Japan’s famous singing show “Kouhaku” Part 1

Every New Year’s Eve, a singing show called “Kouhaku” is held on TV in Japan. It’s become a custom to watch this show with the family for many people. Many popular and famous artists sing in this show. Artists are divided into red team (mainly consisted of female artists) and white team (mainly consisted of male artists) to compete each other. In this article, I will introduce you to some of the artists in the show last year who are especially popular amongst the young adults (though I want to introduce more of them to you…).

あいみょん　-Aimyon-

Aimyon is a Japanese singer songwriter. She started writing songs with her acoustic guitar when she entered high school. It is easily understood that everyone in Japan sing her exhilarating melodies and her unique lyrics. The melodies stick in your head and are nice to sing along. In the show, she sings relaxed and can see how she enjoyes singing with her acoustic guitar. She has many hit songs and some of them are the theme songs for TV-shows.

This year in the “Kouhaku” show, she sang “愛を知るまでは Ai-wo-shiru-madewa” meaning “untill I know what love is”. (song below↓)

The song “マリーゴールド　Marigold” was Aymyo’s biggest hit and was top in the chart for a very long time. (song below↓) This song is still in many of the charts in Japan even after 4 years since it was posted and is alomost always sang in karaoke in Japan. She sings in this song that “You wearing the straw hat look like the Marigold swaying”. This is probabloy a song thinking back on a past love.

The name of the song below is “貴方解剖純愛歌～死ね～” which can be translated as “dissection of you, pure love ~die!~”. This song is one of her first songs. The lyrics as well as the music video are very unique and crazy. The song starts off by saying, “if I cut off your two arms and tie them around my waste, you’ll never be able to hug another women” and ends by saying, “die if you don’t love me”. Though the lyrics are a bit extreme, the music is swift and exhilarating which is very awsome.

藤井風　-Kaza Fujii-

Fujii Kaze is a　rizing Japanese singer songwriter. He started classical piano from young age and started covering popular songs on YouTube when he was 12 years old. He released his first album “HELP EVER HURT NEVER” in 2020 followed by his second album “LOVE ALL SERVE ALL” in 2022. Both album reached number 1 in many rankings such as Billboard Japan’s Hot Album Chart. He performs in his tours and music festivals. In addition to his beautiful singing, he often sings dancing or playing his keyboard or his piano.

This year in the “Kouhaku” show, he sang “きらり kirari” and “燃えよ MO-EH-YO (Ignite)”.

“きらり kirari” is a onomatopoeia for when something shines. (song below↓) In this song, the effects of rhymes and onomatopoeias in the lyrics are added to its catchy melody. This song was written for Honda’s commercial video and soon gained its popularity.

“燃えよ MO-EH-YO (Ignite)” is the second song he sang in the “Kouhaku” show. He sang “Kirari” from where it looked like his room, he played the keyboard as he sang but it was fake and appeared on stage to surprize everyone. The video below is a live video of this song. From 4:15 in the video, he plays his shoulder-keyboard which is quite cool.

Lastly, the name of the song below is “何なんｗ Nan-Nan”. Like many of his songs, it has his unique taste to it. Nan-Nan is a slang way of saying “what?”. Throughout the song, he uses dilect used in Okayama-prefecture. The song has very unique lyrics and wording. Accroding to Kaze, this music is about finding the higher-self that everyone has inside themselves.

Thank you for reading our articles! We will post sequal articles on “Kouhaku” show!

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Reference

・AIMYON OFFICIAL SITE bio (https://www.aimyong.net/feature/biography)

・Fujii Kaze PROFILE (https://fujiikaze.com/profile/)　