Why are girl groups popular in Japan?

The day before yesterday, girl groups were discussed on a TV show.Since I found it interesting, I'll tell you about it.

In Japan, every ten years or so for the last thirty years, a girl group appears. Until now, three groups have appeared in total and all of them have become popular. These girls are cuter than average, but many of them aren't notably cute, which makes boys and young men feel as if the girls were their friends. It's been said that this sort of familiarity with the idols helps these three groups become popular.

In 1985, about fifty high school girls were selected in a popular TV show to form an idol group called Onyanko Club (おニャン子クラブ), which you can see in the first YouTube video. The group captured the hearts and minds of boys and young men. Although it broke up in 1987, some members are still popular now and appear on TV shows.

In 1997, another group called モーニング娘/morning-musume appeared, which you can see in the second YouTube video. First, the group received public attention because it was produced by a well-known musician named つんく/tsunku. The group consists of ten girls on average, and it changes members frequently. The frequent change of members is a strategy to capture public attention. Since elementary school girls sometimes become members, during the peak of the group's popularity, many young girls used to pay close attention to it, dreaming of joining it. I would say that the group is still popular, but it is much less popular now than it was up until five years ago.

About five years ago, a third group called AKB48 (the third You Tube video) was formed by a Yasushi Akimoto/秋元康, who is well known as a songwriter, music producer and so on. As a songwriter, he has written the lyrics of a wide range of many popular and great songs. His strategy for making the group popular is unique and noteworthy. Even though I'm not interested in the group itself at all, I follow it as a businesswoman. I think that you can find useful hints to develop new business models if you see why the group is very popular lately.

The AKB of AKB48 is from Akiba. Akiba is the abbreviated form of Akihabara/秋葉原, which is well known as an area where there are many Otaku and costume maids. Since the group has an exclusive theater as their home base in Akihabara and consists of around forty-eight girls, it was named AKB48. In the TV show that I mentioned at the beginning of the entry, AKB48's popularity was discussed, and they were compared with Disneyland (I might talk about this in a future post).  

I wonder if such groups consisting of many girls could be popular in other countries.