Tokyo Idols is a documentary on the idol industry in Japan and was released on NetFlix last month. It is not directly related to Terrace House, but, nevertheless, it served to change my mind on one aspect of how the casting is done on Terrace House. Prior to watching this film I felt that the show should not have cast people in the idol industry like Rie (B&GND) and Rikopin (B&GITC) because these women are contractually obligated not to have a boyfriend, and being on Terrace house often put them in the untenable position of having to choose between forming a romantic relationship and their job.After watching the film, however, I believe that Terrace House's approach to relationship formation is far more healthy and appropriate for Japanese culture, and is a strong counter to the highly problematic aspects of the idol industry as a whole.
I do recommend watching Tokyo Idols. It provides an excellent, and, I believe, a fairly balanced view of how the idol industry exploits both the idols and their fans. It should be said, however, that otaku who follow idols do not agree that the film is balanced because it does not feature any women fans, and over emphasizes the presence and impact of sketchier older men in the fandom and their relationship to these young women. That being said, you do not need to watch the film to understand idol culture as it is currently structured in Japan, but, instead, you need only learn about the history of AKB48 (the group that Rie was in during B&GND).
Idol culture as it exists now is the result of a couple of promotional innovations that, as far as I can tell, arose with AKB48. The group started in 2005 as a primarily live act with its own theater space in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. The marketing genius and lyricist behind all of the the group's singles is Yasushi Akimoto,who came up with the ideas that if you bought a CD single you would get two things in addition to the music: a chance to shake the hand of a girl in the group and starting in 2009 a chance to vote for which of the girls would be featured in one of the singles in an annual election called the senbatsu sōsenkyo.
The handshake events were so successful that they became a ubiquitous feature of the idol industry, and the film does an excellent job of exploring what these events mean to the fans. Essentially, men (mostly) are given a chance to hold the hands of these pretty, young women for a few seconds and establish a connection which can be renewed at subsequent events. The film argues that these events have become so successful that they are, in part, responsible for Japan's lower birth rate. I find that thesis overblown; however, the film does provide evidence that there are a set of men who find easier to have these interactions than to try to get to know the real women in their lives as people and form relationships with them.
It is important to understand just how big the idol industry in Japan has become. The film mentions that there are around 10,000 young women who call themselves idols. The larger AKB48 organization alone has about 800 girls from various sister bands throughout Japan and Asia who can take part in the annual elections.
And those elections are a big deal in Japan. Here's a look at Google search for "American Idol" and "election" in the US:
As you can see, at it's peak American Idol was about as popular as US congressional elections during non-presidential campaign years. Here's a similar graph showing the popularity for the word "election" in Japan along with the Japanese for the more AKB48-specific term senbatsu sōsenkyo:
Those smaller peaks between the spikes are the national parliamentary elections. That is, by this measure the AKB48 elections drive about six times as much interest online as their national governmental elections.
Part of the problem in idol culture is the "love ban": idols who are popular enough to be in group with a management team are routinely required to sign a contract forbids them from having boyfriend or even giving the appearance that they might have had sex with anyone. It is generally believed that these clauses would be legally unenforceable, but they have not, as far as I can tell, ever been tested. Nevertheless, there have been many "scandals" in the idol industry in which these young women have been discovered giving such an appearance and some of them have been forced to leave the industry early as a consequence. In fact, the biggest news from the most recent AKB48 elections was an idol announcing she would be getting married as a way to get out in front of such a "scandal". She will, of course, be leaving the group as a consequence.
Idol culture brings many people together to focus attention and money on the idealized presentation of a relatively few young women. It is exploitative both of the young women themselves and of the lives and livelihoods of at least some of its fans. It has created many-to-one versions of relationships which foster and sustain a mere patina of what a real relationship can and should be between two human beings.
Terrace House, whatever other faults it may have, is all about how two people get to know each other as equal individuals, and the show celebrates those genuine individual connections as they form. If idol culture in Japan is a kind of poison, then Terrace House is a kind of antidote to that poison. And so, thanks to Tokyo Idols I am now completely in favor of including idols in the cast.
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