1. Introduction
[1.1] The live music market has expanded recently. According to a World Economic Forum article, "The global music industry is worth over $50 billion, with two major income streams. The first, live music, makes up over 50% of total revenues and is derived mainly from sales of tickets to live performances" (Hall 2020). Since the means-end relation between record sales and live performance has reversed, live music now "continues to be the experience which for most music lovers defines their musical values" (Frith 2007, 9). Academic works since Simon Frith have focused on the live music economy (Holt 2010), live music attendance (Kulczynski et al. 2016; Brown and Knox 2017; Mulder and Hitters 2021), and live music communication (Bennett 2012). However, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation and postponement of live shows, and ticket sales decreased rapidly (Liang and Mao 2022; Denk et al. 2022), with an increasing number of studies zooming in on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on live music. According to Jingwen Liang and Xinyi Mao (2022), live music ticket sales decreased by 84 percent in 2020. Janis Denk et al. (2022, 2) stated that consumer spending on music in Germany "has decreased by more than 45% compared to pre-pandemic, with live music events and physical sales most severely affected." Under such severe circumstances, the music industry has focused on the online streaming of live music (Oliver and Lalchev 2022). Despite limitations such as the delay and absence of embodied engagement, it allowed musicians to be "connected with an audience" (Green et al. 2023, 36). Researchers have investigated the reasons for which large numbers of people are drawn to live music, and after 2020, they have been motivated to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on live music (Oliver and Lalchev 2022; Minamida et al. 2021; Perez-Monteagudo and Curras-Perez 2022) and to reflect on the meaning of live music (Rendell 2021; Zhao 2023) (note 1).
[1.2] I investigate popular music fandom during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, analyzing the changes in fans' live music attendance and their social relationships. What did fans experience during the temporary cancellation of in-person live shows brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic? Did online streaming serve as an alternative to in-person live shows? What did fans consider when deciding (not) to attend in-person live shows? I seek answers to these questions by conducting qualitative research on participants at live music events.
[1.3] I address the case of popular music in Japan. In response to the government's request for voluntary self-restraint, people in Japan were under strong pressure to refrain from engaging in activities that posed a risk of infection. There was a prevailing "sense of duty to follow social norms—and intolerance for those who don't" (Martin 2022). Since music events were labeled as "nonurgent and nonessential" activities, concert-goers were occasionally regarded as deviants who disobeyed the socially imposed request for voluntary self-restraint. Under these circumstances, music fans managed to maintain their fandom and relationship with other fans. Therefore, Japanese music fandom is an interesting case for the study of fans facing an unprecedented crisis.
2. Anime song in Japan
[2.1] The term anime song refers to the genre of songs related to Japanese animation works. TV series anime in Japan have ninety-second opening and ending theme songs for each twenty-four-minute episode. Theme songs are produced by a record company and sung by a singer from the company. Some recording companies have their own anime song labels, such as King Records' King Amusement Creative and Sony Music's Sacra Music, which are dedicated to the production of anime songs. In addition to opening and ending theme songs, insert songs are also occasionally used in anime works. Moreover, there are so-called character songs that voice actors perform as anime characters. The anime song is widely recognized in Japan as a music genre that includes these anime-related songs (note 2).
[2.2] Readers unfamiliar with anime in Japan may wonder whether anime songs are exclusively for children. In fact, they were called TV-manga theme songs (terebi manga shudaika) in the 1960s and the 1970s and were categorized as nursery rhymes (dōyō; Ideguchi 2018). However, from the end of the 1970s, teenagers and adults formed the majority of anime audiences and song listeners. As the age of anime audiences increased, the anime industry began to focus on teenagers and adults as its main consumers (Nagata 2015). The anime song industry has expanded in parallel with the development of teen-oriented and adult-oriented anime.
