Korean artist Younha, has recently secured an interesting new job for herself, after proving to be quite skilled in conveying Japanese sensibilities to her fellow Koreans. She’s been chosen by Japan’s National Tourist Organization, to promote Japanese tourism throughout her homeland of Korea, and the organization hopes to build more public interest in visiting Japan. The trend lately within Asian tourism, has seen Japanese destinations losing out to more exotic Asian locals, and the JNTO hopes to remind Koreans, and other Asian nationals, just how interesting a trip to Japan can be.
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A study published by Japanese music ranking company Oricon, has made a few quite interesting discoveries. Oricon wanted to probe why Korean artists are making such headway against the once dominant Japanese. Some interesting facts came out in the study, the first being, that many feel that Korean stars interact much more often with their fans–refreshing considering the distance that some Japanese stars have been known to keep with theirs. Another interesting discovery, was that fans like to see their favorite Asian pop stars involved in TV and film projects as well–a trait that Korean artists are known for, often diversifying amongst many different artistic projects quite well.
Billboards of a mysterious girl began popping up all around Tokyo recently, apparently a promotion put out by Asian music label Avex Trax. The billboards, come only with a brief tag line, a picture, and a url directing those interested to a web page online. Not much is known so far about Avex’s motives, but what is known, is that the female depicted in the pictures is a well known South Korean commercial actress, and it looks like Avex Trax may be gearing her up for some sort of Asian music debut sometime in the coming months..
Japanese musician Yoshiki, of X-Japan fame, is rumored to be working on a few songs for an upcoming horror movie entitled “Catacombs”. The movie is set in an underground cemetery, just like the real ones so notorious beneath the Paris city streets. Although, not usually a horror fan himself, Yoshiki agreed to work on the project based on his respect for producer Gregg Hoffman’s previous work and his artistic vision for the film. Yoshiki is said to be working with a vocalist from his long awaited ‘Violet Uk’ album, and here’s to hoping we’ll be seeing more from this most gifted and prolific Asian artist.
Japanese comedian Ochi Yosuke, has to be walking on a cloud this month, after winning the Air Guitar World Championship in Finland recently. Only practicing for a couple of days, he shocked the judges with his powerful, albeit slightly comedic performance of “Are you gonna be my girl?” by the band JET. The Youtube video doesn’t really do the performance justice–he really had the crowd going. He walked away with a specially designed Finnish guitar and amplifier, donated by Brian May of the British rock group Queen. But more importantly, being part of a story that is sure to be circulating Japan for many months into the future..
The last few months have been good for Johnny Jimusho and his large stable of boy band artists. Bands such as Kinki Kids, KAT-TUN and others, have all been dominating the Asian music charts lately. Now the latest of Johnny’s groups to achieve good results is of course the long running Japanese band SMAP. They just debuted #1 on Oricon’s music charts with their new 2 CD set “Pop Up!” Quite an accomplishment, seeing they’ve been out of the public eye for quite some time.
It’s official, Ayumi Hamasaki has surpassed all other Asian female solo artists–having the most singles sold over the course of her career. The record was set after her latest single “Blue Bird” entered the Oricon music charts at No. 1, selling just over 180,000 copies at the time of this writing. With the single in Oricon’s top spot, Ayumi will be breaking another record as well, having more No. 1 singles than any Japanese female in history. She’s still in the early stages of her career, so these records will be quite interesting to watch in the coming years.
Japanese pop idol Younha, seems to have been flying under the public’s radar up to now, but that all looks to be changing, as there’s been a new flurry of media attention showered on the Korean born singer lately. With a recent mini-concert held in Tokyo going over better than planed, the young pop star seems to be endearing the Japanese public to her. Considering she has strong Japanese language abilities, and a refreshingly humble public persona, it’s not surprising that Japan has embraced her with such open arms.
Oricon, the Asian music ranking company, is celebrating it’s 40th birthday this month, and as part of the celebration they are releasing some long-term statistics. Most interesting, being best selling artists from both past and present. Japanese rock group B’z tops the list, with an astonishing 40+ million albums sold over their very illustrious career. Female artist Ayumi Hamasaki is also listed, topping the singles category with over 19 million singles sold. But that was not enough to beat veteran Japanese singer Yumi Matsutoya, who has sold close to 30 million albums dating all the way back to the late 1970’s.
Up-and-coming Japanese artist Nana Kitade, whose “gothic cute” style has been sweeping Japanese fashion of late, is trying the Koda Kumi marketing strategy of releasing multiple singles over an extended period of time. Her plan is to release 7 downloadable singles over the next several months, and will convert these to regular CD singles if all goes well.
