Make Believe Mailer 30: Ko-Hot-Take-U 2021
Stream Of Thoughts On The Initial Line-Up For NHK's New Year's Eve Spectacular
The COVID-19 pandemic was significantly worse in Japan this year than in 2020. Case numbers reached record highs over these last 12 months, while until just one month ago, the nation had basically been under a State Of Emergency for almost all of 2021. It’s felt like more of a slog too.
That’s especially true for the Japanese music industry. Whether because companies had enough releases lined up ahead of the Diamond Princess pulling into port or just thanks to the initial novelty the pandemic brought…streaming, did you hear about it?…2020 in retrospect feels like an epoch-shifting year, partially due to accelerating trends due to everyone largely staying home but also thanks to a new generation of artists emerging into the mainstream. In 2021 it was…2020, part two. Like most sequels, the returns were diminishing. J-pop didn’t offer up as many fresh ideas, with only a few surprises cutting through. Everything felt static.Credit to national broadcaster NHK for…intentionally or not…capturing the sluggish pace of Japanese music in 2021 via the first set of artists announced for their annual Kohaku Uta Gassen New Year’s Eve spectacular. Last year gave us the first appearances from YOASOBI, NiziU, milet, SixTONEs among others, along with the farewell performance from Arashi and a long-awaited debut from Tokyo Jihen. This year we get…the second appearances from YOASOBI, NiziU, milet, SixTONEs and Tokyo Jihen. KAT-TUN makes the bill for the first time, which is more like “huh, they weren’t on one of these before? Swear I saw them before…” then a moment (unless 15th anniversaries really titillate you).
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The proper debuting acts are: Awesome City Club, Mone Kamishiraishi, BiSH, millennium parade and Belle, the aforementioned KAT-TUN, Snow Man, DISH//, Dai Hirai, Tomoyasu Hotei (a rock fixture for over 35 years finally arriving, is it a Kill Bill anniversary or something?) and Mafumafu.
Most of the above feels like a continuation of trends originating from 2020, and either got bigger (Snow Man really entering their own in the Johnny’s verse) or were simply missed from last year (DISH// is responsible for a huge hit stretching back to the start of the pandemic). Awesome City Club and millennium parade, meanwhile, provided music to smash films, with the latter set to perform with the main character from that flick (errr, the voice actor at least).
millennium parade (Featuring Belle) — “U”
I just…completely missed Kamishiraishi’s biggest song (if it even is…Kohaku is great at exposing glaring blind spots)? Good for her. BiSH have been building towards this moment for the last few years, though my sizzler of a take is it’s Aina The End’s 2021 that pushed them over. Hirai Dai plays the role of Eito this time around with a lovey-dovey song that went viral online (and at…real world weddings). Hold your loved ones close, or go use the bathroom.
The most interesting debut…maybe the only really surprising one…is Mafumafu, a creator from the Vocaloid community who has become a pop force on their own via YouTube and other online platforms. That lines up with greater trends in J-pop, but unlike a YOASOBI, Mafumafu hasn’t properly crossed over to the mainstream yet. They don’t have a single song that’s monopolized TikTok, or blasted over the Daiso sound system, or even warranted an appearance on Music Station. They have a strong following for sure, but for many this will be a total intro, without even the chance to say “oh hey, I’ve heard this.
I think Mafumafu landed on in large part due to dominant J-pop trends, but also because everyone wants to pretend the world is getting back to normal. Numerous TV shows and magazines (Nikkei Trendy, most notably) predicted Mafumafu would be the breakout music star of 2020, centered around a spring show at Tokyo Dome. Then the live music industry shut down, everyone signed up to Apple Music and discovered YOASOBI instead. This feels like a delayed coronation.Mafumafu — “Kamisama No Idenshi”
There’s one huge snub that would seem to be a better fit for the sonic and emotional space Mafumafu fills in at this year’s Kohaku. Ado should be here, singing “Usseewa,” which is one of the only real jolts to J-pop this year. It’s the logical blowout for this current gloomy Vocaloid-born boom, and for at least the first six months of the year, was a constant discussion point and ever-present number. Then again, Ado could also intentionally be skipping out, as the just-graduated-high-school-aged singer might not be ready for a live performance. Though, hey, hold on to that thought.
