Pop As Commodity

In recent years, Japan has been losing to South Korea in terms of its pop music reach throughout Asia, and some people believe it mainly has to do with the South Korean government’s active promotion of K-pop as a commercial export.

Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is encouraging Japanese companies who sell products and services in other Asian countries to use the all-female idol collective AKB48 in their TV commercials, according to the Mainichi newspaper.

“AKB48 provides new content with the potential to substantially improve the image of Japan,” a senior official of the ministry told the paper, and emphasized that, more than a pop culture phenomenon, the group is helpful to Japan as a “business model.”

There is already an authorized AKB48 café in Singapore where local girls imitate the group. A “sister” project in Jakarta called JKT48 is presently in the works.

In contrast to South Korea’s female idol groups, which present a more sexual image, AKB48 emphasizes innocence and cheerfulness, a model that may be more appealing to younger girls in Southeast Asia, even if the main target audience for the group is young men.

An executive with the Singapore company collaborating with AKB48 management says that more girls in his country have been inspired to become idols by AKB48.

Meanwhile, K-pop continues to dominate Japan itself.

The girl group Kara last week scored a No. 1 hit on the ringtone chart with its latest single, “Step.”

What’s notable is that the version that made it to the top was in Korean, not Japanese.