I was similarly accosted last year at an outdoor concert given by a shamisen player. There were guys with stepladders and 500mm mirror lenses clambering all over the place when I arrived but my foreignness was the signal that shit had goten out of hand, apparently. I was told brusquely to stop which I did with an apology. Then I noted that nobody else had been told to stop, so I re-started. There was, I should note, a gorgeously lit castle in the background which was more than half the shot and was not represented by any talent agency to my knowledge. Eventually, after I repeatedly, soundlessly pointed to the others in reply to my own reprimand, the gig was closed to cameras.

Its another of the great contradictions of the country – the showbi world. Visit the official site of any idol here and I warrant you’ll not find a single useable image – in fact they even go as far as putting sad, 30dpi pixelated images up – defiling the very image they seek to guard. They have all kinds of tricks like slicing the images into pieces to make it more diifficult etc.

So, then, to recap; their visual “property” they’ll protect to the point of hiring expensive security guards to protect, but their CDs can be rented for a few yen at any street corner video store, along side a bunk of blank CDs and tapes at cut-neck prices!

A contradiction? Or, perhaps a signifier of the true worth of what is actually on the CDs and a flat admission that what they look like is, in fact, all they have??!!

Interesting post.