Monthly Archives: March 2006

A monument was unveiled yesterday to rock star Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi (49). In August 2004, the singer/songwriter drew more than 75,000 fans to an all-night rock concert in his home town of Sakurajima in Kagoshima Prefecture. The town showed their appreciation for the economic benefits they gleaned from that event by commissioning a 50-ton stone statue of their favorite son at a cost of ¥35 million. 15,000 people turned out for the unveiling and Nagbuchi gave them a six-song performance in the 130,000 sq.m. space where the concert was held.

• Pin-up girl Yasu Megumi (24) has denied rumors that she is dating writer Lili Frankie (42), despite photos of the two published in a weekly magazine. She was appearing at the launch event for her latest photo book, shot on location in Hawaii.

• Also releasing a new photo book soon is Kano Mika (38), the younger of the “Gorgeous Kano Sisters”. It reveals officially for the first time the 1989 Miss Japan’s wholesome proportions, given as: bust-95cm, waist-57cm, waist-90cm. The book will feature “hair nudes”, meaning photos that show pubic hair. Not a rarity these days but a first for the Kano-shimai, who have been fading a little from the limelight lately. The book is being publicized as one product to mark the sisters’ tenth year as celebrities.

The all-female Takarazuka theater company has reached another major milestone. The 1,630th performance of “Berusaiyu no Bara” (Rose of Versaille) yesterday saw the total audience reach 4 million. The lucky audience member, a 15-year old girl from Yokohama, got a bouquet of flowers and had her photo taken on stage with the stars of the show. The lavish production has been running since 1974 at the Takarazuka theater in the city of the same name in Hyogo Prefecture.

• Yesterday’s issue of weekly magazine Friday published more photos “proving” the romance between actor Tsumabuki Satoshi (25) and actress Shibasaki Kou (24). The photos, taken at the beginning of this month, showed the couple in Tsumabuki’s car after a dinner date in Tokyo. The two have been rumored to be dating for several years, since they co-starred in the drama series “Orange Days” in 2004. Shibasaki was spotted leaving Tsumabuki’s Tokyo home last September and the two recently spent a month in New Zealand filming the movie “Dororo”. Tsumabuki has previously been linked with talento Yuka (25), while Shibasaki has been said to be involved with Da Pump vocalist Issa (27).

• The winners of this year’s music video awards from cable channel Space Shower TV were announced yesterday. Winning in the pop category was Hirai Ken (34) with his appropriately titled hit “Pop Star”. The video featured him dressed up as various characters, including a racoon. Koda Kumi (23) continued her award winning streak, taking the Music Video of the Year for her collaboration with Soulhead.

Sakai Masaaki (59) and Inoue Jun (59) are going on the road again after a gap of 36 years. The former lead vocalists of hugely popular 60s band The Spiders had a famous rivalry, but are said to have met for a drink last year and put the past behind them. Starting from the end of this month, they will spend the next two years touring the country with their joint show. The Spiders were among the pioneers of the Group Sounds era in the 60s, and broke up in 1969. Both Sakai and Inoue have remained TV regulars over the decades. Sakai is best known outside Japan for his lead role in the 70s TV series “Saiyuki” (Monkey). He and other Spiders members Mousieur Kamayatsu (67) and Inoue Takayuki (64) formed a trio in 1999, appearing on the Kohaku New Year’s Eve show on NHK and doing a national tour in 2001.

• The Stones rolled into town yesterday for their fifth Japan tour. Coming straight from a show in New York, they’ve brought their A Bigger Bang tour for five dates – March 22 & 24 at Tokyo Dome, 29 at Sapporo Dome, April 2 at Saitama Super Arena and finishing up on April 5 down the road from Japan Zone’s new home at Nagoya Dome. Mick Jagger (62) said this visit, their fifth, may be their last to Japan. 200 fans turned out to welcome the band at Narita Airport, though they were outnumbered by over-enthusiastic reporters who had to be told to “take it easy” by Keith Richards (62). Also among the crowd was comedienne Takeuchi Miyako (42) of the duo Pink Denwa, a die-hard Stones fan.

Kabuki actor Ichikawa Danjuro (59) gave a press conference yesterday to announce his return to the stage after battling with leukemia for the second time. He was hospitalized in September of last year and finally released on February 22. He will appear at the Kabukiza theater in Tokyo on May 1. The exact nature of his disease was a recurrence of acute promyelocytic leukemia. Head shaven but looking well, he described his time in hospital as a struggle with himself as much as the disease and said that he had been to hell and back.

