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The story
Actress Yoko Minamino (59) became a hot topic on 5ch’s Geinou/Sports News+ board after she looked back on her ultra-busy days as a top idol, saying “I couldn’t go home for 10 months,” during the October 25 broadcast of Fuji TV’s “Nariyuki Kaido Tabi.” She also named contemporaries including Yuki Saito, Miho Nakayama, Minako Honda, Yui Asaka, and Shonentai. In the thread, some pointed to 1986-88 as her peak years and cited CD sales in the 300,000-400,000 range, while others pushed back with “I don’t remember her selling that well,” sparking a debate over just how popular idols really were back then.
Yoko Minamino: “I Couldn’t Go Home for 10 Months” — Looking Back on Her Insanely Busy Days as a Top Idol
Actress Yoko Minamino (59) appeared on Fuji TV’s “Nariyuki Kaido Tabi” (Sundays at noon) on the 25th, where she looked back on her overwhelmingly busy days.
When asked about her contemporaries, she said, “I have tons of contemporaries. Such a star-studded lineup… in music there’s Yuki Saito, Miho Nakayama, Minako Honda, Yui Asaka too. For the guys, Shonentai. There are a lot of actors as well…”
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
By around '89 people were already over her.
Yui Asaka was around the same time.
Re: #25
She had a brief moment of really selling.
Even so, her CDs still moved around 300,000-400,000 copies.
There were way more kids back then,
and people used to say an idol's shelf life was 2 years.
but by the time I noticed
it had already gotten pretty far along
and I blew my chance.
Hope they run it again next year.
I used to idolize her yo-yo moves. (her character in Sukeban Deka fought with a yo-yo)
Haruko Sagara also gives off a seriously not-ordinary vibe watching now
People back then were something else
No mention of Akie Yoshizawa, huh?
of top idols started to slip.
Don't make a thread over a 2024 rerun.
Re: #19
Shizuka Kudo too…
You can only say that because you don't know the era of Mari Amachi or Miyoko Asada.
Brings back memories.
Nanno's "Haikara-san" look
was so cute that it's the reason female university students started wearing hakama at graduation ceremonies
That's a fun fact for you.
and where did it all end up going?
Pink Lady got hit hard too.
Re: #49
Ostracized by the industry's inner circle.
Rebuilding the agency
the president's car getting pricier, and more numerous
keeping a mistress on the side
paying staff salaries
and whatever's left over probably goes into developing the next crop of candidates?
Miyoko Asada got talked about, but she wasn't a top idol.
Asada and Kumiko Ooba were famous for the "this girl's a singer but can't sing" label — which, flip it around, means the other idols actually could sing. And that kind never made it to the top.
Later on, idols started hitting #1 and racking up hit after hit as a matter of course, and "idols can't really sing" became the assumed norm
so the compliment flipped to "this girl's an idol but she can actually sing."
Mari Amachi wasn't treated as a bad singer in her own time either
It's just people who don't know that era watching old footage later and laughing that she was bad
https://youtu.be/gisM_EVbc0c?list=RDgisM_EVbc0c&t=4
With Kumiko Ooba, the rough singing actually became part of her charm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4I5H0ZkUUs
If Asada and Ooba weren't top idols, then Yoko Minamino and Yui Asaka weren't either. Stop moving the goalposts to fit your argument.
Minamino's agency president was Shunichi Tokura, but it was a small-time agency
Sukeban Deka 2 was originally supposed to star Akie Yoshizawa from Tanabe Agency
they even held a second "Saki Asamiya" audition for it and she won
But then a producer who reportedly fell for Minamino at first sight swapped out the lead. He later said, "I pretty much forced it through on my own call." If he's willing to admit that much publicly, there must have been real friction behind the scenes.
They say Akina Nakamori's agency, Ken-On, wasn't that powerful for singers either — upsets like that happen with female idols
With male idols, a single agency controls everything and the rest can't even get on TV
so there's no competition or variety left.
with Haruko Sagara and Yuma Nakamura clapping along behind her, looking bored out of their minds.
Haruko Sagara looked bored during "Aki no Indication" too.
I love that clip of Haruko Sagara feeding Nanno a Pocky stick through her iron mask (a masked character from the show)
She told fortune-teller Kazuko Hosoki that she disappeared for several years in line with the industry's unwritten rules.
Her acting career ended up well behind Saito's, but overall it wasn't a failure.
She rose far enough to become the stand-in when Yuki Saito got dropped from the Taiga drama over the "underwear scandal"
makes you think there must have been a Sukeban Deka fan on the production staff.
The one who vanished from TV completely was Yui Asaka
Re: #125
Yui Asaka ranks even lower.
she probably could've landed a morning-drama heroine role
Shunichi Tokura had connections at NHK, after all.
Apparently Minamino was actually a candidate for the lead in "Chotchan," wasn't she?
But a morning drama ties you down for ages, pays peanuts, and you can't juggle commercials on the side — isn't that probably why they passed on her?
She played the most beloved woman in "Takeda Shingen,"
and still couldn't get on Kohaku (the New Year's Eve Kohaku Uta Gassen song contest).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBJoxK1E1HE
It's pretty wild that she's still out there singing at regional events as she nears 60
It's one of those narrow-range songs typical of composer Kisugi, so her voice still comes out easily even now.
She's actually gotten better at singing lol
That's a rare pattern.
Singers back then had no in-ear monitors
it was live singing on live broadcast with a different backing band every single time
Even so, every idol got called a bad singer.
Back then singers had a front monitor at best
with live singing on live broadcast and a different backing band every time
Of course that's going to come out rough
Meanwhile these days there are people who can't sing even with in-ear monitors feeding them a vocal guide track.
Background and Points of Debate
What split opinion in the thread was the standard for “was she really a top idol.” Commenters citing concrete CD sales figures of 300,000-400,000 copies clashed with those saying “I don’t remember her selling that well,” and the discussion expanded — drawing comparisons with earlier-generation stars like Mari Amachi and Miyoko Asada — into a debate over when exactly “idols being bad singers” became the accepted norm. As background, it’s a story well known in the industry that the lead role in Minamino’s signature work “Sukeban Deka II” was originally set to go to Akie Yoshizawa of Tanabe Agency, but was changed to Minamino at the producer’s insistence. It’s also worth noting that Shunichi Tokura, who ran the agency representing Minamino, later went on to serve as Commissioner of the Agency for Cultural Affairs. Some replies in the thread contained baseless speculation or remarks bordering on unfair slander against Minamino and other celebrities; those portions have been excluded from this article.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Entertainment] Yoko Minamino: “I Couldn’t Go Home for 10 Months” — Looking Back on Her Insanely Busy Days as a Top Idol.”
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