Make Believe Mailer #129: "Turning Up"
Five years since the musical end of Heisei...and beginning of Reiwa
As it celebrates its fifth anniversary this week, J-pop powerhouse Arashi’s “Turning Up” remains an enigma. It was a single released months after the quintet at its center announced its intention to go on hiatus at the end of 2020, making it a song coming out in the middle of what most would interpret as a farewell campaign.
Yet everything about “Turning Up” projects new challenges. This was Arashi’s first digital single ever — remearkable for a group that existed for the entirety of the 21st century — and came shortly after the launch of an official YouTube channel. The song itself hints at greater ambitions, but the accompanying video slams them over your head. A fake news report at the start says they are preparing “for a new journey.” The members of Arashi board a plane to fly to Los Angeles, culminating in a dance segment in front of the LA Forum, sporting a big banner stating “Welcome to the USA.” It screams “we’re going international” but it arrived from a two-decades-old outfit on the cusp of taking an extended break.
Five years later and with Arashi still on hiatus, the single remains a puzzle. Yet there’s at least one part of it that has become clear in the time since its release. “Turning Up” marked the musical end of the Heisei Era…while simultaneously signalling the arrival of how the Reiwa Era would be defined.
If you want a concise snapshot of how J-pop has changed over the past half decade, just look at Arashi’s YouTube page. When “Turning Up” helped debut said channel as part of the group’s 20th anniversary celebrations, it felt like a fever dream. Despite standing as the most popular male J-pop group of the century to that point, its internet presence was near non-existent save for scraps of “preview” clips of music videos. They did not need to be online — and they weren’t, even if being plugged in could have proven a boon. So the arrival of an official channel with this new clip plus five classics resembled an epoch shift1.
For the 25th anniversary festivities over the past week, someone just uploaded 71 Arashi music videos onto the YouTube channel at once. A fan could have gone to bed early last Sunday, and woke up to find the entire Arashi MV catalog suddenly accessible in one place. That was obviously big news…but it also didn’t feel like the same “what the hell is happening” when it became possible to watch the “Love so sweet” video. This is the norm.
Arashi represented the last time any entertainer in Japan could be truly ubiquitous with everybody. The group’s music was of course hyper popular and constantly on top of the charts, but they themselves were also everywhere. This was the idea of “talent” — the jack-of-all-trades performer in the Japanese entertainment ecosystem — perfected, with members appearing in ads and starring in dramas and hosting TV bonanza’s such as Kohaku Uta Gassen and 24-Hour Television. When I arrived in a Mie Prefecture bedtown in 2009, everyone knew Arashi — the youngest kids I taught at the schools I worked at, my Japanese co-workers, and even the greying set making up the majority of the area’s population2.
That was in large part because Arashi existed right before the internet really became a central culture hub in Japan. They emerged in the early 2000s and, after a “slump” by its standards in the middle of that decade, shot back to the top in 2007…back when Japanese bulletin boards such as 2chan and video platforms such as Nico Nico Douga offered more of an alternative from mainstream pop culture rather than working in stride with it. Arashi thrived via 20th century media delivery — television shows, print publications, film and CDs.
“Turning Up” represented the end of that being able to hold. When a group like Arashi pivots to embracing YouTube, something has changed. Months before that, Japan’s Heisei Period — running from 1989 to 2019 — came to a close. It was during this period of time Arashi truly towered over the Japanese entertainment landscape, in large part because of maximizing the distribution networks of the time. Those had already been changing, but here was a symbolic moment for it to cemented.
The song itself came about seven months after Reiwa — the era we are now in — started, but “Turning Up” feels like a logical ending point for the J-pop of Heisei…while also setting the stage for what would come next.
Arashi’s exit from the spotlight didn’t unfold quite as planned. The first year of an expected farewell run went smoothly, and while the news they’d be taking a long break bummed out fans, hope remained they could go out with a bang…say, with an appearance at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (a rumor / desire so strong I made it central to my look at what Arashi meant for The Japan Times back in 2019 , before “Turning Up”). Then 2020 actually came around and…yeah, not exactly a year you want to use as a goodbye. It all ended with a concert in the sparkling new Japan National Stadium in front of…nobody.
I don’t want to imply that, in 2024, Arashi have become a relic of Heisei. They remain loved, and that data dump of music videos was received enthusiastically. Yet at the same time, Arashi feels very much in the background of modern J-pop. It’s quite different than where predecessors SMAP stand, as that male pop group still inspires frantic tweeting and will make people truly connected with that ‘90s institution angry if you bring up how that ended. There was no controversy or perceived injustice with Arashi — they just wanted to chill. Maybe they could have left more of an impact with a huge sendoff but…the realities of the world prevented that.
Or maybe just the vibe Arashi gave off weren’t made for these times. It’s not the highest bar to clear — feel free to dig through the old Wordpress version of this blog to find plenty examples of me ripping these five’s music apart — but I consider “Turning Up” the project’s best song by a pretty substantial mark. It’s breezy late-afternoon disco-pop created by the type of Nordic songwriting brains that always deliver on this front. It’s catchy as hell! I’m of course fully onboard with the talk-box effect giving a robo edge to Arashi’s vocals at certain points, though they definitely could have done another pass on the late-song rap interlude. What really elevates it, though, is the commitment to goofiness. The mix of English and Japanese could be a minefield, but when a tune moves this swiftly, it works wonder.
Then comes that chorus, full of incredible little lyrical details3 and topped off by a line reading batshit stupid when I type it out — “turning up with the J-pop!” — but just sounds so good when they sing it, and doubles as a wild mission statement4. It’s so upbeat and confident…it’s tough not to be swept up with it.
