Berryz Workshop is how “Berryz Kobo” translates from Japanese and it is the name of a young girl musical group in Japan. The members are all school aged and their musical numbers are provided to them by producers working for the Hello! Project musical label.
Following I, Japanophile logic, what we have here is a bunch of kids who were inducted while still underage and were then subsequently fashioned as idol style objects for our worshiper style gratification. In other words: The production and promotion of this group was a comercial venture in (music and) the objectification of young girls.
The Berryz Workshop is by far and away a better place to be than the lower ranks of U-15. While the Berryz Workshop also partakes in the U-15 genre, it is from a halcyon height. What the Workshop brings to the marketplace in terms of photography and “Photobooks” serves as much more of an exultation of the girls than do the products produced at the lower end of the scale by other less repuatable companies for other less fortunate girls.
Could Berryz Kobo work just as well as a dance troupe? No.
As far as I’m concerned it’s the music that pushes them way up into the atmosphere. Beyond a commercial enterprise they are also an artistic endeavour and they are not without artistic merit! One can be enthralled without flitting back and forth in one’s mind to comparisons with strip joints and that other kind of dancing girl, the stripper.
