If you ask the current children about their dreams when they grow up, many people may say that they want to become stars. In Japan, where the idol industry is extremely developed, young boys and girls are packaged to debut every year, but under the top of the shining pyramid, there are countless buried and forgotten underground idols and underground idols.
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When a female idol loses popularity, what awaits at the end is usually the custom industry.
Sarina was once a well-known child star, the C of the idol group with a small fire, but now the only way for her is to sell her body...
Not long ago, the 27-year-old Sarina was selected to play the role of "stripper girl" in a movie. It's a small character who doesn't even have lines, and she has to spend a whole day waiting on set for a few seconds to appear on camera.
Sarina is tall and thin, looks much younger than her actual age, and now focuses on being an adult film actress. Adult films are filmed very quickly, and they can run multiple "announcements" a day, so in general, Japanese adult actresses do not like to participate in real TV movie shooting - wasting time and not making money.
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But Sarina, who was waiting on the set, felt a little relieved that she had not been screened in mainstream film and television for nearly 20 years, and becoming a star was her and her mother's dream.
Sarina's mother is a typical "stage mother". It's a term that has become increasingly popular in Japan in recent decades (there are also stage dads, but fewer). The rise of Japanese idol culture has deeply affected generations, idol artists seem to be much lower than the threshold of singers and actors, some of them are not very good looking and can debut by virtue of charm, and some are good-looking but have mediocre talents and can also become big stars.
As a result, there are a large number of parents in Japan who have an infinite yearning for becoming idols in childhood. They participate in idol auditions as underground idol activities, and are also fanatical star chasers. But in the end, because there was no chance of debut, he chose to get married and have children.
Some of them impose their unfulfilled dreams on their children, arranging auditions and performance opportunities for their children from an early age, hoping to be discovered by a certain scout. In order to increase the possibility of children becoming famous, the age of stage mothers to receive notices to the baby is also getting younger and younger, more and more inward. (Underground idols are mostly women, so there are more stage moms than stage dads)
The mother of child star Sen Qicai was called a stage mother by the Japanese media
Sarina's family was wealthy, her parents were both company employees, and she lived in a high-end residential area in Tokyo. It is said that her mother once had the idea of becoming an entertainer but failed, so when Sarina was less than 1 year old, her mother looked around for opportunities to package her as a baby model.
She firmly believes that her daughter will definitely go further than her own acting career when she began to contact the show business as a baby. Sarina remembers that when she was 3 years old, her mother would take her to a different studio every week to shoot TV series, and she had worked with countless famous artists.
He has worked with a four-person famous female idol group, played with a member of a disbanded Jesney boy band, and starred in a TV series starring a famous original Takarazuka actress. Sarina said that when she was a child, she did not understand what the entertainment industry was, and she did not want to make a scene herself, but she knew that her mother wanted her to do so, and slowly learned to enjoy the feeling of being noticed.
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At that time, she was a prominent figure in school, and occasionally missed classes because of the busy work of child stars. In addition to playing supporting roles in many TV series, her most famous work is a video game console commercial that was very popular in Japan 20 years ago.
But Sarina's mother did not think that the living environment of the child star was more cruel than that of adults. Ordinary parents expect their children to grow tall and develop, but parents of child stars are most afraid of this. By the time she graduated from elementary school, Sarina was taller than her peers, even though her face was still a child.
Unable to mix in the television industry, her mother took Sarina back to the child modeling world. High school naturally chose the art high school that children who want to become artists will go to.
At that time, every child felt that he would become a big star, and Sarina also signed a firm and was soon planned to become an underground idol, sarina felt that the future was bright, and her mother's expectations for her would soon be realized.
Now that Sarina thinks back to her time at school, only one of so many children has now become an unknown mainstream TV actress, and the rest have not even reached the edge of mainstream show business.
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Her life in actually entering the underground idol world is also very bad, because the idol world is more ugly and complicated than the competition for child stars. The girls in her group, in order to become the C position, repeated plastic surgery. Sarina was very reluctant to do so, but in order to stay in the circle, she could only go with the flow.
She managed to become the C-spot of the group, and was once very popular, and the group's songs even entered the oricon charts. Although as long as you are a little more popular, you can become a real mainstream artist, but this "point" is more difficult than ascending to the sky.
Among The Japanese idol practitioners, 80% are low-level idols, or "underground idols", with no original tracks, and some even have no agency and fixed performance venues, and can only hang out between major bars and livehouses. The remaining 19% are underground idols who are a little popular and seem to be only one step away from their debut. But only 1% of them can really become idols on earth.
Underground idols have meager incomes, and they can almost only rely on offline interaction with fans, and holding a handshake will maintain popularity. Due to the instability of the market, these girls are manipulated by the company like pawns. Sarina was transferred from one group to another, and was never able to gain a stable fan base.
The income from the performance is very small, after the concert with fans, a photo can earn 300 yen, a month down the Salinai only get 10,000 yen (more than 500 yuan), even if you count the commission of the performance, a month's money is not as much as the average student working in a convenience store.
Sarina wants to live a better life, but always has fantasies about becoming a star. Busy with the life of an underground idol, she did not have time to work to earn money.
Sarina had never thought that this was a dead end, much less that the end of the road was customs. Because of the lack of money, Sarina was recommended to date middle-aged people and do aid socializing (known in Japanese as "Daddy's Work").
This gray industry is allowed in Japan, it gathers a large number of underage women, at first glance is just a side-playing service industry, but in fact it is the first step to introduce countless women into the abyss of customs.
Sarina started by making 5,000 yen over tea and dinner with her guests, earning money while trying to retain the losing fans. But three years later, she has passed the golden age of idols, or quit the idol industry because of the hopeless debut.
Because she did not take a good culture class in the art high school, could not enter the university, and because she did not have any internship experience, she could not find a serious job. The only job she has been exposed to since she was born is show business.
Sarina finally realized that fame was actually impossible for most people. In Japan, where career paths are very narrow, one wrong step is one wrong step, and when you wake up from the dream of a star, you can't turn back.
Some low-level idols even offer bottoms in order to retain fans
She works in a bar and is spotted by an adult film "star scout" who asks her to go to the sea to make a film, and they describe a wonderful future to Sarina in similar words as an underground idol: here you are the only heroine, you will be loved and worshipped, you will become a superstar in this industry.
The failure of the path of child stars and idols made Sarina mistakenly feel that she could only fulfill her and her mother's long-cherished wish by being a star in adult films.
A slogan for underground idols on adult products
Today, Sarina will take on no matter how cheap the filming work, she comforts herself that "acting is the same, as long as you can be a star, you can be happy", she told her mother that she lived by acting, but in the end she did not dare to reveal the truth to her family.
Some would say that women who choose to be "depraved" like Sarina can't resist temptation. But in fact, the Japanese sq image industry and custom industry are allowed to exist, which is essentially a "mouse clip" dedicated to capturing fallen women.
Like Sarina, Yuzuki, who was once an underground idol and later became an adult actress, revealed that custom shops and adult film companies will specifically lobby unsatisfactory female idols (and even many of them are once popular mainstream idols). Because the label of "former idol" can create a huge gimmick in the SQ industry, it can create two or three times more value than ordinary people.
Therefore, during the epidemic, due to the closure of LiveHouse, a large number of underground idols also flowed into the adult film market.
When countless young people with star dreams walk into idol companies, they think they will go to the Avenue of Stars, but in fact they are going to the dark road wrapped in star dreams and money, and wrapped in Japan's narrow social structure...