Shallow??

One of the people that I know at Kansai Gaidai mentioned the other day that she hated how shallow many Japanese girls seemed to be. She was mainly commenting on the idea that girls will like a person or group only because of their looks or because of a person certain associations within a group. The above picture was taken in Shinsaibashi and is of two members of a popular boy band under Johnny Entertainment. You can read more about the band and the company here; company, band. The reason that the above picture is relevant to this is that JE is known not the produce the most talented of singers (although there are some) and yet they are popular among young Japanese people and older Japanese women. Yet according to this person, they have no right to be popular because all most all of them have no talent.

In my Struggle for Justice class we have been talking about how the idea of Japanese group based cultural has helped contributes to why the crime rate is so low in Japan. So I wonder, does this desire to fit into the group (to know who there people are) related to why these bands are popular? Does the idea of group cultural even fit into this idea as to why certain bands (and items) are popular in Japan? If it is then I don’t see much of a difference between Japan and America. Even in America the average person just wants to belong to the group. So personally I don’t think that a person is shallow for just wanting to belong to a group or just by association belong somewhere.

Disclaimer: I do understand that America and Japan have different cultures. America is mainly individual driven and Japan is mainly group orientated driven, but in this idea I think that maybe they are driven by the same want.