Week 9 Blog Post for Media in Japan

Difference in Fandom culture and social standards between Korea and Japan

        For k-idols, they are considered as the perfect figure and the society has high standards, expectation towards the professionalism criteria whereas Japan it is the flaw and natural aspect that provokes the moe culture and therefore fans are willing to be together on the journey for making improvements in their musical career. Therefore, the kpop idols are required to be involved in long time training period, intensive competition and even if they complete them, there is no guarantee that they will be successful.

    In korea, the idol members undergo intensive training on average of ~years, polished, they have to be talented at singing and also they have to look good, should go over the average for every field, they have perfect in every field in order to survive in the competition, image of perfect to please the fans, get easily criticized from not caring about their appearances, but at the same time, have to have professional field of their own, and uniqueness. Not a friendly image, very distant, someone who is hard to meet once in a lifetime, people admire, idol sphere becomes isolated, there is a wall between fans and stars although they hold fan meetings and try to communicate through Instagram often. They are like the polished diamonds without any single flaw or scratch and they have to maintain that status in order to not let go of their reputation and their formation of image in the field. But AKB48 members give off more of the vibe of friendly girls you could see naturally at school. For Koreans, the society expects and the idols to come out as a finalized polished outcome to be adored by fans, to be idolized but for japan, there is a strong sense that the naturalness, raw, untrained for singing or dancing seems to be all natural and accepted and the progress they make together as they develop their music career with fans is what the audience expects and enjoys seeing.

        However, the culture that K-pop fans and J-pop fans devote their love to their starts by achieving satisfaction through seeing their stars being happy when they receive their gifts. For example, fans make donations for the low income children for education under the name of their star if the star had constantly mentioned that he/she had been interested in child education issues and showed willingness to support them. These are some great examples where fans can be satisfited with contributing/impressing/helping both the star and the society, the star gets impressed by the warm-hearted initiative of their fans, while the act itself holds significant social values.

        It is from the cultural acceptance of flaws and naturalness and willingness to support them for their gradual improvement that the media industry and fans do not have strict/high standards for the ability of singing and dancing but in fact turning to/putting more focus on the unique concepts and characteristics and overall performance of the group. Therefore, their strategy is to create contents that are special, and unusual that would make the group stand out. This explains the reasons for why there are so many groups with unique concepts and often considered weird within the media.