How former music idol Saori Araki became a worldwide viral sensation

Until a few days ago, Saori Araki (荒木佐保里) was little known even in Japan, to say nothing of outside the country. But that all changed this week.

That Nagasaki-born idol with cute cheeks has now hundreds of followers on social media. (She had a mere 7,000 followers on X and 100,000 on Instagram in June.)

And it all began with a photo of herself in suit and holding a laptop that she posted on July 25 with a simple “good morning” message. That post on X currently has 76 million views, the majority of which are from the United States and Britain. So what gives?

Her post had quite a big reaction in Japan, but somehow got noticed overseas, and then things exploded and suddenly she was in everyone’s timelines over the next few days.

A driving force was this July 28 post by Eigen Robot (37 million views and counting) that turned a simple photo into a meme and cultural flashpoint by putting Araki’s pic next to one of Sydney Sweeney, asking “Western man” to choose between them.

Eigen Robot also posted a survey, asking people to vote for either a “sexpot jeans supermodel” or “random jp salarymoman.” Araki won, 77.1% to 22.9%.

Of course, this is based on a misunderstanding. Araki is not a “random Japanese salarywoman” but a former music idol.

Nonetheless, the meme spoke to the nub of the matter: Araki’s viral “Japanese Girl in Suit” post was gaining traction because it had sparked a debate over men’s preferred type of women, spawning lots of other memes (mostly users swapping out the laptop for other objects), comments, and responses.

The 29-year-old had unwittingly found herself in the middle of an incel and proto-incel storm that saw her celebrated as a “wholesome” girl who was a far worthier object of male affection than “entitled” American “whores.” She began receiving marriage proposals, perhaps not all of which were in jest.

You know you’ve made it when you get your own entry on the Know Your Meme website. Araki had now gained a place in internet history and the meme canon.

Araki herself responded and started explaining who she is in English. A former member of the J-pop group Tokyo Girls Bravo (graduating in February 2025), she is currently a freelancer model and actor. By day, she works in an office. The original pic was actually taken on a visit to a manufacturing group. No doubt, her coworkers find the viral storm quite amusing.

She also diligently replied to countless user comments on her posts in fluent English (she has a TOEIC score of 700).

The original viral energy, fueled by delight over a cute Japanese girl effectively cosplaying in a suit, and a wider debate over Asian versus Western women, inevitably mutated. A backlash emerged whereby people started claiming that Araki’s photo is fake, that it’s Photoshopped (because of some strange blurred around the face near the wall that may or may not be the result of basic photo editing or simply the lens), that she doesn’t even exist — and that she’s even a man. Wow, the internet is a strange place.

The choice of Sydney Sweeney for the “contest” of women types is not coincidental. Sweeney is very much the model and actor of the moment in the States, and her American Eagles campaign has also gone viral this month.

If the Arakai-is-a-man claims sound bizarre, Sweeney’s jeans campaign has also become a preposterous controversy. Some see it as a return to “pre-woke” values and a riposte to the recent trend for body-positive models, while others condemn it as a celebration of eugenics — all because of the tagline’s pun (“Sydney Sweeney has a good jeans.”).