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Arashi seeks to get closer to fans for debut anniversary
Japanese boyband Arashi celebrate 20 years of its debut by giving the worldwide fans what they have wanted all along; interaction with their idols.
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Arashi members (left to right) Kazunari Ninomiya, Masaki Aiba, Jun Matsumoto, Satoshi Ohno and Sho Sakurai attend a press conference at Mulia Hotel in Senayan, Jakarta, on Nov. 10. The Japanese pop group was officially formed on Sept. 15, 1999. (JP/Donny Fernando)
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apanese boyband Arashi celebrates 20 years of its debut by giving its fans across the world what they have wanted all along: interaction with their idols.
In September 2018, Japanese news service NHK reported that police were investigating a case of missing articles about the country’s most popular boyband Arashi or its members from dozens of books and women’s magazines in Anjo City Library of Aichi prefecture.
The case unfolded when fan filed a complaint with the library after failing to find a certain article in a magazine. A total of 50 publications and 332 pages worth of Arashi-related material had vanished from the library’s archives, according to the report, each meticulously cut out or removed.
There was no follow-up reporting on the case, but it seems that what happened at Anjo City Library was not an isolated incident, and it shows what a die-hard fan may do to get a glimpse of the idols or at least to hold encyclopedic information about the group.
Sitting with the Japanese press on Nov. 3, Arashi –– Masaki Aiba, Satoshi Ohno, Jun Matsumoto, Sho Sakurai and Kazunari Ninomiya –– announced its year-long agenda, all well-planned seemingly to appease the fans before taking an indefinite break starting on Dec. 31, 2020.
On that day, the group’s management firm Johnny & Associates launched Arashi official Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and Weibo accounts, besides releasing the new single “Turning Up” on various digital music platforms, along with the music video on the group’s YouTube channel.
The channel garnered a million subscribers within 27 hours of its pre-launch on Oct. 9, while Instagram followers numbered 2.3 million after three days.