[2.3] Anime song live shows are characterized as follows. First, there are many prohibitions for audiences. Those who take pictures or record during the show are ejected from the venue. In addition, various types of behaviors are declared to be nuisances in the announcement before the show starts: throwing gifts or other objects toward the stage, leaving your seat or rushing to the front of the stage, throwing glow sticks, wearing hats or clothing that obstruct the sight of the nearby audience members, excessive cheering such as moving your body more than necessary or bumping into the nearby audience members, and clapping or making loud noises at inappropriate times (note 3). However, this does not mean that one must sit and listen quietly, as one would at a classical concert. Rather, anime song live shows are characterized by unique rituals: the use of glow sticks (pen raito) and the practice of call and response. Attendees wave glow sticks during a live show. A standard battery-powered glow stick is about twenty-five centimeters long, three centimeters wide, and can generate fifteen different colors. Attendees choose a color corresponding to the image color of a song or singer and wave their glow sticks back and forth to the rhythm. The call and response, or call (kōru) in short, is, in this context, a form of collective shout. While a single attendee's shout due to an emotional outburst is usually judged as a nuisance, it is not a nuisance if all audiences shout simultaneously. All songs have a specific timing for the audience to shout, and fans know this (note 4).
[2.4] To enjoy a live show fully, an attendee needs to master these unique rituals by watching DVDs or Blu-ray discs and attending live shows repeatedly (see also Benzecry [2009]). It would not be an overstatement that the "knowing-field" (Duffett 2013) of an anime song's fandom is constituted by the form of live music attendance. Continuing engagement with an anime song's fandom is closely related to continuing attendance at live shows. Therefore, anime song live shows in Japan present an interesting case for investigating the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on live music.
3. Literature review on live music attendance and music fandom
[3.1] Psychological studies on motivation, pioneered by Seppo E. Iso-Ahola (1980), have accumulated quantitative and qualitative knowledge about motivations for event participation, including live music events. According to Martijn Mulder and Erik Hitters's wide-ranging review, the motivations of live music attendance mentioned by previous studies are classified into four types: "personal motivations, social motivations, artistic motivations and motivations related to the setting/environment of the live music event" (2021, 360). However, although psychological research has examined the wide-ranging factors that motivate live music attendance, it has a serious drawback in that the motivation–attendance framework itself discards the situation of action. My critical attitude toward motivation research is based on Herbert Blumer's (1956, 685) criticism of variable analysis: "The variable relation is a single relation, necessarily stripped bare of the complex of things that sustain it in a 'here and now' context." This simplification "leaves out the actual complexes of activity and the actual processes of interaction in which human group life has its being" (689). Thus, the analysis of motivational variables ignores how individuals interpret live music attendance. As Blumer rightly pointed out, this interpretation is processual. Considering live music attendance as an interpretive process, one should examine not only the factors that motivate attendance before the live show but also the interpretive changes that emerge during and after attendance. To use Frith's words, "A live concert is not simply a transitory experience but also symbolizes what it means to be a music fan" (2007, 5). In short, qualitative approaches such as ethnography and interviews are more effective methods to elucidate fans' interpretive processes.
[3.2] Ethnographic studies on fandom generally originated from research on audiences' active interpretation under the influence of cultural studies. The first wave of fan studies initiated by pioneers such as John Fiske and Henry Jenkins proposed a "Fandom Is Beautiful" perspective to "defend fan communities against their ridicule in the media and by non-fans" (Sandvoss et al. 2017, 3), followed by the second wave that emphasized "fans' habitus as a reflection and further manifestation of our social, cultural, and economic capital" (5). In contrast, the third wave focuses on the relationship between individual fans and their fan object, emphasizing that intrapersonal (fan–fan object) and interpersonal (fan–fan) relationships are "complementary, intrinsically connected parts of the same ecosystem of analysis" (8–9).
[3.3] Ethnographic studies have investigated not only television audiences but also music fandom. About ten years after John Fiske's (1989) reading of the Madonna fandom as a resistance to male hegemony, Daniel Cavicchi published his monumental work Tramps Like Us (1998). Cavicchi distanced himself from the cultural studies perspective, which views fan practices as a resistance to the hegemony of the music industry, and paid attention to "fans' own valuing of their activities" (7). Analyzing the becoming-a-fan narrative, identity formation process, sense of community, and fans' distinction between fans and nonfans, Cavicchi's research opened the way to ethnographic studies of music fandom that focus on the meaning of music for fans. Fandom scholars such as Cavicchi (1998) and Mark Duffett (2000) have emphasized the importance of conducting interviews with fans to understanding their meaning-making process. Concerning popular music in Japan, interview-based research has been conducted on the fandoms of male idols (Tsuji 2003), female idols (Zaborowski 2015), rock music (Nagai 2016), and K-pop (Yoshimitsu 2023).
