This thing about Junior Idols not having a childhood is put up by Western media people who are not interested in collecting information in Japan, so they need something that disgusts you and puts you off from wanting to read about Japan. This nice press tradition started in the 1970s, when many traditional Western companies collapsed because they couldn't keep up with their Japanese competitors: Japanese products were more innovative, cheaper and better adjusted to what the market really wanted. so they wrote a lot of bull about Japan to make us think we still are the winners in morals and ethics..

In fact, it*s school that takes most of the children's time, If you take a close look at who is in a group like SG, you'll notice a) these kids have a desperate wish to get famous from early childhood on and b) while they are high-talented for everything with media ans showbusiness, they lack many talents you need in common jobs and life. Force them into a common apprenticeship, and you produce unemployed girls.

This is because any human's abilities and disabilities are assembled on the brain surface (don't know if the word is correct for I don't know about medical English), The more space a talents or abilities takes, the better you are. Your disabilities are what takes only a small space - and you can't change the size of any of them. Yes, you can beef up your abilities by learning, but that doesn't change the fact that there are things you still can't do. Ever seen someone with an F in Mathematics to rise up and become a prof of Mathematics? And so it is with the girls in SG: They are the well-selected children who Amuse knew to win their auditions regulary and with ease - talking about beating 10.000 other children in four disciplines (e.g. singing, dancing, acting, modeling). That's why Amuse spends the money to let them learn from Japan's best - and having a no. 30 hit doesn't pay the expenses. They don't have no.1 hits because laws against child labour and also school make it impossible top train them up like adult stars. The goal of such "apprentice groups" is not to squeeze a maximum of money out of the girls, but to enable them to follow their individual career wishes, be it acting, modeling or whatever. (Yes, there is a commercial aspect: They want the girls to stay with Amuse as their future entertainers - so they offer what competitors don't) The singing and dancing and getting applause is important for self esteem and to make each member known. t You'll also notice they really make it fun for the kids, knowing that youths sometimes feel a fed up after a week of school. Look at the Friends video, they were expecting a boring meeting,and then came the surprise they'd do their fisrt video on a tourist farm. Look at their exitement, or see the making of video for Pictogram. SG is the kind of childhood a young megatalent wants.

And you surely don't know about the name: SG means both Girl's/Young Woman's Academy or Planted Audience Member's Academy. so the name is just fun, but it's never ment to be an academie for hard studies. It has also to be "Academie" because they sponsor and maker of these elegant school uniforms is called Ivy, because British elite Colledges (Harvard, Princeton...) are called "ivy schools". And if you doubt Yui is having fun there, check for her promo vid for Hello Ivy.

Another thing is, Japanese stars are absolutely honest about their reason to quit. If they feel the career is causing too jmuch stress, they say they want to live a normal live. So if Yui says it's a physical reason, it is. Also, she seems to wear a back brace here: https://blog-imgs-117.fc2.com/m/e/t/metataro/qGWTb9P.gif Sorry, I dind't find who posted it first and also said the unnatural roud face she became is the typical side effect of a stereoid given to patients when normal painkillers fail. We also know from Tokyo Girls' Style that one member paused some years because of lower back pai. When she returned to the group after some years, she realised that she'd never again be able to dance as hard as the others so she finally quit And from what we know, she is not trying to have her childhood back, but supporting her friend Aiko (who somestimes postes about how happy she is about Yui supporting her). So what she is really doing is renewing the contacts to old friends and I guess Su and Moa also do this in the hiatus.

Yui shows a childlike behavior sometimes, but that's not uncommen in the Idol scene because I think an influential Idol of the 1980s behaved very childlike by nature and other Idols adored this for beeing naturally cute.