Which made it completely incompatible with what younger listeners wanted from music. Two weeks after “Turning Up” appeared online, the true pivot point emerged on YouTube in the form of YOASOBI’s debut single “Yoru Ni Kakeru.” Calling up everyone on the weekend and turning up with the J-pop gave way to the simpler thrills of wanting to jump off the top of an apartment building. It took time to become a sea change, but it seems almost creepy how close these drastically different thematic songs came out, Heisei giving over fully to what has, thus far, defined Reiwa.
“Turning Up” does not match the musical mood or sonic construction of J-pop in the 2020s. While it’s significant that it helped signal a change in how music from top acts was distributed — the internet, it exists! — it was not the starting point of this digital shift either, with plenty of other acts outside of idol-dom discovering the power of YouTube and streaming.
Yet what makes it such a Reiwa-appropriate song…maybe the first…is in its attitude.
As easy as it is to bash J-pop and especially Arashi’s agency Johnny & Associates5 for being paranoid about online realities, that’s really just a symptom of a bigger issue at the core of it and the Japanese music industry; no confidence in itself. Owing to both oversights in business and a more personal pain stemming from World War II, agency founder Johnny Kitagawa never really believed Asian artists could make it outside of their home region…especially the United States. Arashi actually teased a shift from this mindset…the group represented an effort to create a “storm” traveling into the world, with their debut reveal happening in Hawaii for extra oomph. This time, it’s different!
It wasn’t. Arashi focused on Japan, with some performances across Asia for good measure, but no real ventures into more far-flung markets. Overall, they didn’t need to — they became a true force at home and throughout the region, and plenty still found them beyond, even if it required visits to shady websites or jacked-up import costs for CDs — but it felt familiar in an age of lowered global expectations from J-pop, complicated by the rise of K-pop internationally6.
Which is why “Turning Up” is so strange but so telling. I don’t know why they decided to do this months before a break — I’ve had people tell me in the music industry here that it was a play at winning awards, while others simply point to the success of BTS and say “yeah, they did it, why not us?” — but Arashi challenged the Western market, making its intentions clear in the song and especially video. It really didn’t matter if they made any headway or not, because by simply trying they presented a new boldness that, to that point, was rare in J-pop.
“Turning Up” represents the end of the stranglehold the old ways of operating in the Japanese music market had7, even if the true accelerators on this front came from younger projects who would rise to prominence in the months and years after. More importantly, the whole attitude powering the current era of J-pop to go beyond its home comes across here. Forget about the timing of it all or business decisions or the choice to dress Arashi up in silly tuxedos as they dance in a parking lot — at its core, this song is a challenge to push past borders and try it.
In the Reiwa era, that attitude has become commonplace. YOASOBI, Atarashii Gakko!, Fujii Kaze and many more have not just made a concentrated effort to perform outside of Japan, but to showcase a newfound confidence in challenging the globe. Next year, performers like Kenshi Yonezu and Ado undertake big world tours, with the latter going on what I safely say is the most ambitious jaunt a J-pop artist has ever undertaken, the sort of thing that would have been unthinkable back during Arashi’s heyday. Even if lyrical concerns can get glum, the actual energy of what artists and labels wants to do is very confident.
All of that flows out of “Turning Up,” a song at odds with a lot about modern J-pop but absolutely in tune with the attitude the times have taken.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
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This started a little early when the agency then known as Johnny & Associates announced plans to launch a YouTube channel for its then-named Johnny’s Jr. developmental branch in 2018. I think more than enough time has passed where I can say…this news was presented to journalists in a way akin to like geopolitical alerts. I found out about it because someone from YouTube Japan called me on a Friday night and kept saying “you have to keep this secret” like it was Joe Biden’s brain rot or something.
To really underline this…Arashi is also maybe the first J-pop group proper (we aren’t counting like Shugo Tokumaru as “J-pop” I think) I ever encountered, as a friend in college was a huge fan.
My favorite, doubling as a rant opportunity: I love how they wink at the listener in describing themselves as a “guilty pleasure,” a levels-deep awareness of both the reputation of idol music and J-pop in the greater entertainment space. I also applaud them for not shying away from that term, which at some point in the last decade music writers and Reddit users dubbed “no good” because if you like something, you should just like it, right?! That sounds great in theory, but naturally in the online atmosphere of now, that’s just turned into an excuse for fans of pop music (often the really bad stuff) to force everyone to acknowledge ~ just how great ~ their faves are. Arashi gave us permission to keep our fondness for pop to ourselves…and simply shell out lots of money to show how great they were.
I truly don’t know what was in the air during the first few months of Reiwa, but “Turning Up” is the second song I can think of from that year centered around the very concept of J-pop. SASUKE’s “J-pop Wa Owaranai” also revolves around the idea of J-pop being a timeless delight, coming out two months before the Arashi song. Making it all the funnier…SASUKE eventually became Sasuke Haraguchi, creator of some of the wildest electronic music in the country today.
Given that Arashi was active when the company still used this name I’m just going to keep using it.
The inspiration for this post — which is to say, the thing that made me check out “Turning Up” and realize it turned five — is the latest video from copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy YG act BABYMONSTER, which features a bit in the middle that struck me as very “Turning Up” in how it utilized the motif of breaking news and a kind of unexplained mass-dancing phenomenon. Unlike “Turning Up” though, the accompanying song is pure garbage.
Not to be too flippant about death despite who I’m about to mention (if you are reading this, you don’t need me to go over all his crimes, I trust you to know ‘em), but…pretty weird how J-pop started gaining more international attention and enjoying global growth after Johnny Kitagawa died in the summer of 2019. I mean…I’m sure everything about Arashi’s “Western push” was in place before that, but it is still kind of bonkers knowing the group’s YouTube channel and “Turning Up” came out after he died.