Yukirin World

Cafe Society
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This is my first post on Straight Talk. In preface to my thread, I am not a stranger to finer culture, preferring classical music with my claret. But when I chanced onto a J-pop (Japanese pop) video I was smitten. Thinking I found something really exciting, I sent videos to colleagues, who to a person denigrated it as silly pap.

One of the aspects of appeal to me is the charisma I find with so many J-pop performers, reflected in their personalities, voices and bodily movements. So I am curious if anyone here might like it. Here’s a 21-year-old woman, Yuki Kashiwagi, in only her second solo concert. She performed as a teenager with a j-pop song and dance troupe.

Her audience met her standing out of love and respect. Her first concert was a hit. Surprised, she opened by saying, “You’re all standing!”

So two questions: does anybody here find Yuki to be cool and terminally cute, like I do? Obviously if I posted the question on a Japanese forum, lots of people would agree with me, but about 20 out of 20 westerners I asked went meh. And if yes, what makes her performance different from western pop performers who don’t impress me at all? Athleticism and quickness of movement play a part, but I am trying to understand a little of the ineffable.

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In answer to your first question, yes she is adorable. As are the vast majority of idol singers.

Sadly I don’t think that I can say much towards answering your second question, because j-pop tends to set my teeth on edge. Certainly there is a kind of “innocence” in the performance of j-pop stars (mostly, again, idol singers) that is generally not found in the personas of their Western equivalents. Of course, much of that is a facade enforced by their agents and managers in order to maintain their appeal to a younger demographic and prevent anything scandalous from getting into the press.

I tend to prefer j-rock acts instead of straight-up j-pop. Even there you can find a certain amount of the “innocence” stuff. For example the band Scandal certainly has a more “cute & fun-loving” image than a western band (even an all-girl group like themselves) but it feels less forced than with idol signers. Probably because a lot of the bands are actually friends that got into music together and not manufactured groups like the idol teams.

Do you find the Japanese acts superior only in regards to pop? Or have you looked at other genres and find similar preferences?

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Her somewhat nasal singing style calls to mind Chisato Moridaka. Excellent pop idol from early nineties.

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I’ve listened to a little j-rock, but I’m in love with j-pop and its idols. By the way, I couldn’t be any more western in heritage, a Caucasian mix of French and English. But the first time I heard the j-pop idol troupe, AKB48, actually, it felt like finding God. As a secular person, it was the first time that I felt my “god archetype” (from Carl Jung) sounded. It might be a fetish with me, but it’s not sexual, except in an indirect Freudian sense. So maybe I’ll make this the last time I look for any western agreement – I’m batting O for 21.

I have a rum theory, probably, that people who already have a spiritual sense can’t accept another symbol to glom on to that particular receptor and thus Yuki and her genre do not register with those people. 80% of Americans, for example, are Christians. But most Japanese people, like I, are secular and are maybe receptive to this particular symbol that attaches to their heretofore unexpressed god archetype, for some reason that would be difficult to figure out.

So just one more: Yuki in her third concert. Here, she approaches the spiritual empyrean, as her “congregation” wave her effigy up at her, and the number of worshiping “fans” is incredible. Her appearance at times resembles a flying saucer, which Carl Jung wrote a whole book on how such sightings project our whole Self outward. The giant crane putting Yuki in the middle of her fans was her idea.

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She was…o.k., I guess. Nothing really stands out when it comes to her voice or range.
DisneyPop.

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You can’t talk about J-Pop without giving a shout out to Puffy Ami Yumi.These girls are just adorable.

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To Czarcasm and others from his vantage, Of course Yuki, and most of these idol girls, are not very vocally accomplished technically. There are lots of them who come from small towns and the city to audition with music producers, and if a girl shows something inchoate but special a producer sees, she gets hired and trained. Sometimes a girl has no singing experience, and maybe she only looks very pretty, or dances okay. But sometimes the producer picks well and a girl resonates in the souls of the people, in part, besides her talent, because she is an everyday girl, like everybody else, “one of us.” Akimoto, the erstwhile producer for the top idol troupe, AKB48, would cull through as many as 30,000 girls to find one with special charisma.

So I am not asking if you think Yuki is technically good, she isn’t that great; I am asking if anyone here can feel a connection with her as a symbol to a psychic archetype, and thus get a numinous rush from her like I do. That’s all. I don’t really expect anyone else to recognize it; but I can certainly recognize that she affects me and many of those people waiving her effigy, even if they don’t know what to call their fascination.

Here’s a poignant song Yuki wrote and sang in her second concert about how she dreamed of being a superstar from when she was small, and after passing her secret audition she left her hometown family and friends behind in her selfish quest, and at a point could no longer turn her head to look back. When she closes her eyes she sees them appear and then disappear behind her lids in the falling ashes of her volcano. She cries.

Then her next song begins with her exploding volcano and confetti raining down on the audience, like her volcanic ashes. Her new guitarist, who swore his eternal devotion to Yuki that night, sounds reminiscent of the late Tony Peluso playing fuzz guitar behind Karen Carpenter’s *Superstar*. Yuki sings about her checkered heart, not the real heart anymore that she sacrificed. She belongs to the people and they belong to her. Like a succubus, she announces they are now in *Yukirin World*, whether they are asleep or awake, and that she makes them gaga, her words.
I don’t think you can make up drama like this, and I think it might be an Asian thing, - and I am almost done talking about it here. Thanks for listening, for anyone who made it this far.
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I think you’re putting much more into her performances than are really there.

I think you are turning second rate PR drama into 3rd rate melodrama.

No, he doesn’t.

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I’m data driven and when I see that millions of people in Japan, China and other parts of Asia are spellbound by the magnificence of this girl, I don’t need any more assurance from sarcastic individuals, although I admit I momentarily lost my head and was doing exactly that.

On a personal note, I have some talent, while nothing like Yuki’s, and am quite comfortable because of it, like young Yuki is already. So I feel a personal affinity with her, I suppose, like an uncle for a delightful and successful niece. You might be a multimillionaire, also, from the fruits of your intelligence, possibly good looks, and particular personality brand, for all I know.

I suppose I’m like Diogenese with his little lantern poking about this forum lured by its purported premise. This is my last look here, so don’t bother to respond further regarding this thread for my sake. But thanks for already confirming other prejudices I have.

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I’m sorry, but I don’t see her as any different or any more talented than any other heavily promoted J-Pop product. She didn’t get to where she was at by any real effort on her own-her promoter could have taken any other girl with similar looks and probably done the same thing. The packaging may be “magnificent”, but she, and you, have yet to show me that the actual content has real value.

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Sounds like typical gateway music to me; something to be quickly latched onto and then outgrown. (Think Britney Spears or the Spice Girls.) While such acts are usually derided, I think they perform a valuable service of getting kids hooked on music so they can eventually move on to the harder stuff.

In her third concert? Whoa, this relationship is moving way too fast.

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You’re not kidding: