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Excerpt:

The no-dating dictum can be traced back to the mid-'80s "idol" group Onyanko Club, an immensely popular lineup of schoolgirl-uniform-clad singers created by AKB48 founder Yasushi Akimoto. (In Japan, "idols" are prepackaged pop singers with choreographed moves, rabid fanbases, and pure-seeming public personas). The policy didn't lead to any scandals within Onyanko Club—an underage smoking controversy stands as that outfit's most salacious shakeup—and various members have since said they secretly dated men during their time with the group. Still, the rule maintained the singers' virginal public appearance, which was all that mattered to the suits selling records.

Since then, the no-dating prohibition has been applied to both idol groups and individual singers, and to both men and women. This year alone has seen a slew of scandals besides Sashihara's. In January, AKB48 members Natsumi Hirajima and Rumi Yonezawa resigned after photos of them with men appeared on the popular message board 2Channel (the Japanese equivalent of 4Chan). Garnering more press attention was Jin Akanishi, a member of the popular boy band KAT-TUN and a solo artist, who secretly married a woman earlier this year without telling his agency. As punishment, Akanishi was removed from a TV drama he was set to star in and also had his fan club dissolved. His career has since taken a big hit.

While plenty of non-pop entertainers are freely allowed to have normal relationships, idol groups, says Miller, are "a special category of media product." Indeed, when the leader of hugely popular act Morning Musume resigned in 2005 after being photographed walking out of a convenience store with a male actor she'd been secretly dating, she put out a statement saying she said she could no longer sustain an appropriate "idol" image. Even rumors of romance are enough to send J-Pop handlers into spin overdrive. Last year, Ayaka Nishiwaki of the successful electro-idol group Perfume was seen visiting the home of a famous male rock star late at night. Her management snuffed the story by saying with a straight face that she was merely bringing him medicine.

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