[Janiwota Starter Pack] Kouhaku Uta Gassen
I've been asked by new Johnny's fans to explain what is Kouhaku Uta Gassen, so I've written up an overview of Japan's biggest music extraganza on New Year's Eve. This is still a work in progress so I may repost it later with updates.
Overview: What is Kouhaku?
Kouhaku Uta Gassen, which translates to “Red and White Song Battle”, is an annual music extravaganza aired on NHK, Japan’s national broadcasting station, on New Year’s Eve. The 4 hour long program features predominantly Japanese artistes from genres such as rock, pop, enka [1], visual kei [2] and popular anime. The show also includes notable foreign acts popular in Japan, such as K-pop artistes like TWICE and Girls’ Generation, as well as Western artistes like Idina Menzel and Sarah Brightman.
Kouhaku first started on the radio in 1951, and was only an hour long. After 1989, the show became so popular that the performers were given four hours to showcase their talents. Many Japanese families would often spend the New Year’s Eve watching Kouhaku, making it the most popular music show in Japan with ratings in the high thirties to forty per cent range.[3]
How does an artiste get on Kouhaku?
Due to the prestige and popularity of Kouhaku, it’s usually considered an achievement for an artiste to be invited on the show. NHK has the following criteria when selecting which artistes get to be on the performance roster for that year’s Kouhaku.
1. The artiste’s activities for the year
This includes the artiste’s CD, DVD and blu-ray sales, online downloads and views of music video streams and research on social media, requests on karaoke and radio, and their audience numbers in concerts.
2. Support from the public
NHK will conduct a telephone survey with over 3,000 people over the age of 7, which are selected via random digit dialing, and also a survey of 8,000 people across Japan over the age of 7, and ask them to list down the artistes which they hope to see on Kouhaku.
3. Kouhaku’s overall program
Lastly, the Kouhaku production team will review whether the artiste fits the overall theme and programming of the show.
Ayase Haruka and the members of Arashi were the respective Red and White Team emcees in 2013
Show format and audience participation
As the show’s title suggests, the performers are split into Red and White Teams where they will take turns performing. The Red Team comprises mostly of female artistes, though bands with both male and female performers such as AAA or Sekai no Owari may be on the Red Team too. The White Team would comprise mostly of male artistes, which includes the Johnny’s groups. Historically, an emcee would be assigned to each team to support them, but the concept of team-specific emcees was scrapped in 2021 and emcees are now meant to support all performers instead.
At the end of the show, the audience and a panel of judges made up of notable Japanese celebrities vote for the winning team. Apps and text-votes are counted alongside the venue head-count as the audience’s vote. In addition to the audience’s vote, each judge gets to cast their own vote, and the team who receives the most votes altogether wins the show. For the first time since 2020, a live audience will be returning to NHK Hall for Kouhaku.
Judges and audience members hold up their red or white panels to vote for their preferred team.
In 2019, the White Team won overall as it proved itself popular with the live audience and viewers at home, although the Red Team won the judges’ vote.
The winning team will be presented with the victory flag as the show closes with the song, “Hotaru No Hikari”, which is a Japanese song incorporating the tune of Scottish folk song Auld Lang Syne.
Collaborations with popular culture
As the show is meant to appeal to a broad demographic, it often includes pop culture references from popular anime, cartoons and TV shows.
Sakurai Sho holds up a panel from the popular anime “Attack On Titan”, which prompts Wada Akiko to say, “Oh, that titan does look like me!”
Linked Horizon performs “Guren No Yumiya”, the theme song for “Attack On Titan”, while backed by a choir dressed in Training Corps uniforms.
In 2016, Godzilla appeared to attack NHK Hall during Kouhaku, while Pikotaro attempted to valiantly defend the venue with a performance of P.P.A.P.
The monster made a hasty retreat after X JAPAN brought out the big guns.
In 2019, Kanjani ∞ performs Maemuki Scream while backed by then Kansai Juniors Naniwa Danshi and a horde of Pikachus.
Do you have a favorite Kouhaku moment? Share it with us in the comments below!
[1] The modern enka genre is a type of Japanese popular music that uses pentatonic scales and kobushi, a melismatic vocal technique. Enka songs tend toward sentimental ballads that recall ryūkōka music, a traditional Japanese music form popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[2] Visual kei (meaning ‘visual style’, with the ‘kei’ pronounced ‘k’) is a musical genre - and beyond that a subculture - which grew out of a tangled mix of glam rock, punk and new wave influences, combined with kabuki theatre and shojo (manga for young women).