[3.4] Cavicchi's (1998) research on Bruce Springsteen's fandom emphasized the significance of live music for fans. He argued that live music offers "the excitement of participation, the feeling of connection with Springsteen, the interaction of fans and other audience members, the rituals, the energy, the empowerment, the communal feeling, the evaluation and discussion," so that these "enact the meaning of fandom" (37). Recently, scholars have compared in-person live music attendance with online live streaming attendance. Lucy Bennett (2012) studied fans' online communication during live shows. She revealed that "the boundaries of the live concert and its notions of 'liveness' are extended" (551) by nonattendees' real-time reading of posts on the set list on the internet.
[3.5] Comparisons between in-person and online live music attendance have been increasingly conducted since the COVID-19 pandemic. Sicong Zhao (2023) illuminated the differences perceived by Chinese indie music audiences between in-person and online shows during the pandemic period. Zhao mentioned attendees' inattention to streaming and stated that "'live' is not just about watching a performance in real-time; 'live' itself also encompasses and builds on the tangible experience and participation of the audience" (471). In Japan, Misa Matsuda interviewed attendees of online music streaming events and argued that "basically, not only are online live events not an alternative to real events, but they are also not seen as another attractive event" (2020, 175) (note 5). Gamze Kelle (2024) conducted ethnographic research on "visual kei" fandom in Japan and revealed that a band "found a way to interact with fans during [online] concerts instead of trying to recreate a traditional concert experience at an empty live house with no off-line audience" (¶ 4.9).
[3.6] Although I also pay attention to the difference between in-person and online live music attendance, I include not only fans' experiences during the live show but also their experiences in everyday life. Through this approach, I attempt to understand the desires of fans who attended in-person shows during and after the pandemic, as well as the logic of fans who decided not to attend. Fans always have the option of continuing or stopping attendance. Their continuing engagement with fandom is neither autonomous nor self-evident: "Unending attention is never guaranteed" (Duffett 2013, 157). Their continued attendance is a consequence of their choice. Their music experiences and experiences in everyday life are relevant to their decisions. During the blank period of in-person shows, fans went through a variety of experiences such as online streaming live music, remote working, social distancing, and self-isolation. In light of these experiences, some fans decided (not) to attend in-person live shows during the pandemic. Therefore, I focus on music fandom in a time of crisis.
[3.7] I understand the concept of crisis in the context of Alfred Schutz's social theory. Schutz (1962), an Austrian-American phenomenologist, investigated the structures of the life-world. According to him, people in everyday life rely on routine knowledge to cope with a situation. The effectiveness of routine knowledge is taken for granted until further notice, namely, until something irregular occurs. Schutz called this kind of irregular situation a "problematic situation." The extreme form of the problematic situation is "crisis," in which people can no longer rely on routine knowledge. According to Schutz, a crisis is "an event or situation which cannot be met by applying the traditional and habitual pattern of behavior or interpretation" (1964, 231). In this sense, the COVID-19 pandemic caused a crisis by forcing people to adopt new behavioral patterns, such as social distancing and self-isolation.
[3.8] Focusing on fandom in crisis opens up a new perspective on the dynamism of fans' experiences and interpretations. As fan studies have repeatedly indicated, fandom is not a stable, timeless, or unchanging entity. Rather, it is constructed through the continuous practices of individuals. Matt Hills (2005), C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby (2010), and Simone Driessen and Bethan Jones (2016) investigated how fans modify their engagement with fan objects over time. However, how fans cope with situations that influence society as a whole has not yet been investigated. This situation inevitably requires fans to reflect on their engagement with fan objects. They need to stop and think to decide what they should do in an unprecedented situation. How others, including nonfans, cope with the situation is relevant to their reflections. At the very least, they cannot consider their engagement with fan objects solely as an individual affair. The study of fandom in crisis illuminates the process by which fans cope with unprecedented situations and establish new relationships with their fan objects and fellow fans.
