Dear Forum members,

Because I'm not a specialist on electoral politics or voting, I'm a little bit confused by last night's results. This morning, Asahi television showed a tearful Maeda Atsuko gratefully accepted her victory as AKB48's top idol, having come from behind to overtake Oshima Yuuko by less than a thousand votes. Having not purchased any of AKB48's recent singles, I myself was unable to vote and, to be perfectly frank, had viewed this the way I often do American mid-term elections.
Sure, there's a civic duty to stay informed about the battles among Team A, Team B, and Team K (not to mention the travails of the kenkyusei), but with the earthquake and my various professional responsibilities, I had sort of let things slide. I don't much like the term "voter apathy," but, truth be told, I was pretty apathetic about the outcome of this.

What's more noticeable to me is that the spread of votes seemed much larger than last year, and I'm wondering if that's because of increased voting from fans in South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong; these voters were featured prominently on Asahi's broadcast, as was one American guy who, I'm pretty sure, doesn't get out much. The outcome was that in previous years, the lowest vote-getter would receive roughly 5% of the number of votes of the most popular members (1600 votes vs. 30,000), but this year, the caboose of the group received only about 3% (4000 vs. nearly 140,000). At least in my estimation, increased voting seemed to benefit the top members of the group but added little to the AKB backbenchers. The big loser, Kudo Reina, dropped from 33rd last year to a last-place 40th this year, though (without having done the research or, frankly, having any idea who she is) I suspect that this may have been due more to redistricting than to any fundamental change in her qualifications as a Team K member.

My concerns are two-fold. First, if I'm correct about this -- and I might not be! I am not an expert -- Maeda's victory may have been due to foreign voters, whose influence we've been warned about in the past. And second, if it's determined that this is the case, could she be subjected to a vote of no-confidence? Oshima (Team K) and Team B's Kashiwagi Yuki, who came in 3rd, certainly would seem to have nothing to lose by spearheading a drive against Maeda's victory, particularly if it turns out to have be tainted by the same rumors of foreign funding that have dogged Team A candidates in the past. And while there are ideological gaps between Teams B and K (K's connection to a powerful religious organization has already raised questions about its policy independence), I don't think they represent insurmountable barriers to a joint action against Maeda, though one can see how squabbles between the teams might make their coalition concerts tentative and, if I may say, kind of terrible.

So I think the wild card in all of this Maeda's intra-team rival, Takahashi Minami. While Takahashi has occasionally been described as irascible and unreliable, she commands loyalty from a substantial chunk of Team A, who owe their own careers to her tactical brilliance.
My sense is that without Takahashi's support, a vote of no-confidence won't even get off the ground, but it depends to some degree on how she thinks about her time left in the group and about her commitment to the team. I would imagine that she has to calculate whether she should be part of a coup or bide her time and figure that Maeda herself will stumble over the coming year (a drunken press conference in Italy, an ill-conceived Futenma plan) and that she'd be positioned to take over. Takahashi is already 20, of course, so longevity has to factor into her decision, but my sense is that Japan is better served by patience on her part. Her scheduled three-day event at the Yokohama Arena -- Takamina ni tsuite ikimasu -- was cancelled because of the Tohoku earthquake, and I think that continued magnanimity on her part might help to make sure that Team A maintains control of the group if fans turn against Maeda for her indecisiveness. I for one have always felt that the criminal charges against Takahashi were politically motivated (I'm not sure I believe them in the first place, and even if true, are they really worse than what everyone else in AKB48 is doing all the time?), and I think it very unlikely that she will serve any time in prison. But I suppose that even a slap on the wrist might be a game changer.

For her part, Maeda seems aware both of the fragility of her support as well as the potential consequences for aidoru kotai (particularly the ending of over 50 years of nearly uninterrupted Morning Musume dominance). In her victory speech, she said "Even if you hate me, please don't hate AKB" (watashi na koto ga kirai demo, AKB ni kirai naranaide). I'd like to believe that this is the sort of unified spirit that will unite the group when Japan needs it, but I've been disappointed in the past. Clearly, unless Maeda improves her media strategy, she will be in for a rocky tenure. It won't be long before Martin Fackler or Hiroko Tabuchi writes a New York Times article suggesting that Maeda's failures as No. 1 AKB idol are emblematic not of her personal idiosyncrasies but rather something darker and more persistent in the Japanese national character.

Final thought: given that the policy differences weren't clearly articulated, it raises the possibility that this really came down to a straight-up popularity contest. Not sure if this suggests something about the "presidentialization" (to use Krauss and Nyblade's
term) of AKB48, but it raises troubling questions about how little we actually know about these candidates and how they will behave once in power.

So, my thoughts, for what they're worth. Has anyone done research on these no-confidence rules? Am I completely off-base?

Dave

David Leheny
Henry Wendt III '55 Professor of East Asian Studies Department of East Asian Studies
211 Jones Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544
dleheny@princeton.edu