This week on Recochoku, AKB48 topped the chart with “365 Nichi no Kamihikouki.”
On iTunes, Sandaime J Soul Brothers topped the chart with “Feel So Alive.”
RADIO FISH topped the Recochoku monthly chart for March with “PERFECT HUMAN.”
This week, SKE48 topped the Oricon single chart with their new single “Chicken LINE”, selling 257,095 copies in its first week.
Sandaime J Soul Brothers topped the Oricon album chart with their new album “THE JSB LEGACY”, selling 476,120 copies in its first week.
Hello, Arama! Japan readers and welcome to this week’s installment of #1 Song Review! Last week saw ONE OK ROCK defeat Kis-My-ft2 to take the top spot. This week, we have a returnee facing off against 2 newcomers. Find out what various staff members thought of the songs that topped the physical and digital charts this week and share your thoughts on them too!
Suzuki Ryoma, the founder of Warner Music Japan’s sub-label unBORDE, recently sat down with The Japan Times for an interview. In the lengthy piece, several topics were discussed, including the Kawatani Enon / Becky scandal, unBORDE’s 5th anniversary, and the evolving music industry.
“The Gesu scandal has been crazy,” Suzuki says about a minute into the interview at the unBORDE office in Tokyo’s Aoyama neighborhood, punctuated with the sort of laugh born from dealing with a frustrating situation everyday. “I’m hoping this can be a learning experience for us. Look forward to me telling you what that is.”
Kawatani’s scandal has been time-consuming, to say the least. He’s not shy to talk about it in abstract — he brings it up before the actual interview begins — but shuns details as “it’s all still unfolding.” He does say he heard of it three days before it was published, and disagrees with the idea that the exposure has helped Gesu.
“That is totally wrong. We were promoting to sell even more than what we did, it’s clear to me that this has worked against us,” he says.
Tonight, BABYMETAL will perform on a late night American talk show! The group will be a guest on the CBS show “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” The show airs at 11:35 PM EST. The performance will be posted here as soon as it is available!
More than 50 Japanese ruling and opposition politicians formed a group Wednesday to boost the popularity of older types of Japanese popular music mostly ignored by the youth.
“Let’s think together what we can do to give a boost and revitalize the world of enka and kayokyoku,” said Toshihiro Nikai, chairman of the General Council of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, who assumed the post of chairman of the nonpartisan group of lawmakers.
Enka is a type of ballad music often favored by older people while kayokyoku is how the Japanese popular music excluding enka was known before the advent of the more Westernized and sophisticated J-pop in the early 1990s, referring to more traditional genres of popular music.
This week’s guests were A.B.C-Z, lecca, and MOTHBALL.
A.B.C-Z – Hanakotoba
lecca – For you
MOTHBALL – Starting Over
Rapper DAOKO and producer TeddyLoid are back together in a new CM titled “Kirai, demo, suki” for HAL, a Japanese specialized college for learning about digital studies such as videogames, animation, music, robotics and web designs. The 15s CM doesn’t leave much time for music and the song is credited just as “TeddyLoid x DAOKO”, but it’s probable that it ends up being a full track. This is the second time DAOKO and TeddyLoid work together, being “ME!ME!ME!” their first collaboration. The CM has been supervised and directed by Hibiki Yoshizaki, known for being monitor graphics director in “Evangelion 3.0: You Can (Not) Redo” and director of both “ME!ME!ME!” and its sequel, “GIRL”. Check it out after the jump!