Charisma's Realm: Fandom in Japan

Abstract

Most studies of Japanese social organization focus upon structural elements of duty and obligation. This study of Japanese fan clubs uses concept of charisma to analyze voluntary bonds that connect individuals to one another. The concept of charisma recognizes individual choice, transcendental affect, and role of exceptional. Moreover, this study examines charisma within context of popular music. Charisma here becomes not mystical enigma, but manipulable tool of big industry and fan alike. (Japan, consumption, popular culture, charisma) Weber (1968:xviii) defines charisma as a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional qualities. Charisma, however, only exists within particular set of relationships between leader and those for whom that leader's magnetism finds resonance. One cannot, therefore, speak of charisma without referring to an intrinsically social relationship founded upon ties of transcendent appeal. Most studies of charisma focus on religious movements and political leadership. This article, however, explores relationship between charismatic performer and audience, which is cultivated on stage and screen and ritualized fan clubs. The ways which an ordinary listener becomes an ardent fan strikes at core of charisma-based human interaction and formation of resultant social groups. This essay explores that core context of fan clubs for popular singers of enka, sentimental musical genre Japan that appeals primarily to older adults. As genre which reputedly sings of and from the heart/soul of Japanese, enka not only expresses what are considered traditional values, but also exemplifies them its patterning of fandom. The organization of fandom by and around commercial industries Japan does not lessen emotional grip among members or invalidate its community of ardent fans. The charisma of popular singer may (or may not) be individually derived, but its maintenance by profit-seeking music industry forms basis of fandom Japan. The questions addressed here are: 1) What is patterning of fandom Japan? 2) How is charisma-based relationship between performer and audience cultivated by music industry? and 3) What is nature of community created by fan clubs? Most studies of Japanese social organization focus on structural elements of duty and obligation. This study of fan clubs uses concept of charisma to analyze voluntary bonds that connect individuals to one another. The concept of charisma recognizes individual choice, transcendental affect, and role of exceptional. These elements have been long neglected within anthropological studies of Japan. Moreover, this study examines charisma within context of popular music (clearly charisma for profit); that is, charisma which is industrially produced, culturally sanctioned, and economically deployed. Charisma here becomes not mystical enigma, but manipulable tool of big industry and fan alike. THE CULTURAL PATTERNING OF FANDOM IN JAPAN Fandom United States is often denigrated as social pathology, as a psychological symptom of presumed social dysfunction (Jenson 1992:10). Fans are negatively viewed as passive victims of manipulation who have easily fallen prey to seductive powers of mass media. Fandom is perceived as symptomatic of lack people's lives, as action which rests upon filling an emotional void with fantasized parasocial relationship (cf. Horton and Wohl 1956). Indeed, Weber (1968:333) describes charismatic relationships as those born in times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, political distress. A fan is someone lacking individuality to stand on his or her own. To be fan is to be follower, without independent ideas or an inner core of one's own, without control over one's actions. …