Koji Fukada has, within his oeuvre, always put the emphasis on how relational dynamics and sudden shifts in relational realities evoke the ‘subjective position’ of his characters. Informed by his experience at Seinendan, the theatre company established by playwright Oriza Hirata, he pays close attention to the relational effect of circling of the signifier as well as its temporary absence.
Given Fukada’s interest in relational dynamics, it is not all that surprising that he became interested in exploring the idol industry with a fictional filmic narrative (General-note 1). In a similar way, the encounter with the figure of the idol led to me write an article that explored the idol-phenomenon from a Lacanian perspective – Female idols in Japan: Desiring desire, phantasmatic consumption and drive satisfaction (General-note 2).
Koji Fukada opens Love On Trial by introducing the spectator to the members of an up-and-coming idol-group called Happy ☆ Fanfare: Mai (Kyoko Saito), Nanaka (Yuuna Nakamura), Risa (Miyu Igawa), Minami (Mitsuki Imamura), and Himena (Hinano Sakura).
One night, after a performance, Nanaka approaches Mai and Risa, with whom she shares a dorm, to ask them to accompany her to following day to the zoo so she can secretly meet her boyfriend Yuya (Naoki Inukai). At the zoo, Mai happens to run into Kei (Yuki Kura), her former classmate who became a professional mime/juggler. They keep meeting and grow closer to each other, yet their first moment of intimacy is cut short by an unexpected message from Risa: Nanaka’s relation with Yuya has been leaked.
To safeguard her dream to be an idol, Nanaka swiftly streams an apology video and cuts ties with Yuya. Mai, on the other hand, decides to keep Kei at a distance. Yet, after a shocking attack at a fan event, she makes a radical decision: she flees the bus and drives off with Kei, who came to check upon her after hearing the news. Eight months later, Mai stands trial in a suit for damages.
Let us begin our reading of Love On Trial by highlighting that the title-sequence, the performance of Happy ☆ Fanfare stages the phantasmatic reality that seeks to bind the male spectator to the female body, as objectual support for their phantasmatic investment in a love that is not allowed to be written. What the idol sells through her dance and her lyrics is nothing other than a ‘produced’ fantasy of a writable sexual relationship. The female subject lends her voice and her body to an agency – producers, choreographers, and so on – who fabricate/produce a phantasmatic image that can capture, at the level of looking, male desire (Narra-note 1). The subject does not merely give up her agency to be produced as an idol-image, but also ‘agrees’ to show agency only within the imposed confines of her produced image.
The impossibility to turn this fantasy into reality, made into a rule by making dating forbidden – renai kinshi [ 恋愛禁止], leaves the fan hanging in a place that keeps him consuming goods in support of his preferred bodily support, his oshi (推し), and enables him to gain pleasure from said impossibility, from the phantasmatic investment into the possible sexual relationship as such (Narra-note 2).
At another level, the renai kinshi rule cuts the female subject off from the fantasy they seek to sell to their fans. The musical echoes of love – of a love that never realizes itself, of being imprisoned in a position of ever-desiring – can, in the world of idols, only successfully entrap male desire by leaving who she desires ill-defined. The idol seductively delineates an empty space where the male fan can feel desired and thus fleetingly escape his sense of castration.
Fukada also highlights how the demands made by and the rules imposed by manager Saya (Erika Karata), a former idol herself, forces each member to live the desired image – an image of virginal purity – for the desiring fans. They do not only have to attend the fan events organized by their agency, but also expected to stream and use SNS for fans in their ‘free’ time. They are subjected to a strict curfew and are forbidden to drink alcohol.
The leaking of Nanaka’s relationship with Yuya cracks the image of virginal purity, the bodily frame the male subject projects his desires on, and exposes, in a radical way, its fictionality. However, the betrayal does not lie in the mere revealing of the fictionality of the image – most idol-fans consciously know they deal with an image, but in accidently exposing the structural gap between one’s subjectivity and the phantasmatic image they form the temporary bodily support of. The confrontation with this gap complicates the desiring male subject’s ability to ‘nurture’ his phantasy through consumption and fatherly ‘support’ the impossible fantasy and an image to believe in (See also Narra-note 2).
However, Fukada also takes time to stage the radical response by fans who do not perceive the performative dimension of being an idol, who do not realize that they, first and foremost, consume a fantasy. Such subjects feel betrayed because they have seized, in an erotomaniac manner, the ‘shared’ empty space as their sole property – Yama (Katsutoshi Kihara) deems himself the only desired object of Nanaka.
It is also interesting to highlight the role Saya, the manager, plays within the narrative. It is evident from the way she speaks to the members that she realizes herself with respect to them as a representative of the idol-system, of the symbolic apparatus that produces ‘fetishist’ fantasies of youthful virginal purity to entrap male desire and seduce the desiring subject to perpetually consume to support his investment in the unattainable fantasy of romance.
During the trial, we see a different Saya; she is visibly shaken, she realized herself as a divided subject. While she speaks as a representative of system, underlining the mundane rationality of the rules in a rather emotionless way, her body communicates a more tragic truth, signalling the wounds inflicted by having passed through the repressive and oppressive prison of being a consumable fantasy (Narra-note 3).
