I hadn't even been aware of any of this until last week, when I was at a Japanese-language meetup group at a crowded cafe in Koreatown. A Japanese girl plunked her iPhone down on the table and said, "Here - what does everybody think of this?" And it was
that picture.
I looked at it, shrugged, smiled, and just thought, "Whatever."
Because at my age, and after all I've seen, done, and been through, it really is just whatever..
Most of the other people at that end of the table (guys in their 20s and 30s) liked it ("I think it's beautiful!"), and said that it would never fly in the U. S. -- "we're just too puritanical here."
The girl said that most people in Japan would think it was BFD -- it wouldn't really bother them.
After that, we got off onto a discussion of who the girl in the picture was -- somebody recognized her as an AKB member. Then the girl with the iPhone showed us the photoshopped version with Akimoto in place of the kid.
If madness made us strong, we would all be invincible.