labingi

Hailing from Oita Prefecture, home of someone else we know, Yoshino Miyu debuted as part of Team 8 alongside
Abe Mei, Okabe Rin, Okubora Chinatsu, Oguri Yui, Oda Erina, Nagano Serika, Fujimura Natsuki, Onishi Momoka, Kuranoo Narumi, Shitao Miu, Cho Kurena, Hamamatsu Riona, Fukuchi Rena, Honda Hitomi, Yokomichi Yuri, the other Yokoyama Yui—and guys, we are not even close to having covered the original 2014 line-up of Team 8!



When we first met Miyu, she was a kid looking up to Sashihara Rino. Before joining AKB, she had already been active on stage in a number of “hip-hop” events which we are told she learnt the manner of at age 3. I’m not here to cast dispersions on Miyu’s talents, but things like that I always take with a pinch of salt as both Japan and Korea’s idea of what hip-hop means feels very different from what I think it needs and the respect it deserves considering its origins. That aside, Miyu was a talented child, and having that awareness of Sashihara and what had, by this point, made her a household name probably made the decision to audition an easy one. In her own words, Miyu says, ‘I wanted to dance at first, and I wanted to entertain the fans with a smile,’ so it feels very natural for her to have taken this path, this was the moment in which dance was really becoming a core focus of idol music, and Team 8 were certainly the team that brought that focus to AKB.

Shortly after joining, she was able to take part in the general election, and though maybe confident at first, she didn’t rank as she was still such an unknown quantity. What makes this particularly bittersweet however is that she didn’t rank at all during any of the elections during her time in AKB, which is both testament to how unworkable that system was even as late as 2014 with many of the original members having graduated.

She was thought of as the member whose strength in dance bound the Kyushu members together in terms of performance, and anyone who saw her in Kumamoto, Hiroshima, Okinawa, and Hyogo may well have been able to testify. If I ever become proficient in Japanese, one of my many AKB related ambitions, is to travel the country documenting their recollections of Team 8. Throughout the following year, Miyu kept working harder, turning 14 and celebrating with her peers at the theatre whom she also appeared alongside on the B sides of Kokoro no Placard through to High Tension.

After the second general election and her failure to place, a note of defeat enters her voice and there is the first suggestion of graduation. ‘I will graduate soon, and Takahashi Minami's efforts will surely be exhausted,’ she wrote in a 2015 blog. Whilst she again celebrated her birthday with friends, and ploughed forward with ambitions for 2016’s election, the failure must have sealed the deal for her as she sadly graduated in early 2017. Despite this, there is the hope to be remembered, the hope she made a mark. In 2025, I’m writing this, Miyu, to tell you that you did.