<figure id="attachment_462699" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462699" style="width: 3360px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="0d1756a6"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/cfcf764e0e1bd2b8275faebc18b81c79.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462699" class="wp-caption-text">Mariah Carey comes out of an Italian restaurant in Aoyama, protected by a strong bodyguard. After this, she went to Shibuya (from the March 29, &#8217;96 issue).</figcaption></figure>
<h3><span class="strongInContent"> Are you sure it&#8217;s real?</span></h3>
<p> What did &#8220;FRIDAY&#8221; report 10, 20, or 30 years ago? In &#8220;Playback Friday,&#8221; we revisit topics that were hot at the time. This time, we take a look at the March 29, 1996 issue, which was published 30 years ago, in the &#8220;Mariah Carey&#8217;s Aoyama→Shibuya &#8216;Late-night private party&#8217; in full.</p>
<p> Mariah Carey, 56, is a &#8220;world diva&#8221; who has sold more than 200 million albums in the past 25 years and has topped the charts in every decade since the 1990s. Her first concert in Japan was held at the Tokyo Dome on March 7, 10, and 14, 1996. Tickets sold out immediately, and 150,000 people came to see her perform in Japan for the first time. The article reports on the &#8220;nighttime&#8221; part of the Mariah Fever event (descriptions in parentheses are quotes from past articles, titles are from that time).</p>
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<p> March 12, 1996, 4:00 p.m. Mariah leaves the Four Seasons Hotel (Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo), where she is staying, accompanied by her bodyguards and other attendants. After stopping at McDonald&#8217;s in Ichigaya to see if she was hungry, she attended the &#8220;10th Japan Gold Disc Awards&#8221; ceremony at NHK Hall, where she received the grand prize. Afterwards, he rented out an Italian restaurant in Minami Aoyama for a late dinner at 10 pm.</p>
<p> He left the restaurant at midnight. We thought she was going back to her hotel in peace, but this was actually the &#8220;real&#8221; part of the evening.</p>
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<p> Mariah appeared at the club &#8220;C&#8221; in Shibuya, wearing only a black sleeveless one-piece dress and a white coat. The article at the time described the scene as follows.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Noooooo, is she really real?</span><br>
<span class="strongInContent"> The 60 or so customers in the disco were all at a loss for words. It was only natural that they wanted to pinch their cheeks. Because it was Mariah Carey (editor&#8217;s note: she was 25 at the time), the &#8220;Diva of the World,&#8221; who came to the restaurant.</span></p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" No way she sang &quot;live&quot;!"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">The surrounding staff was on high alert&#8230;</span></h3>
<p> It is true that &#8220;C&#8221; was a popular restaurant visited by celebrities at the time, but it was not the gorgeous big box that was popular during the bubble era. It seems that the restaurant did not expect VIPs with bodyguards to visit.</p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> Apparently, one of the stage dancers had been here a few days before, and they decided to &#8220;go together,&#8221; but this was a cozy place with an admission fee of 2,000 yen and no VIP room. The visit was so unexpected that a member of the staff &#8220;was surprised and astonished when he received a phone call out of the blue and was told that they were on their way to the restaurant. Mariah went to the disco space with a group of foreigners who looked like dancers, and they were dancing happily.</span></p>
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<p> However, it seems that the guards were still very strict. When she went into the restroom, her bodyguards stood in a position at the entrance, and when she moved around in the store, several people immediately formed a wall to guard her. Customers with cameras in their hands were immediately chased away, and it was a very tense situation. Even so, there were some who managed to get around the tight security and get Mariah&#8217;s autograph.</p>
<p> According to the article, Mariah ordered a Coca-Cola and danced without drinking it. And there was also an unexpected service.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> She said, &#8220;I&#8217;m so tired. She went out to the disco space twice and danced happily.</span><span class="strongInContent"> He even went out twice to the disco space and happily sang along to the background music playing in the bar without a microphone, a great service.</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> The sudden appearance of the super celebrity disturbed the atmosphere and some of the regulars had to leave, but the remaining customers got to hear Mariah&#8217;s seven-octave voice, which is said to cost 150,000 yen per premium ticket, for free.</span></p>
