No Boundaries Anymore? Michito Goda’s “Prescription” for the Revival of Kohaku: Questioning the Merits and Demerits of the Rampant Rampanting of “Special Quotas

The roots of the “special program” date back to 1973.

This year’s “Kohaku Uta Gassen” has also seen an increase in the number of performers since the announcement of the contestants, and the announcement of “special slots” and “special programs,” which have become commonplace over the past few years, has increased the excitement of the “Kohaku” as we approach the big day of the year. This year, too, on the 28th, Seiko Matsuda’s “special program” was announced as the grand finale.

This year’s “Kohaku”, the 76th, marks the 100th anniversary since 1925, when the first broadcast in Japan began. Masaaki Sakai, who has been a star in the history of “Kohaku” as a singer, host, and cheer leader, will perform a medley of his own hit songs, etc. Kiyoshi Hikawa, a 24-time participant in the past will sing “Ai Tsan” by Hibari Misora.

The opening program by the contestants was titled “100 Years of Broadcasting: Kohaku Special Medley,” and included the theme song from “Yume de Aisho” (Let’s Meet in a Dream), which started NHK’s variety song show, “Sukiyaki” or “Ue wo muite aitokou,” which was born on the show and spread to the world, “Hikkori Hyottanjima,” an animation song from the show, and the theme song from the show. The theme song from the anime “Hyokkori Hyotanjima”, “Hana ha Saku”, which became a reconstruction assistance song for the Great East Japan Earthquake, “Paprika”, etc. will be sung.

Koji Tamaki, Yumi Matsutoya, and Gen Hoshino will also appear as special performers, but the 24th Kohaku in 1973 was the first time in the history of “Kohaku” that “special appearances” were announced when the members were announced. From that year on, Hibari Misora, who had been the star of the Kohaku group for many years until the previous year, did not appear on the program. It was also the year that NHK Hall, the venue for the Kohaku program, was completed, and Ichiro Fujiyama and Hamako Watanabe, both recipients of the national Medal with Purple Ribbon, sang in a special appearance.

Both singers were veterans who had been singing since the early Showa period, but they appeared five numbers before the last singer and received thunderous applause when they sang “Nagasaki no Kane” (Fujiyama) and “Kuwako (San Francisco) no Chinamachi (Town)” (Watanabe), which they had both sung in the first Kohaku as the last two singers.

In 1979, “Kohaku” celebrated its 30th anniversary, and “special appearances” were announced once again. Ichiro Fujiyama sang a medley of “Over the Hill,” “The Bells of Nagasaki,” and “Blue Mountains” for the white group, and Hibari Misora returned to the Kohaku stage for the red group after a seven-year absence. On the day the members were announced, Hibari said at a press conference, “I declined again this time if it was as one of the singers in the Kohaku competition. But I was asked to appear as a guest singer with a special section, so I gladly accepted the request. 30 anniversaries. I wanted to be a part of the celebration,” he said.

I think it is fair to say that the reason why Kohaku has become a special program is because Hibari Misora, the greatest singer in Japan, made this program special. It is true that Hibari’s association with “Kohaku,” including her declining to participate, her graduation, the importance of the trio, and her appearances in special quotas, has elevated “Kohaku” itself.

The truth about the “termination theory” whispered after the 70% collapse in viewer ratings

The next time Hibari would appear in a “special slot” would be at the 40th anniversary and the end of the Showa era. However, Hibari celebrated the 40th anniversary and flew away at the age of 52, the year the Showa era turned into the Heisei era.

In fact, for a while after the Heisei era began, there were no singers announced for the special slot. Rather, during that period, singers who would now be considered special appearances appeared as part of both the Kohaku and Haku forces. After 1985, the viewership ratings of 70% or more that had been achieved until then collapsed, and as a means of reworking the situation, the members, who until then had mainly sung songs and pop music, began to broaden their genres from this period.

The program expanded its genres by including operatic singer Shinobu Sato, who was not yet well-known on TV, minyo singers Chieko Kishi andTakio Ito, and chansonist Yukari Kaneko. Yuki Saori, who had not performed in nine years since the song era, was chosen as a member to represent musicals before children’s songs and Masachika Ichimura and others became as well known to everyone as they are today.

However, the show was unable to revive the ratings to 70%, and at the end of the Showa era, there was talk of “ending the Kohaku around this time. The NHK chairman at the time, who was not from the entertainment field, said, “We are letting them come up with a program plan that surpasses Kohaku.

As an alternative, a program featuring “artists from around the world” could be considered. In 1989, the 40th anniversary of the event, Cho Yong-pil and Patti Kim from Korea and Kim Young-ja appeared in chimachogori to sing “From the Land of Morning,” the theme song for the Seoul Olympics the previous year, which was still unfamiliar to the Japanese public.

The following year (1990), Cyndi Lauper andPaul Simon, and the following year (1991), Andy Williams andSarah Brightman from “Phantom of the Opera,” The Ventures, who only performed, and Teresa Ten, who had not performed for a long time, also made a comeback. Now that would be enough to qualify for a special slot.

