Shining Stars: Idols in Japanese Cinema in the 1980s and 1990s

‘Idol’ is a term which has become a ubiquitous feature of Japanese culture. Packaged as cute, adolescent starlets, idols appear in both film and TV and are known for their singing and acting in often equal measure. While the trend has continued since the 1960s, this film season focuses on the paramount period of the 1980s, an era considered the ‘Heyday of Japanese Idol Films’ when idols regularly graced the silver screen and simultaneously topped the pop charts, as well as the following decade of the 1990s as a comparison. The stars in the selected films were all household names in Japan, but how many can you recognise?