[3] Despite its historically high ratings, Kouhaku’s viewership ratings have been falling each year and reached a record low of 34.3% in 2021.
Overview: What is Kouhaku?
Kouhaku Uta Gassen, which translates to “Red and White Song Battle”, is an annual music extravaganza aired on NHK, Japan’s national broadcasting station, on New Year’s Eve. The 4 hour long program features predominantly Japanese artistes from genres such as rock, pop, enka [1], visual kei [2] and popular anime. The show also includes notable foreign acts popular in Japan, such as K-pop artistes like TWICE and Girls’ Generation, as well as Western artistes like Idina Menzel and Sarah Brightman.
Kouhaku first started on the radio in 1951, and was only an hour long. After 1989, the show became so popular that the performers were given four hours to showcase their talents. Many Japanese families would often spend the New Year’s Eve watching Kouhaku, making it the most popular music show in Japan with ratings in the high thirties to forty per cent range.[3]
How does an artiste get on Kouhaku?
Due to the prestige and popularity of Kouhaku, it’s usually considered an achievement for an artiste to be invited on the show. NHK has the following criteria when selecting which artistes get to be on the performance roster for that year’s Kouhaku.
1. The artiste’s activities for the year
This includes the artiste’s CD, DVD and blu-ray sales, online downloads and views of music video streams and research on social media, requests on karaoke and radio, and their audience numbers in concerts.
2. Support from the public
NHK will conduct a telephone survey with over 3,000 people over the age of 7, which are selected via random digit dialing, and also a survey of 8,000 people across Japan over the age of 7, and ask them to list down the artistes which they hope to see on Kouhaku.
3. Kouhaku’s overall program
Lastly, the Kouhaku production team will review whether the artiste fits the overall theme and programming of the show.
Ayase Haruka and the members of Arashi were the respective Red and White Team emcees in 2013
Show format and audience participation
As the show’s title suggests, the performers are split into Red and White Teams where they will take turns performing. The Red Team comprises mostly of female artistes, though bands with both male and female performers such as AAA or Sekai no Owari may be on the Red Team too. The White Team would comprise mostly of male artistes, which includes the Johnny’s groups. Historically, an emcee would be assigned to each team to support them, but the concept of team-specific emcees was scrapped in 2021 and emcees are now meant to support all performers instead.
At the end of the show, the audience and a panel of judges made up of notable Japanese celebrities vote for the winning team. Apps and text-votes are counted alongside the venue head-count as the audience’s vote. In addition to the audience’s vote, each judge gets to cast their own vote, and the team who receives the most votes altogether wins the show. For the first time since 2020, a live audience will be returning to NHK Hall for Kouhaku.
Judges and audience members hold up their red or white panels to vote for their preferred team.
In 2019, the White Team won overall as it proved itself popular with the live audience and viewers at home, although the Red Team won the judges’ vote.
The winning team will be presented with the victory flag as the show closes with the song, “Hotaru No Hikari”, which is a Japanese song incorporating the tune of Scottish folk song Auld Lang Syne.
Collaborations with popular culture
As the show is meant to appeal to a broad demographic, it often includes pop culture references from popular anime, cartoons and TV shows.
Sakurai Sho holds up a panel from the popular anime “Attack On Titan”, which prompts Wada Akiko to say, “Oh, that titan does look like me!”
Linked Horizon performs “Guren No Yumiya”, the theme song for “Attack On Titan”, while backed by a choir dressed in Training Corps uniforms.
In 2016, Godzilla appeared to attack NHK Hall during Kouhaku, while Pikotaro attempted to valiantly defend the venue with a performance of P.P.A.P.
The monster made a hasty retreat after X JAPAN brought out the big guns.
In 2019, Kanjani ∞ performs Maemuki Scream while backed by then Kansai Juniors Naniwa Danshi and a horde of Pikachus.
Do you have a favorite Kouhaku moment? Share it with us in the comments below!
[1] The modern enka genre is a type of Japanese popular music that uses pentatonic scales and kobushi, a melismatic vocal technique. Enka songs tend toward sentimental ballads that recall ryūkōka music, a traditional Japanese music form popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
[2] Visual kei (meaning ‘visual style’, with the ‘kei’ pronounced ‘k’) is a musical genre - and beyond that a subculture - which grew out of a tangled mix of glam rock, punk and new wave influences, combined with kabuki theatre and shojo (manga for young women).
[3] Despite its historically high ratings, Kouhaku’s viewership ratings have been falling each year and reached a record low of 34.3% in 2021.