On the Eve of the Birth of SMAP: The Real Strength of “Shonen-tai” and “Hikaru Genji,” the Fulfillment of Janie Kitagawa’s Ideal

In the previous article, “[Behind the SMAP x SMAP Public Execution Incident] Johnny’s Faces the ‘Beginning of the End’ in the Formation of SMAP,” we discussed how the SMAP breakup was the cause of the decline of the Johnny’s office.

The “Ellipse” of Janie Kitagawa

When I think about the characteristics of Johnny’s and the Johnny’s Office, I am reminded of one critic. Hanada Seiki. His masterpiece “The Spirit of the Reconstruction Era” was published in 1946, the year after the end of the war. Included in the book is a sentence written during the war, “Elliptical Illusion – Villon” (Villon was a medieval French thief poet).

A circle has one center, but an ellipse has two centers. It is like a rugby ball. Seiki Hanada writes: “A person can be pious or pious can be pious.

＜A person can be pious. One can be pious, and one can be obscene. But it was Villon who showed that one can be pious and obscene at the same time. ＞The first to show that one can be both pious and obscene at the same time.

He also says that “piety and obscenity – these two things that are most difficult to connect – have equal rights and exist at the same time.

This is the very person of Janney Kitagawa!

Just as the opposites of piety and obscenity coexist, a “great producer” and a “horrific sex offender” exist within a single person. It is not a circle. It has two centers, like an ellipse. They appear to be “torn apart” by these two opposing points.

First, there are two points: the United States and Japan.

Janie Kitagawa was born in Los Angeles, USA, in 1931. His real name is John H. Kitagawa. His Japanese name is Hiromu Kitagawa.

He returned to Japan at the age of 2. During the Pacific War, he suffered an air raid in Wakayama City. After the war, he moved to the U.S. at the age of 16 and attended high school and college in Los Angeles.

He came back to Japan in 1952 and worked for the U.S. military.

I see, he is torn between Japan and the U.S., between “Janey” and “Kitagawa.

In the early 1960s, he formed a baseball team with a group of boys who gathered at a U.S. military facility (Washington Heights). He went to see the musical film “West Side Story” with its members and was shocked. This is how they formed an idol group called Johnny’s.

Both baseball and musicals are American dreams. To realize the American dream in Japan became his lifelong mission.