<p> Mariah left the club in a good mood after 4:00 in the morning.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" She was tired after all!"></div>
<h3><span class="strongInContent">I knew I couldn&#8217;t go to Disneyland.</span></h3>
<p> Mariah made her debut in 1990 with &#8220;Vision of Love&#8221; and quickly rose to become a star in the 1990s. Her first visit to Japan was in 1993. Her 1994 release, &#8220;Lovers&#8217; Christmas,&#8221; was a big hit in Japan. It was the theme song for the drama &#8220;Christmas for 29 Years Old&#8221; (Fuji TV) that aired in the fall of that year, and sold more than 1.3 million copies (the album &#8220;Merry Christmas,&#8221; which included the song, sold 2.8 million copies).</p>
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<p> The Cinderella story of her discovery and eventual marriage to Tommy Mottola, president of CBS Records (now Sony Music Entertainment in the U.S.), while working as a backup chorus member at a party, also attracted fans. Mariah&#8217;s 1996 tour was something her fans in Japan had been waiting for.</p>
<p> Mariah herself seemed to be enjoying herself freely and spontaneously in Japan, but the staff around her seemed to be having a hard time. In an interview with the web magazine &#8220;Cocotame,&#8221; Tetsuya Shiraki, who was in charge of publicity at Sony Music at the time, <span class="strongInContent">described those ten days as &#8220;a raging storm</span>. He also mentioned the &#8220;Disneyland Incident.</p>
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<p><span class="strongInContent"> We started by saying, &#8220;Michael Jackson rented the whole place out, right?</span></p>
<p><span class="strongInContent"> We wanted to go on an off-day, so naturally we wanted to include the media, so we had TV stations and sports newspapers on standby. The TV station had a helicopter in the air. It was like flying over Disneyland and waiting. But in the end, he didn&#8217;t go.</span></p>
<p> The trip to Disneyland, which the people concerned at the late-night club were worried about whether it would be safe for him to stay up so late, did not take place after all. According to an article in this magazine at the time, Mariah was so tired the day after going to the club that she did not step out of the hotel until the evening. The previous night&#8217;s wild partying must have taken its toll on her.</p>
<p> The &#8220;world diva&#8221; had created a huge sensation in Japan.</p>
<div data-friday-nextpage-lead=" (Image) Scoop!　The world diva&#39;s nightlife"></div>
<figure id="attachment_462700" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462700" style="width: 6737px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="0e57ed44"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/f22310cabc6c4cdcec8917a05bb00e2b.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462700" class="wp-caption-text">Mariah is surrounded by several fans and asked for her autograph when she goes to the restroom at a club in Shibuya. Her bodyguard is intimidating her with a scary face on the right, though it is hidden by a mosaic (from the March 29, 1996 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_462701" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462701" style="width: 3369px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="8298866e"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/bac72503ae2ace0a95f65fe29847c141.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462701" class="wp-caption-text"> She leaves the club after 4:00 a.m., being seen off by many people concerned (from the March 29, 1996 issue).</figcaption></figure>
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<figure id="attachment_462702" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-462702" style="width: 5044px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="947c1619"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2026/03/4963e56f774e09564fa8f02eff7d3adb.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-462702" class="wp-caption-text"> Mariah in a good mood as she leaves. She had a boom box on her lap (from the March 29, 1996 issue).</figcaption></figure>


 Hirohiko Tani (1st), Shigeki Katano (3rd), Takero Shiguro (4th)

 In this issue of Playback, we take a look back at what we reported 10, 20, and 30 years ago. In this issue, we introduce an article on Mariah Carey, who visited Japan in March 1996 for her first Japan concert. She was very busy, but she was also crazy at night....

Playback ’96] Mariah Carey’s Late-Night “On the sly” Singing at a Club in Shibuya, Tokyo

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