4. Research method
[4.1] I conducted semistructured interviews with nineteen anime song fans (including four from other countries) who were recruited through snowball sampling. The recruitment process was as follows: I created a Google Forms application page titled "Research on Attendees of Anime Song/Voice Actor Live Shows During the COVID-19 Pandemic." The application form required participants to enter their name, gender, age, email address, preferred interview format (face-to-face or online), and the names of singers, voice actors, or works they often attended at live shows. After creating the Google Forms page, I asked a few fans of Nana Mizuki (a female anime song singer) to forward the link to the page, and two of them kindly posted it on Twitter/X. Those who completed the application form were contacted via email and the interview dates were fixed. The interviews were conducted between July and December 2023. Each participant received a reward of approximately 3,000 yen. All the interviews were conducted in Japanese. Before starting the interview, I explained the purpose of the research, the method of privacy protection, and the right to withdraw consent to participate in the research. In twelve interviews conducted online via Zoom, I shared my screen to clarify these explanations. All participants consented to the research verbally, and all but four submitted their consent forms. All interviewees consented to the recording. After the interviews, I sent the transcripts to the interviewees for checking (note 6). This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Nagano University (number: 2022-032). Interviewee pseudonyms are listed in the appendix.
[4.2] All interviewees are attendees or former attendees of Nana Mizuki's live shows (note 7). She is one of the most popular female anime song singers and voice actors in Japan. Many of her songs have been used for theme songs of anime works in which she performs as a voice actor, and she identifies herself as a seiyū artist (voice actor/singer). Her live shows attract tens of thousands of attendees, and she has ranked number one in Japanese weekly music sales several times. She holds a tour every summer and one-off shows or events every winter. The last in-person show before the pandemic was Nana Mizuki Live Express 2019 from July 6 to September 15, 2019, and the first in-person show after the beginning of the pandemic was Nana Mizuki Live Runner 2020–2022 (January 3 and 4, 2022). In the interim, she held a few online events. After restarting in-person shows, she held twenty-six shows (including official fan club events) by the end of 2023. Here, I reveal what fans of Nana Mizuki experienced and what they considered to decide (not) to continue live music attendance from 2020 to 2023.
[4.3] It should be noted that although Nana Mizuki's live shows are classified as anime song shows, they are not anime events. The number of anime theme songs included in the set list depends on the theme of the tour. For example, in Nana Mizuki Live Heroes 2023—Lightning Mode—, seventeen out of twenty-two songs were anime-related songs, twelve of which were from the Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha series, while the twenty-four-song set list of the last day of Nana Mizuki Live Parade 2023 included only seven anime-related songs. The fact that she is an anime song singer does not mean that fans' live music attendance is based purely on their attachment to the anime works or characters she performs. In this sense, fandoms centered around a particular anime work differ significantly from those centered around a singer. The fandom of Nana Mizuki is a prime example of the latter, as she is one of the representative seiyū artists in Japan (note 8).
5. What did fans experience during the temporary cancellation of in-person live shows?
[5.1] Many fans of Nana Mizuki lead their everyday lives with the assumption that live shows are held regularly on weekends. Hence, it is important that their days off are fixed on weekends. In Japan, working on Saturdays and Sundays is not rare. According to the NHK Japanese Time Use Survey in 2020, 40 percent of those working for organizations work on Saturdays and 24 percent on Sundays (Ito 2021). Therefore, some fans (Kasahara, Saito, Tateishi, Mizutani, and Tsukahara) stated that when choosing their workplace, they considered whether they would have to work on weekends. Tsukahara, a thirty-one-year-old female fan, stated, "Now I'm living for the live shows." She had changed to a company that grants weekday work to ensure her continuing attendance at live shows, but because "I couldn't make it to the start of work on Monday if I stayed until the end of the show on Sunday," she changed again to a company with shift work.
[5.2] Fans' everyday routines have completely changed since the beginning of the pandemic. Saito, a thirty-two-year-old male who attended about sixty anime song shows a year before the pandemic, had "nothing to do" on weekends due to the cancellation of live shows. After the outbreak of the pandemic, the Japanese government started to request people not to go outside unless it was urgent and necessary; it was, so to speak, a "voluntary lockdown" (Watanabe and Yabu 2021). Its message implied that in-person shows should not be held and that one should refrain from attending a show even if it was being held. People could only enjoy something that does not involve meeting someone in person. On weekends, Saito had nothing to do other than play video games. The cancellation of live shows not only damaged the music industry but also disorganized fans' everyday routines.
[5.3] Nakahara, a twenty-three-year-old female, experienced mental health struggles during the period of restrictions. She repeatedly emphasized that her mental health was not good at that time. She recollected that 2020 and 2021 were "two dark years" that spoiled her "precious university life." As a university student, she was staring at a computer in her room all the time. During these years, the university did not offer in-person classes. This caused her a serious mental health burden.
