↑Click above to follow Triptych Life Weekly!
Japan's Janis Office issued a notice to the Japanese media on the evening of July 9, and President Kitagawa died at the age of 87 due to subarachnoid hemorrhage caused by dissociative brain aneurysm rupture on the afternoon of July 9.
Since Kitagawa founded Janis in 1962, he has focused on cultivating male idols and has pioneered the boom of male idol groups. The junior team, light GENJI, bitter team, SMAP, ARASHI Arashi, KAT-TUN, Seki 8 and other super popular boy bands are all from Janis. Hideki Nishijo and Yumi Go in the 1970s and 1980s, Takuya Kimura, a phenomenon idol in the 1990s, and more recently, Akashishi and Tomohisa Yamashita, who were influential throughout Asia, were also popular by Janis. In the eyes of many people, Janis is the "Dream Factory of Hanami Boy", and Kitagawa is "the person who dominates the aesthetic and definition of love beans in the whole Asian fan".
During the more than fifty years of working at the firm, Kitagawa poured his personal preferences and talents into Janis, saying that Janis's success was built by Kitagawa, but Janis was too strict about the use of his artists in terms of marriage, income, portrait rights, and social media use, coupled with a sexual harassment scandal that year, Kitagawa, the father of the idol empire, also carried some complaints.
Kita River
Kitagawa was born in Los Angeles in 1931, and after finishing high school there, he became the stage manager of a theater. In 1950, a generation of Japanese singers, Miku Skylark, went to the United States to hold a performance in a temple run by Kitagawa's father, and Kitagawa, who was in charge of stage management, took the opportunity to meet Miku Skylark and Haruhisa Kawada, which became an opportunity for him to return to japan to develop in the performing arts industry in the future. Later, he returned to Japan, worked as a translation assistant at the U.S. Embassy, joined the army on the Korean Peninsula, and then went to the university for a period of further study after recovery, and formed a band in the university, at which time Kitagawa had already begun to take charge of the band's management work, and there were signs of development in the direction of artist management.
In 1958, Kitagawa, who lived at Yoyogi Washington Heights Apartment in Tokyo, gathered nearby boys to form a baseball team, named Janis, and served as his coach and head. In 1962, he took the boys of the baseball team to see the film that changed his personal destiny and the development of Asian idols, based on the American film "West End Story" of the same name on Broadway. Kitagawa and the baseball team teenagers were impressed by the film's lively and brilliant song and dance performances, and in the same year, two "Janis" were born, one was the debut of the original boy band "Janis" composed of four teenagers from the baseball team, and the other was established as a "Janis" office in the form of Watanabe Productions' affiliate.
Since then, Kitagawa's love of baseball and stage dramas, as well as his training model for teenagers from an early age, has continued to grow and develop.
From 1990 to 2003, the Janis Games were held for 14 consecutive years, and most of the competitions were related to baseball. Fans come to the scene of the Games, not only can hear the songs of the corresponding combinations, but also can see the idols waving clubs on the court and running hard, which makes the Games look more like a "documentary performance with high variety", it can be said that Kitagawa used the Games to transform his hobbies into the happiness of countless fans.
Stage drama has also been a strong area for Janis. Janis's earliest stage plays also date back to the 1986 stage play "PLAY ZONE" starring Jr. (Johnnys junior, a prospective artist who entered Janis but has not yet officially debuted). After twenty or thirty years of accumulation, Janis's stage plays have been deeply recognized by fans. The nickname "Janis Circus" is the fans' affirmation of the fact that idols can do backflips, tightrope walking and other difficult actions on the stage like professional acrobatics. At the same time, Janis's stage play has also won professional awards. The SHOK series starring Koichi Domoto won the Kikuda Kazuo Acting Award, which is known as the "highest honor in the Japanese stage art world".
In 2013, NHK International launched a special program called "Janis's World: The Pinnacle of Japanese Pop Entertainment." In the program, the host visited the backstage of Janis's "JOHNNYS' World" stage play, and through the lens of the program team, the audience could see that Kitagawa, who was 80 years old at the time, still worked on the stage play himself, often shuttling between the front and back of the stage play.
Kitagawa said, "I sat in the theater hall and listened to the feedback from the audience, no one noticed me, and I didn't need to ask others for opinions to gather all the information myself." I can hear everyone's feedback myself. It's very interesting. It also always reminds me that as a producer, I have to always push myself. ”
After receiving feedback from the audience, Kitagawa will adjust the script at any time, as the staff on the show said, "The script changes every day." "This anytime, anywhere modification poses a challenge to the work of all cast members, but it also ensures the continuous improvement of the repertoire."
At the end of the show, the host asked Kitagawa what his plans were for the future, and he replied, "I'm not the most important thing, what matters is the young idols." They are the ones who propel Janis into the next era. ”
Stills from Takuya Kimura
Backstage in the rehearsal of the stage play, Jr of different ages is training hard, their youngest is only in the upper grades of elementary school, and the older ones are only in their early twenties. From time to time, the person in charge of rehearsing them would pop up one or two "baga", and even those who had not learned Japanese could roughly understand the hardships of these children.
Janis recruits about 200 Jr newcomers each year, all of whom are personally selected by Kitagawa, most of whom are concentrated in the ages of 8 to 15, and after joining the club, Janis will train them in performance, dance, magic, form, vocal music, instrumental music, hosting, program production, editing and other aspects of professional training. After a series of tests and competitions, the people who finally get the opportunity to debut are only a few of them.
Before their debut, most of them will be arranged to do accompaniment dances to their predecessors to accumulate stage experience. Don't underestimate this model of "acting as a background board for seniors to brush experience points by the way", a Japanese journalist called this "Janis strategy", he said, "this is a revolutionary model in the entertainment industry, specifically, once a combination is successful, you have to find more boys who are good at dancing, and then let them dance for the previous group in the back." Gradually, fans will get to know the children who dance in the back, you figure out what the fans like about those children, and then make the fans more eager to see them, and then let them debut. This way has a good chance of winning, and the newly debuted regiment is almost destined to succeed. This star-making model of the cultivation system was later borrowed by Korean entertainment companies to create a "trainee system".
Stills from Tomohisa Yamashita
After Kitagawa's death, many people lamented that an era had passed, and some people worried that The Japanese star-making factory might also fall. In the future, Janis will be the new president of Kitagawa's niece Keiko Fujishima, and Hideaki Takizawa, who is rumored to be Kitagawa's successor, will become the president of Johnny's Island, a subsidiary of Genes, and be responsible for the development of new talents. In the post-Kitagawa era, Janis may have to go through a period of dormancy, or in the near future, it will bring us a new and sharp star-making pattern.
There is a line in the stage play JOHNNYS' World, "Whatever happens, the show must continue." This sentence is like Kitagawa's own work attitude, and this is what Janis will do after that, after all, there are always new stubble of young people ready to shine on the stage.
⊙ article copyright belongs to Sanlian Life Weekly, welcome to forward