School idols will create original songs, hold live performances.

Extracurricular activities at schools in Japan can be broadly divided into two categories. Some of them are the same sort of sports teams or cultural clubs as you’d find in many other countries, like a soccer team or marching band. Other activities, though, are uniquely Japanese, and often tied to centuries-old traditions, like kendo or sado (tea ceremony).

However, one high school is adding a new club that’s very Japanese but also rather modern: an idol club.

Nichidai High School is a private school in Nagano City, and with the new school year scheduled to start in spring, the administration is finalizing what sorts of extracurricular activities its students can choose from. Brand-new for 2026 will be the idol club, whose members will form an official idol unit to represent the school. As with other clubs, the idol club will hold meetings, practice sessions, and activities after class and on weekends. In addition to having specialized dance and vocal lessons, the club will create and distribute original songs, perform concerts, and appear at live events and on local radio and TV broadcasts.

While idol music is characterized by its upbeat sense of fun, the idol club itself is meant as a legitimate extracurricular activity where members can develop their skills as performers. The school hopes for it to become a point of pride on the level of its athletic teams, and similar to such systems for gifted athletes, special entrance-exam waivers may be granted to incoming idol club members with prior musical or dance performance experience. Even those without experience, though, are welcome to join the club.

The idea for the idol club comes from 49-year-old principal Yoshihisa Soeya, and the logic isn’t simply that having an idol club would be neat. Though it’s the prefectural capital, Nagano City sits in the center of some very wide rural zones, and doesn’t have nearly the same level of performing arts opportunities that more urbanized cities can offer. The gap gets even bigger for the Higashi Wada neighborhood where Nichidai High School is located, as it’s not even in the Nagano City center. By establishing an idol club, Soeya wants to provide students who are passionate about dance and music with a way to pursue those interests without having to move away to the big/a bigger city, while also deepening connections within the community.

Nichidai High School appears to be the first high school in Nagano to start a dedicated idol club, and may also be the first in the country to do so, and the news has quickly drawn comparisons from online commenters to the Love Live! anime franchise, in which the protagonists are members of their fictitious schools’ idol clubs. While some might scoff at the idea of idol music being given academic recognition, an argument can be made that it’s not really all that different from a school’s extracurricular activities including a jazz band or keiongaku/light music club, which focuses on pop/rock music. Those were also once seen more as “entertainment” than culture, but have now earned a level of respect and recognition where they’re seen as worthwhile as subjects of study and instruction. The same goes for jazz and hip-hop dance, so accepting idol music/dance as a viable genre for an extracurricular club might not really be so crazy.

Nichidai High School plans to hold an idol club orientation and sample lesson this coming weekend, and will be officially opening the club to first-year female students in the spring.

Source: Shinshu Mainichi Shimbun Digital via Yahoo! Japan News via Hachima Kiko
Top image: Pakutaso
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