[5.4] Under COVID-19 restrictions, Nana Mizuki was an ambivalent figure for Nakahara. On the one hand, this singer showed her "a hope in a desperate situation." Nana Mizuki was an ideal figure for her, and she wanted to become a person who can "give such a hope" (note 9). On the other hand, she could not feel genuine delight in Nana Mizuki's announcement of marriage and pregnancy: "I think it was difficult for me to rejoice in someone's happiness unless I myself was happy." Feeling ambivalent, Nakahara attended an online live show and experienced technological trouble (described in the next section), which made her seriously consider quitting fandom. In the end, she enjoyed an in-person live show again and decided to continue being a fan.
[5.5] Nakahara's case suggests that the pandemic caused widespread mental health struggles. Some fans were on the verge of quitting their fandom. Unlike Nakahara, some may have quit. Only two of the nineteen interviewees no longer attended in-person live shows, but others reported that they knew someone who had quit fandom during the pandemic.
[5.6] While some fans experienced difficulties, others accumulated a desire for live music because of the lack of in-person live shows. After attending the in-person show of female anime song singer Konomi Suzuki in October 2020, Saito, the above-mentioned enthusiastic concert-goer, "attended as much as possible at that time because the frequency was lower." Nana Mizuki's first in-person show after the outbreak of the pandemic was Nana Mizuki Live Runner 2020–2022 in January 2022. Some anime song singers reopened their in-person shows before that. Unlike Saito, who had been attending various singers' live shows, Minamino, a forty-three-year-old male fan who usually attended only Nana Mizuki's shows, felt a "hunger" for live music and attended various singers' shows in 2021: "When the COVID-19 pandemic improved after the worst period, I had a strong desire to attend live shows, so I attended the shows of various artists at that time…Before Nana's live shows lifted restrictions on shouting, I found them, was interested in them, and went. However, I'm not a repeat attendee of any of these now. I ceased attending them after Nana finally returned and my feeling of hunger was mitigated."
[5.7] Tateishi had a desire for live music during the pandemic. However, he became interested not in anime song live shows but those of "underground idols." These are frequently held at small venues. Tateishi went several times per month from 2021 onward. Other fans of Nana Mizuki (Kasahara and Mizutani) stated that they had attended underground idols shows before and during the pandemic. Attending another genre of live show has been recognized as a means of satisfying the desire for live music.
6. Did online streaming serve as an alternative to in-person live shows?
[6.1] Generally speaking, the interviewees evaluated online live streaming shows negatively, explicitly, or implicitly. The harshest expressions were "I don't like it" (Tsukahara) and "unsatisfied" (Kasahara, Saito, Noda, and Minamino). Tsukahara emphasized that online streaming lacks the power of performance and that the power provided by it is completely different from that of an in-person live show. Moreover, according to her, the presence of a singing artist is not a sufficient condition for a live show: "[In online streaming,] we cannot send our signals. Not only Nana Mizuki's presence and singing make it a live show. I really thought that fans' presence, Nana's presence, and mutual shouting complete a live show. Listening alone without everyone's voice, I felt lonely when I did a 'call' [i.e., a collective shout] by myself" (note 10).
[6.2] Those who expressed opinions in a more modest way stated that online streaming was "anything but a live show." Shiroyama, a twenty-eight-year-old male fan, stated, "I have an impression that it was not an alternative to an in-person show. I'm OK, I can enjoy it. However, I thought it was a different kind of fun than a live show…I'm not saying the streaming is bad." Other fans also emphasized the difference between streaming and in-person shows without denying the value of streaming.
[6.3] Some fans positively evaluated online streaming. Ishida enjoyed "a different fun from that at a [physical] venue" by watching it together with his friends drinking at a cottage. Kimura stated that while Nana Mizuki's live streaming show was not impressive, the voice actor Saori Hayami's show was impressive because its performance style was unique to streaming. Fans of anime songs positively evaluate online streaming when they find additional value.
