Make Believe Mailer #142: Music Awards Japan
Biased Sure, But Excited All The Same
The Japanese music industry and government’s experiment in creating an awards spectacle won me over about an hour before it even technically began. During the red carpet event outside of the ROHM Theater Kyoto, I started hearing cheers off in the distance. In the tree-lined area just beyond the venue’s entrance, several hundred people lined up to watch J-pop stars arrive, and scream for their favorites.
Music Awards Japan needed to be a spectacle, and right away it felt big.
There’s no way I can write about this without putting every conflict of interest I have on the table right away. I worked on Music Awards Japan (MAJ) as part of a PR company from late last year helping with English press release creation / distribution and in getting English-language media to the two-day event in Kyoto. It was at times one of the most interesting experiences of my career and also most frustrating. I had to wear a suit for like three days straight, a personal nightmare. Yet by the time the after party started Thursday night, I felt something approaching pride in everything seemingly going off smoothly.
Yet I also had a strong bias of wanting it to go well removed from all that. Sure, any government-backed entertainment undertaking raises alarm bells and I’m generally someone quick to dismiss the implied importance of awards shows…but man, I wanted MAJ to be a success. It’s slowly turning into a well-worn narrative, but Japanese music really is enjoying greater global attention in a way I haven’t seen since I moved to the country in 2009. An almost four-hours-long award ceremony isn’t necessarily going to be the catalyst for even more growth…but it does offer a chance to properly celebrate this moment.
My worries ahead of MAJ were unrelated to the actual ceremony itself. Of course it would be good — Japanese undertakings can be riddled with public-facing problems and controversies, not too mention saddled with behind-the-scenes challenges. The actual performance or event itself, though, tends to deliver on a quality front, even if bugs start swarming the grounds in the case of the ongoing Osaka Expo 20251. A few small technical snafus aside2, MAJ the production was great.
Where I was more worried was in conveying the over-the-topness an award’s show of this nature requires. The worst case scenario would be a staid ceremony big on industry back-patting feeling like the combination of a mandatory work assembly and a variety show combined3. Parts of it could feel clunky, but overall it captured the absurdity of a televised awards offering. Constant set changes! Special performances where acts brought their best4, often accompanied by dancers or featuring death-defying stunts (Chanmina spinning on a hoop above the stage)! Fujii Kaze standing up and dancing along to every single song! Just the very sight of like, Atarashii Gakko! sitting next to Mrs. GREEN APPLE sitting next to Kiko Mizuhara felt unique.
So the fervor around and energy inside worked, though the final push I needed to think MAJ’s idea worked came, oddly, during its dullest set. Midway through, there was kind of a “sponsor hour” featuring awards given out by assorted companies sponsoring the event. A necessary evil for Japanese entertainment (that I don’t think was televised?) that would be my biggest knock against the evening…yet at the end, they honored artists from across Asia, seemingly in an effort to further elevate Japan up as the music hub for the region.
Most of those present accepting awards were just record executives from across the continent. Yet Vietnam’s Tùng Dương — a singer active in that country for over 20 years — came to accept his trophy. And he got so emotional over it, delivering one of the most heartfelt speeches of the night and displaying a real excitement at getting a red trophy5.
The biggest spectacle a show like this can manage? Making people care about who wins and sparking real reactions like this.
My other concern came from how Japanese music would be presented via this event. MAJ exists in large part because of the last five years of J-pop. Would it zero in on this? Would it prioritize like, YOASOBI and Mrs. GREEN APPLE at the expense of everything else? Would it be a kind of shallow “look how big this has gotten” talking point, something rehashed and reheated during assorted industry seminars all week?
Again, it didn’t take long for that worry to vanish. MAJ felt like a celebration of Japanese music history, of the great artists that set the foundation for what is happening today.
The whole show opened with Haruomi Hosono addressing the crowd, as MAJ’s inaugural year chose to honor Yellow Magic Orchestra, one of the first Japanese group’s to find success outside of its home country.
Then the above video played, and I was all in. That’s partially because Perfume is the very first outfit you see, but really it’s because in five minutes you get nearly every corner of Japanese music represented, weaved together in homage to YMO. Rock, pop, rap, Vocaloid, enka, idol, MPC beat construction (courtesy of STUTS)…not to give a show-opening video too much emotional weight6, but the clip does a great job linking the past with the present, showing that the current Japanese wave came from somewhere, and the link between then and now remains vital.
The rest of the night captured the bridge between past and present. While most performers were very much of the 2020s, rocker Eikichi Yazawa made a surprise appearance to accept a special legacy award and to perform three songs brimming with energy. The likes of Takashi Matsumoto and Shigesato Itoi presented awards. You could see like, Yuki Chiba run up the stairs right past Maki Nomiya if you looked at just the right time.
I’ll allow myself to be a little over the top here — what I loved about MAJ was how it got at the possibility of Japanese music in total, once mostly ignored, becoming embraced. It’s not just contemporary acts, though they play a central role too. The thrill of the past decade has been seeing all kinds of corners of the nation’s musical history — city pop, Nujabes, Shibuya-kei, kankyo ongaku — be found by the greater world. It’s easy to be cynical, about how it was always there — yet I choose to largely enjoy that, to so many, Japanese music has become something to take in, whether it’s from 2025 or 1985.
MAJ wasn’t just about singing familiar praises about “the growing potential of J-pop abroad.” It was of pointing to how rich Japanese music history has always been…and continues to be.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies
Check out the Best Of 2025 Spotify Playlist here!
Grounds look great though!
This was the first time I ever attended an awards show geared towards a TV audience…and it is really kind of wild seeing all the moving parts out of the camera’s frame making everything move along.
I will note that the first day of the ceremony — held during the day on Wednesday, and with like 99 percent less pomp — did approach this bad ending at times, but I do appreciate that it existed to basically get everything that shouldn’t be in the main spotlight out of the way.
This includes one that genuinely caught me off guard and will force me to eat a little crow…Mrs. GREEN APPLE are a group I’m not going to listen to personally, but gotta say they sound great live, here joined by a big ol’ orchestra to really sell the drama of it all. I’m so upbeat about this I came away bullish of this trio!
Dubbed “The Ruby” by MAJ, answering one of my lingering questions “what are they calling these things?”
Here’s a superlative for ya…I think this is the best video package about Japanese pop culture since the 2016 Rio Olympics handover promo.
Enjoyed reading your personal experience with MAJ! I recently wrote about the excitement and concerns of it from overseas POV. It helps to read about true observations and feelings from someone on the grounds! Sounds like a wonderful experience. Thanks for sharing!