Japanese popular culture has been around for many years and is the leading wave of Asian popular culture. It includes a variety of media such as manga, anime, film and music. Japanese popular culture is also portrayed through physical forms such as products, celebrities, personalities, maid cafes and may others. SMAP is a Jpop boy band with immense popularity from Japan and is one form of Japanese popular culture. Darling-Wolf suggests that SMAP's popularity is due to its careful construction of appeal and masculinity.
SMAP is not well-known for their talents in singing, but rather for depicting Japanese personalities. Darling-Wolf refers to SMAP members as 'life-sized' pop idols (Aoyagi) who personifies a typical Japanese boy or girl which allows audiences to relate to them well. This is supported by Yano's research which highlights that fans form emotional bonds and connections with celebrities due to their charisma and personalities. Darling-Wolf that SMAP is popular is due to its intertextuality from appearing in TV shows, movies, talk shows and many more media forms which allows fans to feel a proximity or closeness. Intertextuality allows SMAP to be able to portray their personalities better and reach out to more audiences, which enables them to connect with their audience.
Darling-Wolf argues that SMAP's fame is highly due to its constructed appeal of masculinity, which creates the 'perfect female fantasy'. SMAP members portray pluralities of masculinities which involve masculinity as a sensitive man and also a violent one. It is important to note that SMAP is always portrayed as the victim in a movie and though they may use violence, Darling-Wolf identifies that their violence is mitigated by their sensitive side of masculinity. An important argument made by Darling-Wolf is the hybridity of SMAP. They portray different racial characters, genders and