The following year, foreign singers would not appear in the festival until the popularity of K-pop music picked up, but in contrast, Harumi Miyako, Saori Minami, andMasako Mori, who had retired as singers, participated as one of the singers in the red group, not in a special slot, as “songs to be passed on to the 21st century. The Tigers andPink Lady, who had disbanded, were also to make a comeback on “Kohaku.

However, in the name of conveying the message to the 21st century, “Kohaku” had selected songs from songs released or hit that year, such as “Hello Baby” by Azusa Michiyo, “Dokodemo Yume wo Yume” by Hashi Yukio, who passed away this year, “Blue Light Yokohama” by Ishida Ayumi, “Kuchinashi no Hana” by Watari Tetsuya, and “Kuchinashi no Hana” by Ueda Tetsuya, and “Kuchinashi no Hana” by Ueda Tetsuya. The medley of past hit songs such as “Kuchinashinohana” by Tetsuya Watari, “Kuchinashinohana,” and “Sudara-bushi” by Ueki, etc., marked the first time in over ten or twenty years that a singer had appeared on the Kohaku stage.

The Kohaku in Reiwa, Heisei Era, Became a Festival

Takuro Yoshida and Yoshi Ogura made their first appearances on the Kohaku in 1994, but they, too, were not invited as special guests. Until then, newspapers and magazines had been decorated with lists of predicted contestants for this year’s Kohaku in the fall, but the Kohaku of the Heisei period was changing into a Kohaku in which no one knew who would appear.

It was not until the 58th Kohaku in 2007 that a special slot that did not belong to either Kohaku or Kohaku was announced at the same time as the contestants. The “Special Tribute Live” segment was held at the end of the first half of the show to commemorate ZARD’s Izumi Sakai, who had died in an accident in May of that year, and was mainly a live broadcast of a film concert at NHK Osaka Hall. Masahiro Nakai, the host of the Kohaku program, introduced Sakai as “making his first appearance in Kohaku.

In this year’s Kohaku, Hikawa sang “Aisansan” with the video of Hibari Misora, and in the 58th Kohaku, the song’s producer, Kei Ogura, sang a duet with Hibari’s video to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Hibari’s birth.

In 2009, the 60th anniversary, Eikichi Yazawa finally participated in “Kohaku” for the first time. The announcement was kept top secret until the day of the event, when Yazawa suddenly appeared from the backstage entrance of the NHK Hall during the show. Three years later, he made another appearance, and this year he is scheduled to participate again for the first time in 13 years as a special program.

In 2011, when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck, Lady Gaga, who immediately after the disaster delivered a large amount of charity money, made a special appearance from New York to cheer the audience on. At the 69th Kohaku, Saburo Kitajima, who had already graduated from the Kohaku five years ago after 50 appearances, made a special appearance and sang “Matsuri” for the “last Kohaku in the Heisei era. The first time they sang in “Kohaku” was in the NHK Hall. Keisuke Kuwata embraced and danced with Yumi Matsutoya, who was participating in the red group, and Yumi kissed Kuwata on the cheek during “Jikkaku Sinbad,” the first song sung in the Kohaku program. Kuwata offered the microphone to Saburo Kitajima, another special guest, and all the performers ended the Heisei 30 year with a bang. This style is Matsuda Seiko this time.

The 70th Reiwa also featured Hibari Misora. The 70th Hibari was also performed by AI, who sang a new song titled “From Then On” in the voice of Hibari from the past. Beat Takeshi performed “Asakusa Kid,” and Mariya Takeuchi was added to the special lineup with “Inochi no Uta” (Song of Life). In Reiwa 2040, GReeeeN performed “Hoshikage no Yale,” the theme song for the NHK morning drama “Yale,” and in Reiwa 2024, B’z appeared from the studio to the hall in the middle of the performance, creating a composition and direction that kept the audience’s attention until the very end. The “special events” were all over the place.

Is it no longer a “joint battle”?

It is true, however, that there are many additional members added to the initial announcement of members, and that the lines between the red group, white group, special appearances, and special project performers have become blurred. The year after they are in the special project slot, they are sometimes in the Kohaku group. Currently, Yonezu Genji, who was in the special group last year, is a member of the white group this year.

Since many of the contestants are special singers, I think it would be a good idea to divide the Kohaku Uta Gassen into Kohaku and White, and return to its original form, in which men and women compete in equal numbers in singing and performance, which is the basis of the Kohaku Uta Gassen.

Unless it is in memory of a deceased person, such as Hibari’s AI or ZARD’s film performance, viewers will still feel that male singers should be in the white group and female singers in the red group, even if they are in the planning stage. Why not conduct a questionnaire survey of “singers whom the viewers would like to see and hear in Kohaku,” as was done for “Kohaku” when it was considered a “national event”? How about negotiating with the top singers according to their ranking, and if they decline or do not participate, the winners will be selected in order from the bottom of the list ……?

If this were to happen, it would be easier to understand, for example, last year’s special program, in which friends Tetsuya Takeda, Keiko Takeshita, Ken Tanaka, and Shigeru Matsuzaki sang “If I Could Play the Piano” in memory of Toshiyuki Nishida, who passed away. ……