Latest news with #KohakuUtaGassen
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
J-Pop Group Arashi to End Activities Next Spring
Tokyo, May 7 (Jiji Press)--Popular Japanese pop group Arashi has announced that it will end its activities after holding a concert tour around next spring. According to the announcement made through the website of the group's paid fan club on Tuesday, the fan club's activities will also be terminated, at the end of May 2026. The five-member male idol group is composed of Masaki Aiba, 42, Jun Matsumoto, 41, Kazunari Ninomiya, 41, Satoshi Ohno, 44, and Sho Sakurai, 43. After its debut in 1999, Arashi released many hit songs, supported by a wide fan base. The group performed in "Kohaku Uta Gassen" (red and white song battle), the iconic year-end music show of Japan Broadcasting Corp., the country's public broadcaster better known as NHK, for 12 years in a row. Despite its popularity, Arashi suspended its activities as a group at the end of 2020 after holding an online concert on New Year's eve, with leader Ohno taking a break from the show business indefinitely. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
Japan Times
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
Nude photos of deceased singer Aki Yashiro spark row in Japan
A Japanese record company is facing a backlash after announcing it would release a CD by a deceased singer that will include nude photographs of her taken privately. The governor of Kumamoto Prefecture, where the singer, Aki Yashiro, was from, slammed the decision as an "unforgiveable" act in a blog post published Wednesday. The CD is due to be released on Monday by the record company, which has announced that the product will feature two nude photos of Yashiro, who died in 2023 at age 73, as a "bonus feature." It said the photos were taken by her then-partner when she was in her 20s. "If this is not revenge porn, what is it?" Kumamoto Gov. Takashi Kimura wrote in a blog post, referring to the act of sharing intimate images without a person's consent. Makoto Ono, a representative for the company that runs Yashiro's website, has also spoken out against the move. "The announcement (of the nude photo release) is an extremely unpleasant event and absolutely unacceptable," Ono said in a press release this week. Ono's company sent a letter to the record company in March through legal channels demanding that the release be called off, but no response has been received, the firm said. The record company, based in Kagoshima Prefecture, has told Japanese media they hold ownership rights to the nude pictures. Social media users in Japan condemned the company with the hashtag "Protect the dignity of Aki Yashiro." An online petition calling for its cancellation has received more than 7,000 signatures. "Naked photos being published without permission after death. ... This terrible thing must not happen," one user wrote on the platform X. Yashiro, who debuted in Japan in the 1970s, is a household name known as the queen of enka — a genre of Japanese music. She was also a jazz singer. She regularly featured on NHK's prestigious "Kohaku Uta Gassen," a staple of New Year's Eve television.
