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I have always supported Johnny Kitagawa and his strange decisions. Even when he killed Ya-Ya-yah and J.J.Express to create Hey!Say!JUMP I didn’t whine about the loss but was happy about the gain. Even when he debuted Nakayama Yuma w/ B.I.Shadow I backed his decision because after all, it’s his empire, he built it with his own hands (and presumably other body parts as well), and none of his debuted acts ever failed him. But in the end it seems to be him who suddenly started failing his own creations. I’m not gonna get into Hey!Say!JUMP and their lack of releases again. Yamada has a leading role in a drama series coming up, and I’m ready to believe that JUMP will eventually release another single early next year. But there is no denying that Mr Johnny-san completely failed his latest creation, NYwBIS. It seems that he didn’t believe in their potential himself right from the start, so he threw Yamada and Chinen into the mix to create NYC boys, who were supposed to be a temporary group who would just do that one volleyball support song. But then NYwBIS completely disappeared, and NYC boys keep coming back. Last month they were on Shonen Club, which was already kinda strange, and next month they will not only appear on FNS, Fuji Terebi’s big annual music program that celebrates the biggest Japanese music artists of the year, but they will also appear on NHK’s 60th annual Kohaku Utagassen.

And that’s just what’sですよ！

For those who don’t know, Kohaku Utagassen is an incredibly prestigious event. According to Wikipedia “[t]he honor of performing on Kōhaku is strictly by invitation, so only the most successful J-Pop artists and enka singers can perform. [...] Even today, a performance on Kōhaku is said to be a big highlight in a singer’s career because of the show’s large reach.”

So yeah, it’s a really big thing, and it’s no surprise that the whole Arashi fandom is in a frenzy because after 10 years Arashi will finally make their very first appearance on Kohaku, together with their senpais SMAP and TOKIO. And with their kohais NCY boys.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very happy for Yuma, Yamada, Chinen, Nakaken, Fuma, Hokuto and Yugo. It’s gonna be a great experience for them, and I’m looking forward to it myself quite a lot. But…

I can kinda understand that NYC boys will appear on FNS. It’s a Fuji TV event, and they did that whole volleyball promotion thing for Fuji, so it kinda makes sense. But this is Kohaku, for heaven’s sake. Sure, TV ratings have been going down in recent years but it’s still one of the most prestigious Japanese TV events of the year. Isn’t it kinda devaluating the program to have a supposedly temporary group like NYC boys on, even if it’s just an obvious attempt to attract a younger audience?

To have NYC boys on Kohaku is a bit like Barack Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. For die-hard fans it’s a great thing to flail about, but for everybody else it just carries the notion of what the fucking fuck?

The next thing we know might be that NYC boys will do the song for Hidarime Tantei EYE, and not Hey!Say!JUMP. D:

I’ve always backed Johnny Kitagawa and his sometimes very strange decisions. Very much like people who believe in God accept the fact that benevolent as he may be he also creates earthquakes, hurricanes and floods that kill thousands of people. Johnny Kitagawa is the god of my religion, and I accept his decisions like religious people accept the decisions of their gods, because deep down inside we have this feeling of trust that our gods know what they’re doing, and the feeling of hope that even though we may not always understand their decisions everything will turn out fine in the end.

Fingers crossed.

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