Other names missing: Fujii Kaze (the only other performer comparable to Ado in the snub section, pretty much presented as the future of Japanese music…especially by NHK), Official HIGE DANdism (they had another big year, but maybe couldn’t match the two before), King Gnu (millennium parade gets that slot), back number (guess they wanted to keep everyone alert), JO1 (perhaps too young, or perhaps NHK isn’t ready to let a potential challenger to several Johnny’s group on stage), Yuuri (another The First Take star, “Dried Flower” might be the most streamed song of the year, but he might show up in 2022), BTS (man, if they had agreed to do Kohaku, I’d be worried for them…would almost make me get HYBE’s crypto deal), Akiko Wada (I predicted this and…wiped out), and Vaundy (book it for next year).
AKB48 also isn’t performing for the second straight year, but that’s not a “snub” per se as much as a “reality check.”
But hey, maybe some of those names will grace your TV screen / NHK web player on New Year’s Eve! Kohaku has figured out promoting a television bonanza works best when a few late additions emerge, and some of the most buzzed-about entries of recent years — Mariya Takeuchi two years ago, YOASOBI last year with their debut live performance — were only announced days before. Guarantee that will happen again with one if not multiple artists above (and Ado and Kaze have big 2022s planned so…a little extra shine could help them a lot).
Same goes for the assorted non-musical acts bound to pop up, or “special section” acts, like VTubers and cursed Holograms. Today was Kohaku announcement day…but there’s much more to come.UmaMusume — “Umapyoi Densetsu” (from the smartphone game turned media univers of Uma Musume Pretty Derby, which is about horse racing but the horses are anime girls, but they still race and have horse ears. They…or the voice actors behind them…were rumored to take part in Kohaku this year, and they still could!)
Is Kohaku important? Not in the grand scheme of things. It’s “important” like the Grammy Awards, which is to say “not at all” but it still says something about the state of music (even if that’s just “a lot of people are complete lost about what’s going on”) and means a lot to people. The Kohaku news today was anticipated and reacted to in hundreds of thousands of tweets. Ratings dip nearly year on year, people still tune in, whether to watch their favorites or sneer at pop music or to just do something while stuck at their relative’s house.
It does function as a nifty metaphor for Japanese society in general. The big rumor in the run up to today’s news was that NHK would do away with gendered teams — Kohaku features two teams, one made up of women and one made up of men — based on their decision to not make the “moderators” (hosts) assigned to any one teams and a “Colorful” theme hyping up diversity. Look at the logo, the colors blur together in the middle! Symbolism!
For all those gestures, NHK didn’t radically change the structure of their show for its 72nd installment. They rearranged the table and will probably do plenty to signal change similar to recent installments, but aren’t ready to flip it over quite yet.
One huge question remains though — can it stay good? It’s easy to hurl negativity at Kohaku, especially since NHK tends to make it easy most times. Yet last year’s show…was really good? Thanks to a great set of performers, legit history and the pandemic forcing the people behind the show to get creative, the 2020 no-audience edition felt much better paced and entertaining than most from the last decade.
This year, slight signs of a normal Kohaku will come through — a crowd will be present, and I’m sure with the COVID-19 situation feeling safe (~ for now ~) NHK will try to present this as at least a dip back to the way things were. I hope they learn from last year’s special circumstances show, though, and keep the streak going.If nothing else, Kohaku this year will be more like a bridge between eras. I think 2022 will be a much busier year for J-pop and Japanese entertainment in general, and this sluggish 2021 will feel like a supply-chain abnormality. So perhaps savior this year’s version of the strange…or at least see if they can break the kendama world record again, hopefully with cartoon horses in tow.
Written by Patrick St. Michel (patrickstmichel@gmail.com)
Twitter — @mbmelodies