On 5 January, DEMPAGUMI.inc ended its 16-year activity, and a week later, on 12 January, BiS disbanded in its third phase.These two contrasting groups, which have ended their activities at the same time, can be described as symbolic of the alternative female idol scene that has blossomed in Japan since the 2010s, including their independent backgrounds.

In this column, we will dig into the history of the underground idol scene, which is now at a major turning point after these girls built the foundations of the scene.

The word ‘underground idols’ here is used almost as synonymously as the words ‘live idols’ and ‘alternative idols’, and this column is not intended to help define them (in any case, for listeners outside Japan, many Japanese idols are underground). However, it can be said on this premise that it is because there is an overground layer that an underground layer is born, and because there is a mainstream layer that an alternative layer is born. In other words, rather than history being driven by a single trend of ‘underground idols’, there have been underground groups in response to the overground in each period. This means that the prehistory of underground idols is also the history of idols on the ground.

Compared to the music industry in Europe and the US, there is a long-standing trend in Japan where management companies have always been important, and there is a history of major management and major record companies working with mass media such as television and magazines to make up the popular music scene. Although there are differences in volume, if we look back to the prehistory of 2010s-type group idols, the origin of this style is probably the national girl groups of the 1970s, such as Candies (1973-78) and Pink Lady (1976-81), which were made up of teenage girls.

Candies was a three-piece group with an vibe similar to US soul girl groups such as the Supremes and the Three Degrees of the same era. While the group’s popularity stabilised on the basis of their pretty vocal work, they announced their disbandment on their own decision, which was a social phenomenon that gained them public support, and their last single, ‘Hohoemi Gaeshi’ (1978), reached the top of the charts. The fanaticism of the group of fans, known as the ‘shineitai’, who supported the girls was a pioneer of the ‘idol otaku’ movement of later generations. Pink Lady, on the other hand, were a duo with a more danceable musical style and had a succession of million-selling hits, including ‘Pepper Keibu’ (1976) and ‘UFO’ (1977). More than those sales, the unique concept and choreography of each song reached young children (if there was TikTok back then, ……) and gained explosive popularity among all generations.

Pink Lady lost their popularity after their US debut and were replaced in the 80s by solo singers such as Seiko Matsuda and Akina Nakamori, who became popular idols in Japan.　Nevertheless, idol groups regularly followed in the footsteps of their successful predecessors: in 1984, the three-piece Shoujo-tai debuted with ‘Forever – Gingham Check Story’ (also known for being covered by BILLIE IDLE).In the same year, the four-piece Saint Four, selected through a big audition, also debuted, but neither of them got the same breakthrough as their pioneers. In this era of overwhelming solo singers, the next group to create a social phenomenon was the Onyanko Club (1985-87), a group of high school students whose selling point was a sense of amateurism and familiar appeal.

Onyanko Club was originally a project born from a project in the TV programme ‘Yuyake Nyan Nyan’, a high school version of the All Night Fuji TV programme (1983-91), which was created by the staff of the programme after the college girls who appeared on the programme had won popularity under the common name ‘All Nighters’. (One of the brains behind the project was lyricist Yasushi Akimoto, who later created AKB48.) The group, which made its breakthrough in 1985 with the debut single ‘Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanai de’, was characterised by its flexible organisation, with a total of more than 50 members in its short period of activity. Including the solo debuts of popular members and the development of branch units, the group produced 30 No.1 hits in its peak year of 1986 and dominated the charts.

While the large group organization of a catalogue of personalities with a variety of characters created an enthusiastic following as a new image of idols, their unprofessional, unskilled attitude contributed to increasing prejudice against the idol category as whole from the public’s point of view. After the break-up of the Onyanko Club, there were exceptions such as the duo Wink (1988-96), who became popular for their emotionless style of singing and dancing to Eurobeat, but the boom in rock bands that emerged around the same time attracted many young people, which also helped, and ‘idols’ rapidly became a niche existence for geeks. The fact that solo idol Chisato Moritaka released a hit album in 1989 with the ironic and self-deprecating title ‘HI-JITSURYOKUHA-SENGEN’ may be an example of the atmosphere surrounding idols in that era.

Then, in Japan in the early 1990s, when bands were well established in the mainstream, karaoke became a popular leisure activity worthy of the recession, and singer-songwriters who could write pop songs that could be sung together came into the spotlight. As artists who wrote and performed their own songs achieved commercial success, a trend came to develop in which idol singers were treated as relatively lesser status, and as if they had no real skills. This was the so-called ‘Idol Winter Era’.　In terms of girl groups, SUPER MONKEY’S, which produced Namie Amuro, debuted in 1992 and became a success, but they were not often regarded as ‘idols’, reflecting the mood of the times. SPEED (who debuted in 1996) followed in their footsteps, becoming a nationally popular group against the same background as Western groups such as TLC and the Spice Girls, but they were not often referred to as ‘idols’ in Japan.

On the other hand, groups that mainly performed live rather than seeking mass exposure as in the 1980s, such as Tokyo Performance Doll (1990-96), which mainly performed regularly, the musical-based Minami Aoyama Shoujo Kagekidan (1990-01) and Uniform Improvement Committee (major debut in 1993), also formed large groups. In terms of the form and scale of their activities, it is possible to regard them as the originators of today’s ‘underground idols’ and ‘alternative idols’, but in the 1990s in Japan, ‘idols’ themselves were an alternative form of expression.

Writer：Koji Dejima
Japanese music writer. Editor-in-Chief of the Tower Records Japan magazine “bounce”.