The
guy’s face is literally everywhere you turn, and his visage is used to
hawk every possible purchasable item. In addition, the show that made
him famous in Japan,
Winter
Sonata enjoys a cult following among middle aged and older women;
and therein lies the rub. You see, while in Japan Yuki and I were able
to critique Yon-Sama’s career-making role of Min-Hyung Lee in the
aforementioned soap-opera. Of course, the dialogue was in Korean and the
subtitles Japanese, but the story was standard fare (save for a few
twists not usually seen in the States). While I certainly didn’t see
anything special about his performance, Yuki, with the help of her
friend Makko clarified the matter from the Japanese perspective. You
see, Japanese middle-aged women (a large population in any case) tend to
have a serious lack of romance in their lives. Whether that results from
husbands who are too busy or simply ineffectual (or both) is irrelevant
to the argument at hand. What has occurred as a result is a fanatical
lust for Yon-Sama and his romantic leanings during the course of the
show (and boy did it pour it on thick my friends). There were daily news
stories of public Yon-Sama appearances occurring in the
throngs
of screaming
Japanese
babas.
It’s a strange antithesis to the New Kids on the Block phenomenon of
days gone by. Seeing the Yon-Sama cult alive and active in Japan, I
pondered on the same topic from an American perspective. Try as a might,
I struggle to find an equivalent in the States, although I may simply be
too far out of touch having watched too many Dark Shadows re-runs. Come
to think of it, I remember reading stories of there being a cultish
following of Jonathan Frid among middle-aged women at the height of Dark
Shadows’ popularity; fueled by his romantic portrayal of a tortured
vampire. However, I still struggle to find today’s Frid or today’s
Yon-Sama for the United States… and I how I can get that job. -m