History

An off-shoot of Japanese Idols, Net Idols, a new genre of idols, emerged in late 1990s. The first "cyber idol" or "virtual idol" was Kyoko Date in 1997. She has a fabricated history, statistics, and her own songs. Meanwhile, gurabia aidoru (グラビアアイドル, i.e. "[photo]gravure idols") such as Yoko Matsugane, Rio Natsume and Eiko Koike have largely appeared skimpily clad in "cheesecake" photographs.