• Comedy duo Bakusho Mondai this week became the first stars of the TV variety show circuit to be recognized by the government for their cultural merit. They were among the names announced for this year’s commendations from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. Among the 18 winners in the arts were singer/songwriter Najkajima Miyuki (54) and rakugo storyteller Katsura Sanshi (62). With shows like “Sunday Japon” and “Sta-Men” the duo of Ota Hikari (40) and Tanaka Yuji (41) have made popular a new kind of intelligent variety show that discusses current issues. Ota in particular has shown he has a remarkable level of insight and intelligence. Remarkable at least in comparison with the majority of comedy stars who seem to have taken over most of the networks.

• Hugely popular model Ebihara Yuri (26) unveiled her latest TV commercial yesterday. Shot at a private pool in Beverley Hills, the ad for Shiseido’s Anessa sun block features “Ebi-chan” from behind slipping off her bikini top and is sure to be a talking point.

Actor Takahashi Katsunori (photo, 41) bade a tearful farewell to his late father yesterday. Over 800 people attended the wake in Yokohama for musician Takahashi Katsushi, who passed away on Monday at the age of 77. Katsunori married model Hanna (25) in 2004 and said his biggest regret was that his father hadn’t had a chance to see a grandchild.

• Former top bar host Shirosaki Jin (28) is to make his recording debut. The one-time Kabukicho “charisma” host will record the 1977 Four Leaves hit “Bulldog” and the song will be produced by veteran Sakai Masatoshi (67), who in the past has worked with modern legends Yamaguchi Momoe and Go Hiromi. Shirosaki, who in his heyday as a host is said to have made ¥100 million a year, says he is aiming for an invitation to the year-end Kohaku Uta Gassen song spectacular on NHK.

• Actress Adachi Yumi (24) is still a month away from the expected date of her first baby but has already announced her return to work. She will appear in the latest series of NHK’s Friday night samurai drama “Keijirou Engawa Nikki 3”, starring Takahashi Hideki (62) and airing from October. Filming will start in June and Adachi will be back on the set from July. The baby-faced actress played the role of a mother for the first time in the second series and her child will be five years old in the latest. Off the set, she will be the mother of a 3-month old baby with comedian Itoda Jun (33), who she married last September.

Singer Hamasaki Ayumi (27) has become Japan’s most successful female pop artist. With her 39th single, “Startin’/Born to Be…” making No.1 in the Oricon charts, she now has 26 chart toppers, one more than ’80s diva Matsuda Seiko. It’s also her 14th No.1 single in a row, dating back to “Free & Easy” in 2002. She’s also tops in overall single sales with almost 20 million, and in Top 10 singles with 37. Ayu is currently in the middle of a nationwide arena tour that includes 30 shows in 14 cities.

• Meanwhile, one of Ayu’s main rivals these days is doing well with her latest album. Chart topper “Best – Second Session” is Koda Kumi’s second hits collection and includes all twelve singles that she released over the last few months. With sales of over 930,000, it is guaranteed to become a million seller.

• Okinawan singer Chinen Rina (25) has given birth to a baby boy. It’s the first child for her and model Nakamura Kentaro (22), who she married last August. Another new mother with a baby boy is Katsu Keiko (39), former weather announcer on TV Asahi’s “News Station.” She married the editor of a major weekly magazine in 2004.

Actress/talento You (41) has divorced her younger husband to shack up with an even younger dancer. It was revealed in this week’s issue of the magazine Friday that You and her second husband, actor and former model Matsuoka Shunsuke (34), have divorced and that she is now involved with Atsushi (28), a dancer with popular rock/hip hop band Dragon Ash. You, who starred in the recent acclaimed movie “Dare Mo Shiranai” (Nobody Knows), started out as the vocalist of rock band Fairchild. With her quick wit and acid tongue, she made a name for herself on the variety show circuit. She married Tezuka Atsushi (40), guitarist of the band Privates, in 1991, and they divorced in 1997. She maried Matsuoka the same year and they had one child.

• Sexy singer Koda Kumi (23) has taken the Artist of the Year at the 20th Japan Gold Disk Awards. The award is based on sales, of which Koda racked up a whopping 3.55 million copies in the last year. She can put the award alongside several others, including last year’s Song of the Year. And with this week’s release of her second hits album, “BEST – Second Session”, she looks set to achieve another million seller.

• Semi-retired singer/actress Nishida Hikaru (33) revealed yesterday that she is four months pregnant. She made the happy announcement on the pre-recorded Akashiya Sanma-hosted variety show that airs March 14. Nishida married 36-year old E-san, who works for a trading company, in May 2002. At first they lived in California but now spend most of their time in Japan.

