Idols: The Image of Desire in Japanese Consumer Capitalism

Abstract

On 22 November 2010, fans across Japan rushed to purchase Tomochin!!, a collection of photographs of Itano Tomomi, a member of the popular female idol group AKB48. Of the 148 pages in the book, 64 were manga; drawings of Itano and a fictional story about her accounted for 43 percent of a photo book bearing her nickname and presenting her to fans. While the reaction was not entirely positive, it is interesting that such a conflation of images could occur at all. This was not an isolated incident. Just a few months earlier, the members of AKB48 began appearing as characters in their own manga series. As Tomochin!! makes clear, for some perhaps uncomfortably so, fiction is part of the makeup of an idol. The association of real and fictional images exposes how idols are made up and how they are imagined.

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