Most Popular Song In Japan Right Now

[Michael Rosiles]

Thereare a few various stories floating around about how this all started. It was the early 70s in Tokyo. It involved some foreigners looking for something that resembled the roast turkey they were used to celebrating with on their Christmas table. The first KFC had opened in the Aoyama neighbourhood of Tokyo in July 1971 and young Japanese also found the new Western style food outlet very appealing (American culture in particular was considered so fashionable and modern).

Although the fried chicken bucket is the classic choice, the current KFC Christmas menu has expanded to all kinds of offerings for the Japanese palate, including pot pies, prawn gratin, a creamy Japanese mushroom chicken roll and even a whole roast chicken with kinako mushrooms and cheese stuffed under the skin.

Fast food chains are not synonymous with cheap or bad quality foods in a place like Tokyo. On the contrary, they are highly valued for their convenience, a meal that is affordable and easy to get especially for people who live alone (a growing number in Japan) and shift workers.

Growing up with a Buddhist Japanese mother we never celebrated Christmas in Japan, and at home in Australia it was a purely cultural but not a religious event \u2014 Santa photos at the shopping centres and presents under the tree, unwrapped in our pyjamas before breakfast, then a summery long lunch featuring fresh seafood and summer fruit under the wisteria outside.

New Year\u2019s Day is the more important Japanese celebration, a more sombre and quiet rather than celebratory event, but arguably the most important one of the year. Special foods called Osechi Ryori are made over the days leading up to New Year\u2019s so no one has to cook on the day. One of the main ways to ring in the New Year is a deep clean of the house (literally sweeping away the bad spirits, known as osouji in Japanese, here\u2019s more on that in the New Yorker).

But I never was really aware that some Japanese celebrate Christmas (1% of the population is Christian) and I was probably as surprised \u2014at first\u2014 as you might be right now when I learned that the most popular way to celebrate is with a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

According to the blog Gaijinpot, \u201CFrom the Japanese perspective, particularly if you are celebrating Christmas with children, eating fried chicken together is fun and a special treat that elevates the day (which is otherwise just a typical working day) to an event.\u201D

December 25 is not a holiday in Japan \u2014 so a large, elaborate \u201CChristmas dinner\u201D for those who want to partake of western holiday traditions isn\u2019t necessarily doable. And from a purely practical point of view, many Japanese kitchens traditionally were without ovens, or if there were any, they were very small (think a toaster oven) and certainly not large enough to roast a turkey in! Most Japanese dishes are cooked on a stove top and only Western style dishes call for an oven.

\u201CChristmas is approaching this year again, as if to erase away

the sad things that happened. Let\u2019s take off our pajamas now

and go outside, running through the tree-lined streets

that are turning slowly white.\u201D

Fried chicken is already a beloved meal in Japan, where they have their own karaage (above) \u2014 soy sauce-marinated pieces of chicken that are dusted in a light coating of potato starch and deep fried, and eaten with rice and pickles, as part of a larger meal or even cold in a bento box.

In Japan, fast food chains are enormously popular and, culturally, I would say also not looked down upon as \u201Ccheap\u201D or \u201Cunhealthy\u201D\u2014 look at the face of the Kentucky Christmas in Japan, the beloved, award-winning actress and model, Haruka Ayase.

The quality of convenience food, whether from a 7eleven or a fast food chain is also high (anyone who has happened to try fast food in Japan or an egg sandwich from a convenient store, you\u2019ll know, it is on another level). You can find ingredients like foie gras, fish eggs and truffles, blended seamlessly with burgers and fried chicken \u2014 these aren\u2019t your regular fast food chains. In 2015, McDonalds even opened a fine dining pop up in Roppongi Hills in Tokyo, complete with silverware, wine glasses, white tablecloths and a five course meal featuring things like \u201CVichyssoise Mac fries.\u201D

KFC itself in Japan is seen as one of the more \u201Chigh end\u201D fast food chains. And it just happened to fill a convenient hole for this (at the time) new, special, curious, Western tradition in Japan.

