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The story
Yoshie Nitta, formerly of Onyanko Club, has announced she’ll be joining the live event “Seishun Playback! Idol Golden Generation – Miracle Beans Project Vol. 1” on December 5 at TIAT Sky Hall at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport. The event already had two other former Onyanko Club members lined up — Kayo Wagatsuma (member number 48) and Miyuki Sugiura (member number 50) — and with Nitta (member number 4) joining, it creates the rare lineup of three former members sharing the same stage. On 5ch, the announcement drew welcoming comments and nostalgic chat about fellow idols like Tomomi Nishimura and Risa Tachibana, but it also sparked a more divided debate over whether this generation really deserves to be called the “golden generation.”
Yoshie Nitta Set to Appear at Idol Golden Generation Live — Rare Shared Stage with Former Onyanko Club Members Kayo Wagatsuma and Miyuki Sugiura
Yoshie Nitta, a talent and former member of Onyanko Club, has been confirmed to appear at the live event “Seishun Playback! Idol Golden Generation – Miracle Beans Project Vol. 1” (December 5, TIAT Sky Hall, Haneda Airport, Tokyo).
The live event brings together figures who colored Japan’s idol golden age from the 1980s into the 1990s. Fellow Onyanko Club alumnae Kayo Wagatsuma (member number 48) and Miyuki Sugiura (member number 50) had already been announced for the lineup, and with Nitta joining, members number 4, 48, and 50 will now share the same stage.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Things gradually cooled down after that song,
and from '88 onward it was basically the idol winter era, right?
Girls who'd debuted as idols started shifting to a post-idol "artist" image instead.
The idol winter era was from '89 onward.
Re: #44
In '91 there was that concert that got canceled right after it started.
and the idol market was swelling to the bursting point.
Then every company piled into the market, the numbers exploded, and no single overwhelming star was left standing.
Just the usual law of economics, I guess.
It's from "Risa no Yousei Densetsu" (Risa's Fairy Legend) on the Famicom Disk System.
Risa Tachibana's "Risa no Yousei Densetsu" (1988)
Lyrics: Takashi Matsumoto
Composition: Kyohei Tsutsumi
Arrangement: Takeshi Kobayashi
Feels like they're being sold off as a job lot.
Nami Shimada hasn't changed a bit.
A miracle, for someone in her 50s.
the golden ones were Yuki Saito, Yoko Minamino, Yui Asaka, right?
This lineup is way too heavy on minor idols.
No idea how she looks now though.
That's around when their media exposure had dropped off too.
Class B was for members still in middle school.
The system was that they'd graduate into full membership once they moved up to high school,
but the show ended before that happened for some of them, so they stayed in Class B.
Yeah, those swimsuit gravure shots got plenty of… personal use out of guys like me. Around that time the idol winter era kicked in, and magazines like Myojo, Heibon, and Dunk folded one after another.
As if swapping places with the idol winter era, J-POP — Komuro Tetsuya stuff, Being-label acts — started trending big. It really felt like there were no idols at all until Morning Musume came along.
Kayo Wagatsuma, meanwhile, is a name only insiders know: she had to fudge her age because she got caught up in her famous older sister's own age-fudging, and she's also part of why Tsunku (of Sharan Q) decided to get into show business.
Ah, the thing where Naomi Serizawa lied about her age, so her younger sister technically ended up older than her?
Miyuki Sugiura was also on Daijobu da (the Ken Shimura variety show).
Guess they can't afford to book anyone whose fee is too high.
After hearing so many technically perfect singers over and over… you get worn out by all that polish.
These days, Tomoyo Harada's old songs — the ones I used to avoid because I thought she was a bad singer — hit me surprisingly hard.
Once Harada put out enough songs and got more polished herself, she couldn't sing those old songs the same way anymore.
They barely made it out into the world riding the leftover momentum of the idol boom.
It's basically the AKB48 equivalent of the era when Yui Yokoyama was captain.
I'd still call it the golden generation in terms of era.
On TV there was Yuyake Nyan Nyan and Sukeban Deka; at the movies there was the Kadokawa double bill of Yakushimaru and Harada.
Idol magazines were selling well, and radio was dominated by idols too.
It's just that the people gathered for this event were treated as B-list or C-list even within that golden generation.
Background and Points of Debate
Onyanko Club was an idol group that emerged from the TV show “Yuyake Nyan Nyan,” which began airing in 1985; members were assigned “member numbers” in the order they joined. Yoshie Nitta is number 4, Kayo Wagatsuma is number 48, and Miyuki Sugiura is number 50 — given how far apart their join dates were, it’s a rare combination for all three to share a stage. What split opinion in the thread was whether this lineup can really be called the “golden generation” representing the idol boom of the late 1980s. Some posters championed Tomomi Nishimura and Risa Tachibana, while others pointed out that, compared to top-tier idols of the era like Yuki Saito, Yoko Minamino, and Yui Asaka, these performers had relatively low name recognition. One point readers might easily misread is that the term “golden generation” comes from the event’s own branding, and doesn’t necessarily mean these were the very top of the era’s popularity rankings. The thread also cited the sheer breadth of the idol market at the time, and the scale of the boom across magazines and radio, as background context.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] “Idol Golden Generation Live” Announced! Tomomi Nishimura, Risa Tachibana, Yuko Nito, Yumeko Kitaoka, Yoshie Nitta, Miyuki Sugiura, Kayo Wagatsuma, and More Confirmed to Appear.”
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