[6.4] A previous study already pointed out that "basically, not only are online live events not an alternative to real events, but they are also not seen as another attractive event" (Matsuda 2020, 175). However, it overlooked the possibility that online streaming is not only unattractive but also has a devastating influence on fans' attachment to a fan object. Shiroyama was also a fan of The Idolm@Ster series and continued to attend its live shows with his friends from 2015. Just before the Japanese government's request for the cancellation of big events (Prime Minister's Office of Japan 2020), he attended the last in-person show in February 2020. However, he no longer attends the live shows of The Idolm@Ster. In addition to the fact that his friends quit fandom, Shiroyama mentioned an online show with no audience: "The online live show really didn't touch my heart…I didn't even think it was anything but a live show…I had been thinking that I loved the songs, but I thought that I perhaps didn't love them in reality…It might be the case that my passion was cooled down due to the online live show." The fact that the live show did not touch his heart placed a question mark on his self-image of loving the songs of The Idolm@Ster. In other words, an interpretive change occurred in Shiroyama's identity as a fan due to the unattractiveness of online streaming. He finally stopped attending The Idolm@Ster live shows.
[6.5] Nakahara, the above-mentioned female fan, was on the verge of quitting Nana Mizuki's fandom. One reason for this was her trouble watching online streams: "I was watching it together with my cousin, who has been attending live shows with me. We were in a hotel and connected [the streaming device] to the television. However, I guess the hotel's internet connection was weak, so the sound and movie were terribly unsynchronized and nothing was shared with us. It cooled down my passion very much." Both Shiroyama and Nakahara stated that the online live show cooled down their passion. Fans often use the term netsu ryō (the amount of passion) to express the degree of engagement with a fandom. Maintaining passion is necessary for continuing to attend live shows. However, intrapersonal passion toward a fan object can be cooled down due to online streaming.
7. What did fans take into consideration when deciding (not) to attend in-person live shows?
[7.1] Live music attendance during a pandemic poses a risk of infection. In contrast to those who increased their frequency of attendance, motivated by the desire for live music, those who considered the risk of infection decreased their attendance. Noda, a forty-four-year-old male fan of Nana Mizuki and Yui Ogura, stopped attending other singers' live shows and focused only on these two artists. He calculated that the benefit drawn from their shows to his emotional state surpassed the risk of infection. He judged that the live shows of Nana Mizuki and Yui Ogura were worth the risk.
[7.2] The decision to attend does not depend only on the attendees' free will. Fans who live with their families understand the risk of spreading the virus to their family members if they are infected through attendance. Living with his wife and child, Minamino stated that "my family members are concerned about that. They are concerned about getting infected as well as spreading [the virus]." Ishida cancelled a plan to attend TRUE's (a female anime song singer) live show held in Tokyo in January 2021. Considering the risk of infection and spread of the virus, he avoided the Kanto (near-Tokyo) area.
[7.3] For those living in rural areas, getting infected with COVID-19 meant becoming a target of rumors in the neighborhood. Fujii, a twenty-eight-year-old female fan living in a rural area, regularly traveled to Tokyo and Osaka to attend Nana Mizuki's shows before the pandemic began. However, she ceased attending Nana Mizuki's shows after it began: "If I got infected, it would have an impact on my job. Besides, I'm living in a rural area, so the information that such-and-such people got infected spread rapidly, and in this sense, it would have an impact on me and my family members. So I avoided [shows]." Instead, she began to attend movie theater broadcastings of the live events of Touken Ranbu, since she watched the free streaming of its drama. Some movie theaters in Japan offer broadcasting of an event at a large venue at cheaper prices than on-site tickets. This broadcasting is of great convenience to those who cannot attend in-person shows in metropolises. Fujii's experience of Touken Ranbu broadcasting at a movie theatre made her believe that she did not need to spend time or money attending live shows. She no longer attended Nana Mizuki's shows after the World Health Organization declared the end of the emergency and the Japanese government announced its decision to treat COVID-19 as equal to influenza.
[7.4] The manner in which fans perceive the risk of infection depends also on their jobs. Minamino reported that a friend who worked face-to-face with customers was told by the company not to attend live shows. In contrast, remote workers with temporal and spatial flexibility did not find it inconvenient to attend. Kimura felt that he successfully got through the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. In other words, he did not feel resistance or inconvenience in attending so that he could attend in-person shows as he did before the pandemic. Therefore, in 2023, he felt a gap between himself and the general public that emphasized a resurgence from the pandemic.