The song received positive reviews from music critics for a "perfect" representation of Ai Hoshino. It was a massive commercial success by peaking at number one on both the Oricon Combined Singles Chart and Billboard Japan Hot 100. The latter topped for 22 non-consecutive weeks, making it the longest-running number-one song in the chart history. It also broke the record for the fastest song to achieve diamond certification for 500 million streaming by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) in about ten months. As Yoasobi's most successful song worldwide to date, "Idol" was marked as the highest position by Japanese act at number seven on the Billboard Global 200, and the first Japanese-language song to top the Global Excl. US, as well as the 19th best-selling song globally in 2023, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).

Naoya Nakayama directed the accompanying animated music video for the song, which premiered on April 13, 2023, and exceeded 100 million views in around one month, the fastest among Japanese acts. "Idol" won several awards, including Best Animation Video and Song of the Year at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards Japan, Best Anime Song at the 8th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, Song of the Year by both download and streaming at the 38th Japan Gold Disc Award, and Gold Prize at the 2024 JASRAC Awards. After numerous domestic and overseas performances, the first Japanese televised performance of "Idol" took place at the 74th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen, featuring Japanese and Korean idol groups, among others.

An anime adaptation of manga series Oshi no Ko was announced in June 2022.[1] During a livestream on its official YouTube channel on February 19, 2023, the anime series revealed the opening theme which would be performed by Yoasobi, titled "Idol".[2] As a "super huge" fan of the manga, Ayase had personally read Oshi no Ko before and written a demo about it around 2022. It was initially titled "Kyūkyoku no Ōgi",[B] portraying a girl who is the strongest and unbeatable fighter, showing some dark side, reminiscing about Street Fighter character Chun-Li.[3] The demo was originally expected to be released as a Vocaloid song,[4] but the plan was changed after the duo received the offer to perform the opening theme for Oshi no Ko; Ayase interwove the demo and the new composition to be the final version.[5]

"Idol" first featured in the anime's trailer, and the full-length version played for the first time in an extended 90-minute first episode, "Mother and Children", which premiered on March 17 at selected movie theaters in Japan.[6] After the first performance of the song at their Denkōsekka Arena Tour on April 5 at Nippon Gaishi Hall, Nagoya, Yoasobi announced that "Idol" would be available on digital music and streaming platforms on April 12, the same date as the anime's televised premiere.[7] A month later, the duo teased a snippet of the English version as a video clip uploaded via Twitter, showing Ikura recording the song in the studio,[8] which the full-length was released digitally on May 26.[9] The limited CD single and 7-inch vinyl formats of the single were released on June 21 and July 26, respectively, which both contain the Japanese, English, anime edit, and instrumental versions.[10][11] Subsequently, "Idol" was included in the duo's third EP The Book 3, released on October 4,[12] and the English version on their third English-language EP E-Side 3, released on April 12, 2024.[13]

The source of "Idol" is 45510, a short story written by Oshi no Ko's writer Aka Akasaka. The title refers to the initials of the manga's fictional idol girl group B-Komachi founding members: Takamine, Nino, Ai, and Watanabe, when typing on a telephone keypad. Each number corresponds when feeding kana inputs: "ta" (た) as "4", "ni" (に) as "55", "a" (あ) as "1", and "wa" (わ) as "0".[14] The story was first published via Weekly Young Jump's website on April 13, shortly after the anime's first episode televised premiere,[15] before being included as a poster booklet on the single physical releases.[10][11]

The story depicts the points of view of an unidentified one of B-Komachi's former founding members, who found former groupmate and face of the group Ai Hoshino's livestream 16 years after her death. The video showed Hoshino talking to her fans, making her reminisce and her jealousy of Hoshino. After the video stopped and could not find more, the former member tried to log in to B-Komachi's blog, operated by four founding members, whose password is "45510", and found Hoshino's unpublished posts written about her bad feelings, wanting to be like the past. The former member decided to delete the posts because she did not want to show Hoshino's weak side to everyone. Even though she disliked Hoshino, the protagonist also respected Hoshino as a "perfect and ultimate idol".[14]

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