away in the time of recession,which in other country(especially Europe)used foreign guest wokers for this role.
It was also supported by the deep lying idea that woman protects house hold while man work in the office and get salary and stuff.However I must say without this gender discriminative employment practice,there would be no today's prosperous Japanese economy.

Access to the birth control pill was a bit complicated story,all I know is I had a chance of talking with the chap who was resposible on this matter in Kouseisho in the 80's and he had his reason,for he and his colleague thought the condome was the key to the containment of HIV among Japanese population and he believed the birth control pill would help rapid rise of the HIV in Japanese society.His attitude on the subject was"You want womenlive?Fine do it.But not on my turf for I'm in full responsible of life and death matter of the whole nation".This man was awarded in Ig nobel award couple years ago for his hypothesis that Japanese language is the secret of zero patient during SARS outbreaks,by the way.

And about Irie Saaya,I guess the NHK guys simply wanted some twist in their boring educational programs and Channel 3 is known for being radical among NHK.They may be winking to those who get the jokes,I don't know.I find it as a bad taste though.

NK abduction was covered extensively in small circulated Korea watching periodical called 現代コリア(Modern Korea).I happened to be reading it from the late 80's and knew about the abduction briefly."Modern Korea"editors are now the core member of the 救う会.And this saga is also requiring another looong answering post.

"No.These sexual representations on media does not mean "liberal" attitude toward sexuality,rather "neoliberal" sort of attitude of exploiting women's sex freely as the demands of the market."

I am glad Momus is boycotting this site now, because he would fly into a rage with the idea that Japan is not the most progressive country in the world for women.

"Gender discrimination in employment was an integral part of corporate Japan to maintain the male oriented lifetime employment and provide workforce that can be thrown away in the time of recession,which in other country(especially Europe)used foreign guest wokers for this role."

For whatever reason, this is the first time I've heard this idea and it makes so much sense.

"he containment of HIV among Japanese population and he believed the birth control pill would help rapid rise of the HIV in Japanese society."

Japan was the only country during the 90s to see a decrease in condom use. But now, you can't really try to hype any sort of birth control because dekichatta kekkon is a powerful weapon to combat the reduction in child birth.

Aceface,

If it walks like a duck and swims like a duck then its a duck even if its rules of engagement forbid it from quacking back except when its quacking under government "guidance" or the duck food comes from "subscriptions" to its duckyness.

Is Momus officially on boycott now? I must have missed that press release.

Yes, me too. re: momus "boycott."

"it walks like a duck and swims like a duck then its a duck even if its rules of engagement forbid it from quacking back except when its quacking under government "guidance" or the duck food comes from "subscriptions" to its duckyness."

Couldn't be a possibility of different species of waterfowl?Challenge me on this.I'm a keen birdwathcher.

delete the above post.It is from me.

This post is turning into the textual version of Face/Off.

That made me laugh.Keep it!

Now you've got me intrigued Marxy Marx -

Are these idols contracts based on some type of profit-sharing? I mean is she literally getting paid the same amount of money to pour tea and fetch copies? This isn't seen as a punishment time, they are just paying her assumingly obscene amounts of money to be a secretary because she still has contract time left?

Kinda on topic, wondering how far this runs, Looking back at your previous posts on muscians and not just idols getting bit by this. Does this apply to self-run rockers on major labels too? if someone like Koumoto Hiroto got caught doing some type of illict drug, do you really think BMG would up and drop him?

Looks like everyone has their problem with posting comments here.

> "No.These sexual representations on media does not mean "liberal" attitude toward sexuality,rather "neoliberal" sort of attitude of exploiting women's sex freely as the demands of the market."
I am glad Momus is boycotting this site now,

while you're busy invoking Momus' wrath I'd like to point out that what Aceface is saying is actually as much of a challenge to the primitive-western/despotic-confucian theoretical framework of gender dynamics you're perpetuating here as Momus can ever say.

Particularly as coordinator of one of the most male-dominated japan-related (micro)institutions I think you should seriously consider that and gradually try to develop a more appropriate framework for theory, critique, debate.

"what Aceface is saying is actually as much of a challenge to the primitive-western/despotic-confucian theoretical framework of gender dynamics you're perpetuating here as Momus can ever say."

Really? Aceface, what do you say?

"I think you should seriously consider that and gradually try to develop a more appropriate framework for theory, critique, debate."

Oh, I've missed your outrage, Alin.

Oops - I meant to say "patronizing outrage."

i'm not being paronizing nor outraged, hey.
if you take it as such sorry. i have my way of reading things, i see serious gaps and flaws etc if it offends sorry, if it's way out of context, fair enough, again sorry.

The truth is that I am interested in hearing what you say Alin (and Momus if his point is reasonable and not just a cheap shot to prove me wrong at any expense), but I would love it if don't make those points packaged with the "original sin" type arguments that I am coming from a dangerous and wrong philosophical position that immediately disqualifies any of my ideas. This is how I usually read your comments, because you write as such.

Lately, I was excited about patching this up - first meeting you in person, and second, writing to Momus personally to tell him that there must be a more pleasant way to hold these discussions - and I even tried hard not to insult or bait either of you because I realized I was part of the problem in my responses. But this has been taken as a sign of weakness I guess - that I wasn't going to attack back - and I just faced a record 3 or 4 Marxy-bashing posts on Click Opera within three weeks. (Not to try you for Momus' sins, though.)

Anyway - I think you may be saying something interesting, which is, I am not realizing enough how much "neo-liberal" values contribute to male chauvinism, and right, maybe not. That would be an interesting discussion.

The fact that few females visit my blog is not something I can really do much about. It's not like I invite anyone.

Okay...Why is this happening all the time...

"I would love it if don't make those points packaged with the "original sin" type arguments that I am coming from a dangerous and wrong philosophical position that immediately disqualifies any of my ideas. "
This is something happening to me and some of my country men when discussing on comfort women and current criticism on Abe since March 2nd.But this really is off-topic(and frictional,perhaps).

and I'm not going to go-between Marxy-Momus/Alin debate if I don't get armed Australian escorting me all the way through.

Aceface: I'm working for a Dutch company now so I might qualify!

鴨とネギ

I'm not boycotting this site, but, in the same way that this is a "post-blog", I think our basic dispute is a "post-dispute". In other words, I think we've all internalized each other's likely responses, know each other's views, can predict each other's moves. Marxy is basically going to be saying "Momus would be saying x" here, while over on Click Opera I'm going to be actually quoting from his archives (and from Clast) from time to time, because I prefer direct quotes to puppetry and straw man stuff. If I then disagree with those quotes, please don't see that as "bashing"; it's dialectics. It's what provocative views elicit.

Dialectics are productive, and parts of the Click Opera project have been produced by dialectics with "the Marxy view", just as parts of the Neomarxisme project have been produced by dialectics with "the Momus view". We have become somewhat structural to each other's outlooks. But now that the structure is in place, I don't really feel that it's necessary to put "the Momus position" on every new issue that comes along. And this one isn't even new. Actual new positions on new issues are getting rarer.

Meanwhile, as I keep thinking about Japan, I'm sure I'll keep quoting Marxy. He tends to come up in the first page of Google results of stuff I'm interested in, so I'm sure I'd be quoting him (and probably disagreeing with his conclusions -- is a nation emerging from American cultural hegemony really "pushing towards a monotonous local orientation" or "neo-nationalistic"?) whether I'd ever commented here or not.

This has been a "post-comment" and I shall now post it.

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