Make Believe Bonus: NHK Broadcast Center

Watching The Kohaku Announcement Spectacle In Person

One of the most common tropes artists selected to participate in national broadcaster NHK’s year-end bonanza Kohaku Uta Gassen for the first time bring out when talking about what this means for them is the timing of it all. “I didn’t know until last night!’ “My manager just told me this morning!” “It was just so sudden!”

I don’t really buy this. The Japanese music industry and a TV operation like NHK both operate at a cautious pace, which is to say it sometimes takes months for certain things to come together. That’s for like, interviews or collaborations or tie-ups…now imagine the effort going into the year’s biggest music show. Maybe the artists themselves are kept at arms length from the mechanics of putting a Kohaku together…but even then, how do you go about getting a nice suit or arrange your schedule to appear at the announcement event that will spotlight you? Seems a little ridiculous to imagine the folks at NHK’s Shibuya offices finalizing everything at like midnight the day before the lineup drops.

Yet there’s one detail that makes me think…maybe…this detail is actually true. That’s because I found out I was invited to the in-person Kohaku announcement less than 24 hours it was going to happen.