8. Discussion and conclusion
[8.1] By interviewing nineteen fans of Nana Mizuki, I attempted to answer the following three questions: What did fans experience during the temporary cancellation of in-person live shows brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic? Did online streaming serve as an alternative to in-person live shows? What did fans consider when deciding (not) to attend in-person live shows? First, because of the cancellation of in-person shows, fans experienced a suspension of the everyday routines arranged for live music attendance. They lead their everyday lives with the assumption that live shows are held regularly on weekends. The absence of live shows had a serious impact on their everyday lives. One interviewee experienced mental health struggles during the restriction of going out and was on the verge of quitting Nana Mizuki's fandom. While some fans experienced difficulties, others accumulated a desire for live music because of the lack of in-person shows. What both patterns had in common was that the emotional experience evoked by the COVID-19 crisis influenced live music attendance. However, fan activities were not governed by emotions. Fans incorporated their emotions into their interpretive process and decided whether they should continue their engagement with fandom. For example, wondering if she should quit fandom, Nakahara thought that "since I come to love [Nana Mizuki] by listening to her songs and by attending her live shows, I will attend a show again, and if I still don't love her, then I will quit." She tried to check whether her negative feelings toward her fan object were transitory or permanent and to arrive at a consistent interpretation. She thought that if her negative feelings remained unchanged after attendance, the emotion was authentic, and therefore, quitting fandom was justified. While scholars such as Cavicchi (1998) and Nick Stevenson (2009) investigated how fans overcome emotional difficulties through music, my study reveals that emotion and its interpretation are closely related to an individual's continued engagement with fandom.
[8.2] Second, fans did not positively appraise online streaming shows held during the pandemic. Some expressed their dissatisfaction harshly, and others stated that the streams were "anything but a live show." A few fans stated that their passion was "cooled down" because of the unattractiveness of streaming. This unattractiveness can be understood in terms of the distinction between "playing" and "appreciating" formulated by Katsuya Minamida (2018). "Playing" refers to a form of engagement in which people have a lived experience of something unreflectively, while "appreciating" means understanding the value of a cultural work reflectively (185). In this light, fans of Nana Mizuki and other anime song artists were expecting to enjoy playing with online streaming, but it did not live up to their expectations. The use of glow sticks and call and response, which most fans consider an attractive part of live music, are absent in online streaming. Kimura's positive comment on Saori Hayami's online streaming can also be interpreted in this way because the atmosphere of her show is "totally different from those where people use glow sticks and jump." Fans do not become unsatisfied with the lack of engagement in online streaming if their purpose of attendance is appreciating live music rather than playing with it.
[8.3] Third, in deciding (not) to attend in-person live shows during the pandemic, fans considered three relationships: with their family members, neighbors, and colleagues. These are, in the words of Norbert Elias, "the network of interdependencies formed by individuals" (2000, 482). According to Elias, humans are neither completely free nor completely bound: They have "a greater or lesser degree of relative (but never absolute and total) autonomy" (481). They act within a web of relationships (figuration), considering what they can and cannot do, what is permissible and what is not, and what is deemed appropriate and what is not. The web of relations acts as psychological pressure on individual actions. It is easy to imagine that the pressure not to attend was especially strong among those living in rural areas. Unlike the metropolises of Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya, where neighborhood relationships tend to be anonymous, those who got infected became targets of rumors and criticism in the neighborhood in rural areas. It was not easy for fans living in such areas to attend during the pandemic. Refraining from attending for a few years caused some fans to lose enthusiasm for fandom and close ties with fellow fans. The COVID-19 pandemic may have had an irreversible effect on fans who gave up attending live shows. While scholars of live music have studied the extent to which the COVID-19 crisis damaged the music industry, it was not only a crisis in the music industry but also a crisis in fans' everyday lives and fandom.
[8.4] My findings did not reveal every aspect of COVID-19's influence on fans of anime songs. Most importantly, gender differences were not clear. I did not find a case in which a female fan stated that she had given up attending because of her gender. Nevertheless, it is hasty to conclude that no gender differences exist in this context. For example, Tsukahara had female friends who married or became pregnant and stopped attending live shows after the pandemic. She stated that there were more females than males among her friends whom she had never seen after the pandemic. This suggests that fans' experiences of the pandemic might differ by gender, and that some fans gave up their engagement with fandom because of their gender. However, it is more difficult to ask for interviews with those who quit fandom because they tend to stop staying in touch with other fans. This is a topic for further research.
9. Acknowledgments
[9.1] This study was supported by the Toyota Foundation (grant number: D22-R-0022). The author declares no conflicts of interest regarding this study.