The trial, unsurprisingly, turns into a play with signifiers. What turns to be the main crux of the trial is not the reality of their romance – that is not disputed, but whether their love was a breach of contract or not. Can Mai’s love for Kei be criminalized in accordance with the letter of the contract she signed? Can Kei, who did not consider himself a fan of Mai, be punished by the rule that forbids romantic relationships and sexual interactions with fans? Or, to put it differently, is it ethically acceptable for a subject dreaming to be an idol to be forced to surrender her agency and dismiss her own subjectivity? It is evident from the subdued manner in which Fukada explores the subjective effects of the ongoing trial on Mai, Kei and their relationship that the latter question forms the kernel around which his critique of the idol-business turns (Narra-note 4).
The composition of Love On Trial offers a balanced combination between documentary-styled framing and more stylized manner of framing. The use of more documentary-like framing infuses a sense of realism in the unfolding of the narrative, signals the veracity presented in an envelope of fiction. The combination of long takes and hand-held framing supports the naturalism of the interactional dynamics between the members of the idol-band and the (staged) reality of being an idol-image for a desiring audience by turning the spectator, whose gaze coincides with the filmic frame, into an ‘voyeuristic’ presence.
Fukada utilizes the more stylized compositional approach to introduce the spectator to the way live-performances and MV seek to capture male desire and deliver surges of pleasure – split-second romances – by seductively teasing the male subject with ‘acknowledging’ eye-contact. Later in the narrative – to stage the court-case, Fukuda heavily relies on static long takes. By doing so, he does not only put emphasis on the bodily presence of the characters, the signifiers they utter and the way their bodies are implicated in their enunciations, but also effectively inaugurates the spectator into a space where signifiers are opposed, contrasted, and associated (Cine-note 1).
Love on Trial offers one the most honest explorations of the idol-phenomenon, touching both on the dark and the bright sides of clothing oneself with an idol-image for the male other, the fan/subject. Yet, maybe, the power of Koji Fukada’s understated drama lies in the fact that he shows that the brightness by which the idol shines is always in some way an imaginary swaddling of a societal and/or subjective darkness. Highly recommended.
Notes
General-note 1: The case that inspired Fukada to make Love on Trial is a case in 2015 where the management company succeeded in getting damages from an idol for breaching the prohibition of romantic relationships – the court agreed that the dating prohibition formed an integral part of its business model.
It seems likely that Fukada, as he began investigating the industry for his narrative, also learned about the case in 2016, where the court rejected the claim by the management company by emphasizing the personal freedom of the female subject. In our view, the elliptical dimension of the finale reflects both cases, but leaving the contradiction they inaugurate unresolved.
General-note 2: You can access Female idols in Japan: Desiring desire, phantasmatic consumption and drive satisfaction viahttps://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/ax6vp_v1.
Narra-note 1: The signifiers company president Yoshida (Kenjiro Tsuda) uses when he addresses the other members after Nanaka’s ‘forbidden’ romance has been leaked re-formulates the absconding of agency in more familial terms.
He tells them the agency is there to protect and nurture them and frames selfish acts as betrayals of the agency’s fatherly investment in them. However, this indirect reminder that they must show gratitude by strictly abiding by the rules obfuscates the fact that the agency’s main concern is the protection and nurturing of their desirability, their image as catalyst for consumption, their image as what can be phantasmatically consumed by spending money.
Narra-note 2: The interaction between Nanaka and Yama-sanaftertheir live-performance allows us to reformulate the effect of the impossibility to turn the fantasy of romance into reality. In a certain sense, it is because the idol-fan generally knows the fantasy is unattainable that he recedes into a supportive position of consumption – consuming goods is the main way to show one’s support, one’s love for the bodily support, one’s entrapment within the fantasy.
Narra-note 3: The encounter between Mai and Nanaka later in the narrative echoes Saya’s implied trajectory as an idol by illustrating how the true acceptance of the idol system often goes hand in hand with misrecognizing one’s own subjectivity. The organization of one’s ego around an image of castration, a state of dependency on the fan and his desire, leads certain subjects to surrender and dismiss one’s own desire.
The idol’s ‘hysterical’ desire might be the desire of the fan as Other, yet does not (always) coincide with the desire of the subject.
Narra-note 4: The elliptic nature of the finaleenables Fukuda to confront the spectator, irrespective of the outcome of Mai’s trial, with the fact that nothing has changed and re-emphasize the urgent need to ethically question the ren’ai kinshi rule, its sexist implications, as well as radical dependency on the fan imposed by the management company on the female subject.
The elliptical element of the finale, the withholding of the verdict, also allows Fukuda to put the emphasis on the different subjective responses to this exploitative apparatus – acceptance or refusal – and enable the spectator to realize his own ethical attitude towards the idol-industry.
Cine-note 1: Fukuda also utilizes his static moments within this composition to deliver some compositional beauty via thoughtful blocking and by utilizing frame-within-frames in an effective way.