Hollywood star Tom Cruise (43) spoke to members of the Japanese media recently and offered them some world exclusive tidbits. First off, he revealed that Tokyo is the main contender to be the location for “Mission Impossible: 4”. He also gave the first official word that he and fiancee Katie Holmes (27), currently expecting their first baby at the beginning of April, are to have a wedding ceremony in September. Cruise, who shook everyone’s hand and congratulated the Japanese reporters on Arakawa Shizuka’s recent gold medal at the Winter Olympics, promised that he would visit Japan with his new family. He also revealed some details about “M:i:3”, currently in production after delays of several years – his character, Ethan Hunt, is retired from active service and working as an instructor at IMF, but gets caught up in an incident where he has to come to the rescue of a pupil and his own fiancee, played by Michelle Monaghan. Filming has taken place in Italy and China as well as the US, and total production is said to have run to $150 million. It is scheduled to open in the US on May 5 and here on July 8. Meanwhile, Cruise won just one of the three Golden Raspberry awards he was nominated for, taking the newly introduced “most tiresome tabloid target” award. Asked about the awards by the Japanese press, he said he disliked their negativity and the fact that they make fun of people.

• Mai, the talented daughter of musician Hisaishi Joe, is to make her recording debut. She will release a cover of “Sakura ga Saita Yo”, written by her father in 1994, on March 8. The new single will be available only from the iTunes website. Hisaishi Snr. is famous for his work on the movies of Kitano Takeshi and anime features by Studio Ghibli. For the 1984 classic “Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind”, he used the young Mai’s voice for the wel-known “Lan-lan-lalaa” melody. Her interest in singing was sparked again years later while studying in the US.

Comedian Kimura Yuichi (43) and talento Henmi Emiri (29) are to hold a wedding ceremony and reception in April. The couple married on January 9, and Kimura said at the launch of his new cookbook on Saturday that the finals details have yet to be decided. It’s likely that any formal announcement will come from the PR department of Yoshimoto Kogyo, the agency that represents Kimura, known by his nickname of “Kimuni”.

• “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” got off to a good start at the box office. It opened on 800 screens on March 4, and looks set to break the opening-day record for Disney productions set in 2003 by “Finding Nemo” with ¥400 million. Nemo pulled in ¥11 billion altogether, while Narnia is expected to break the ¥15-billion mark. It has already made almost $670 million in 67 countries worldwide.

• The Rolling Stones are to release a Japan-only CD set that includes 8 of their mid-career LP albums. Not just a re-release on CD, the set includes reproductions of the original album covers and all liner notes, posters etc. For example, it includes the set of 12 postcards that came with the 1972 album “Exile on Main Street”. The set covers albums from 1971’s “Sticky Fingers” to 1981’s “Tattoo You”. It goes on sale from Toshiba EMI on March 15. There is sure to be great interest from fans outside Japan. The Japan leg of the Stones’ A Bigger Bang world tour has six dates, from March 22 (Tokyo Dome) to April 5 (Nagoya Dome).

Popular comedian Razor Ramon HG (30) finally has finally made the gossip weeklies. The HG stands for Hard Gay, but the other party in this “romance scandal” is busty pin-up girl Suzuki Anna (23), a former member of the “sexy group” Minisuka Porisu (Miniskirt Police). The two were spotted out on a date in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district by photographers from the weekly magazine Friday. HG has had perhaps the biggest breakthrough in comedy over the last year with his studded black leather outfits, sunglasses, outrageous comments, posing and the catchphrase of “Fohhh!” The tall and well-built former wrestler, whose real name is Sumitani Masaki, formed comedy duo Razor Ramon with partner Debuchi Makoto (31) in 1997 and joined the Yoshimoto Kogyo agency. But it wasn’t until the creation of the HG character that they began to become popular. Debuchi has tried to cash in with his RG (Real Gay) character, but has had limited exposure.

Director and scriptwriter Kuze Teruhiko died of a heart attack at his Tokyo home yesterday. He was 70. He was best known for the popular 1970s TBS TV dramas “Jikan Desu Yo” and “Terauchi Kantaro no Ikka”.

• The hardest-working man in Japanese showbiz has taken on yet another job. With the new talk show “Mino Monta no Sashinomi” set to start in April, Mino (61) now has a whopping ten regular weekly shows, nine of them on TV and one on the radio. The latest addition to his busy schedule is on NTV at 11:45pm on Mondays, so he now has shows in the morning, afternoon, evening and late at night. Mino was most recently in the news following his back surgery immediately after hosting the Kohaku spectacular on New Year’s Eve, after which he spent two weeks in hospital.