TOKIO Kakeru [18.05.2017]
Hi!
Yesterday Taisuke guested on TOKIO Kakeru with Takashima Masahiro to promote Sakurako-san no Ashimoto ni wa Shitai ga Umatteiru. They talked about a lot of stuff in those thirty minutes (like Takashima-san's obsession with bento and his recommendations on ekiben and the story about Taisuke scolding his youngest brother in front of Nakai-san for the nth time XD) and while I didn't get to watch everything yet thanks to delayed trains and work, I did at least see the second half and read some of the online articles that got published afterwards. While I'm no good at translating, I'd like to give you a short summary! I'm sure there'll be subs soon enough, but until then maybe this can help you a bit (and please don't nail me on everything being correct 💦).
Why it took Fujigaya so long to debut and why he decided to not quit Johnny's
When talking about his time in Johnny's, Taisuke told TOKIO that it took thirteen years for him to debut. Which surprised TOKIO both because Taisuke joined Johhny's together with people like Nakamaru Yuichi and Kamenashi Kazuya from KAT-TUN and because the longest it took one of their members were eight years for Joshima Shigeru (Nagase for example debuted with TOKIO after only a year in Johnny's). He said during those thirteen years friends went by and since he joined as primary school student, during middle and high school a lot of his "oniichan" (as in "older brothers", older juniors he worked with over the years) gradually quit. Perhaps he would have debuted sooner in another group, because he was in one just before KT, but since he was a junior high school student at that time, he couldn't and the group was discontinued, so KT debuted instead. Same for Watta who was in a group right before NEWS. Said, Kisumai is a gathering of people who were removed from their debut. When he graduated university and his friends were all getting hired, he became impatient. Fujigaya-papa is strict and asked him what he's gonna do once he graduated from uni. He kept thinking about it in a serious way the whole time about the future while in uni and was forced to make a bitter decision about staying in Johnny's or not. But the reason he decided to continue was at Arashi's concert where he was backing. The Arashi fans said "Thank you" to the juniors and it made him want to become a person who make people happy.
Source: Modelpress
Keep in mind, this is a really rough summary of the article, but you get the gist of what he said. Since it's a TOKIO show, the reactions on Twitter were quite interesting, I think they were overly positive. A lot of Arashi fans heard of what Taisuke said and were surprised about the impact they had on him back then. I saw a lot of tweets saying that they got a glimpse past the typical cool Fujigaya image, that he's a good and polite child and worked really hard and serious to be where he is nowadays. I think he left a positive impression on non-Kisumai fans and I hope some got interested in him and Kisumai!