Japan’s ‘SMAP’ averts break-up – Fans rejoice

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TOKYO, Jan 19, (Agencies): Japan’s staid politicians aren’t known for championing pop music, but even Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday was hailing an announcement that homegrown boy band SMAP had averted an impending break-up.

Saturation media coverage and despairing fans greeted news last week that the five-man group, which formed in 1988 when its members were in their teens and in its heyday packed venues around Asia and sang for Chinese leaders, was on the brink of dissolution.

But late on Monday, SMAP — whose name stands for “Sports Music Assemble People” — said they would stay together, prompting so much joyful internet chatter that Japan’s Twitter network briefly crashed.

“It was good that the group responded to the wishes of many fans and decided to continue (as it is),” Abe told a parliamentary committee.

Challenges

“Like in the world of politics, I assume there are various challenges for a group to keep on going for such a long period of time,” added the 61-year-old leader, whose ruling Liberal Democratic Party has been in power for nearly all of the past six decades.

Other cabinet ministers, including Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, lauded SMAP’s survival and said they hoped they would continue to “give dreams and hopes to the public.”

Fans of ageing Japanese boyband SMAP breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday at the news the middle-aged heartthrobs were staying together, after their agent said they were mulling a break-up.

The news of the possible disbandment last week shook Japan, where groups such as SMAP — tightly controlled by their managers — are wildly popular and often stay together for decades.

Devastated fans on social media had called on each other to “protect” SMAP members by buying their old hit songs, in the hope it would avert a split.

Those wishes came true late Monday when the band — which has been together since 1988 and whose members now range in age from 38 to 43 — carved out time on their weekly television show to apologise for causing anxiety and pledge to remain an item.

Remarks

Wearing black suits, the five members bowed deeply before each offered short remarks.

Takuya Kimura, the most popular member and a veritable megastar in Japan, explained they hastily arranged for live speeches to be injected into their taped variety show “SMAPxSMAP”, acknowledging that the group had been on the verge of a “midair break-up”.

Member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, said: “I am relieved that we five are again together right here.”

The group’s troubles were reportedly sparked by infighting between the agent in charge of SMAP and other top managers at Johnny & Associates, the powerful talent agency that gave birth to SMAP and numerous other boybands.

Media reports of the intra-agency feud and possible break-up prompted an emotional outcry in Japan and other parts of Asia.

Japanese Twitter was flooded by fans during and immediately after the live announcement.

The apology “shows how tough it is to be a SMAP member,” read one tweet Tuesday. “Anyway, I am glad they did not break up because I’ve been a fan for a long time.”

The news dominated media on Tuesday. “SMAP to go on,” read a headline on the front page of the mass-circulation Mainichi Shimbun newspaper.

SMAP, which cryptically stands for “Sports Music Assemble People”, started out as a fresh-faced boy band backed by the powerful Johnny’s agency.

Despite sometimes obvious musical shortcomings — saccharine numbers sung slightly tunelessly while bandmembers offer basic dance moves — they remain at the top of the industry.

They retain an enormous fan base among women in their 40s who came of age as the band hit the big time, and who remain the core viewers for the formulaic television dramas starring various members of the quintet.

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