Latest News from Japan Zone & Japan Store

The world premier of “War of the Worlds” will be held under the strict security of a war zone. Attendees will have to go through search and identification checks and will only be alowed to bring valuables into the screening. Even cigarette lighters and mobile phones will have to be checked in. The 900 or so guests will be surrounded by 400 security personnel and will have to pass through metal detectors and show photo ID. Among the very few people likely to be able to avoid all the hassle will be director Steven Spielberg and stars Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning, who arrived at Narita Airport yesterday. The security measures are to prevent any pirating of the ¥14-billion blockbuster such as that which happened prior to the recent release of the final “Star Wars” movie. The event will be held tonight at the Ropongi Hills complex in central Tokyo instead of the 7,000 seater Nippon Budokan as had been planned. The worldwide official release date for the movie is June 29.

• The movie “Koshonin Mashita Masayoshi” (Negotiator, Mashita Masayoshi) looks to be the kind of success you’d expect from its pedigree. A spinoff from the hugely successful “Odoru Daisosasen” (Bayside Shakedown) movies, it’s set to become a series in its own right starring Yusuke Santamaria (photo, 34) and Mizuno Miki (30). As with yet another spinoff, “Yogisha Muroi Shinji” (Suspect, Muroi Shinji), scheduled to open in August, all the movies are produced by Fuji TV and set in the same Odaiba Tokyo bayside location as the company’s famous headquarters. The two “Odoru” movies are among the biggest ever domestic box office hits.

Orange Range, one of the hottest bands in the country right now, are having to use a replacement drummer following an injury to member Katchan (21). He is said to have an inflammation of a tendon in his left hand and is resting in his hometown of Okinawa. He is expected to need two to three months to recover.

• Rock band Janne Da Arc have a new tactic to get to the top of the charts – use a granny. The band used 80-year old Asami Chiyoko in the video for their latest single “Diamond Virgin.” Asami has become popular as the character that contestants on a popular variety show have to kiss if they lose various games. In the band’s video, she appears in a schoolgirl’s sailor uniform. The single, taken from the new album “Joker,” entered at No.3 on the Oricon charts.

• TV Asahi scored with its recent coverage of the Japan-North Korea soccer game. With Japan clinching a place at next year’s World Cup, the network got a staggeringly high 58% rating. That represents 73 million people tuned in. Even the average for the whole game was a respectable 43.2%, the third-highest figure ever recorded by the network. By contrast, the struggling Yomiuri Giants baseball team had an all-time low of just 6.1% for their game the same night.

Congratulations are in order.

Japan’s national soccer team beat North Korea 2-0 in an eerily silent Bangkok stadium last night to gain a berth at next year’s World Cup in Germany. The game, officially a home game for the Koreans, was held at a neutral venue and without spectators following violence on the pitch and riots off it after they lost to Iran in their previous game. Japan’s goals were scored by Yanagisawa Atsushi, who plays with Italian side Messina, and J-League top scorer Oguro Masashi. Though the Supachalasai Stadium was empty, many Japanese fans could be heard chanting outside, while 20,000 gathered at the National Stadium in Tokyo for a live braodcast. The success means that manager Zico looks to have held on to his job for the time being despite broad criticism of his qualifying campaign tactics. TV Asahi expects the viewer ratings for its live broadcast of the game to better its own record of 47.2%, reached when the home game against North Korea was shown on February 9.

Japan’s biggest-selling rock group B’z have recorded the theme song for the upcoming Fuji TV marine drama series “Umizaru.” The ballad “Ocean” is the first drama tie-up for B’z in five years and is sure to be one of the big hits of the summer. The group, who are currently in the middle of a 27-city national tour, got permission from the Maritime Self Defense Agency to film the promo video on board one of their ships. The TV series is a followup to the successful movie version. A sequel , “Umizaru – The Next Stage,” is scheduled for national release next spring.

• Kusano Masaichi, president of Shinko Music Entertainment, died on Monday of cancer at a Tokyo hospital. He was 74. Under the pen name Sazanami Kenji, he translated many popular hits of the 1960s into Japanese, including “Vacation” by Connie Francis and Del Shannon’s “Runaway.” Hhe also wrote the Japanese versions of “The Mickey Mouse March” and “Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

• Popular acapella group Rag Fair played a mini concert to open yesterday’s soccer game between FC Tokyo and visiting Serie A champions Juventus. The game was held at FC Tokyo’s home at Ajinomoto Stadium in the western Tokyo suburb of Chofu.

Actor turned singer Matsudaira Ken (photo, 51) looks likely to have another money-spinning year ahead. The man until recently best known as the “Abarenbo Shogun” in the samurai drama series of that name, had a complete career and image change with last year’s hit single “Matsuken Samba II.” With people from 5 to 95 across the nation singing the catchy tune and an appearance on NHK’s New Year “Kohaku” song spectacle, Matsudaira tripled his usual income last year. No doubt this helped ease the heartache of his divorce from beautiful actress Daichi Mao. This week he released his first photo book. And this summer, he’s set to release “Matsuken Samba III.” It probably won’t cause the same level of media frenzy, but should earn the star a few more yen.

• Pop diva Matsuda Seiko (45) kicked off her 25th anniversary national tour on Sunday at the Saitama Super Arena. During the concert, she spoke for an unprecedented 15 minutes about the rumored split with her 18-year old daughter Sayaka. She told her 15,000 gathered fans that things are cool between them and that it’s just a case of a young bird wanting to fly the nest. She says she respects her feelings and understands her need to start out on her own, adding that she herself left Kyushu to pursue a showbiz career in Tokyo at the age of 18. In response to questions about a rumored romance with a much younger man, the twice-divorced Seiko said she is not thinking of marrying again.

Rock band Tube represent summer like no other artist in Japan, so it makes sense that they’ve become popular in Hawaii. Currently celebrating their 20th year, on Saturday (Japan time) they played their first official gig in Honolulu in five years. 8,000 fans gathered to watch the 3-hour show as the sun set off Waikiki Beach. Some 3,000 had traveled from Japan and most of the rest were Japanese living locally or Americans of Japanese descent. The band put out a single every summer and it usually becomes one of the biggest hits of the season. They played Aloha Stadium in 2000, when June 1 was named “Tube Day” and released a single in English that was only available locally. Vocalist Maeda Nobuteru (photo, 40) said he hopes to stay healthy long enough to play there again for their 40th anniversary. Maeda was until recently married to actress Iijima Naoko.

• It was revealed at the weekend that veteran rock singer Uchida Yuya (65) underwent emergency eye surgery at a Tokyo hospital on May 31. A blocked retinal artery meant that failure to operate would have led to blindness in the eye. The surgery was a success. Uchida was a leading light of the rock and roll scene in the 1960s, fronting top band the Tigers.

Daishi (29, real name Kajinaga Daishi), vocalist of popular “visual kei” rock band Psycho le Cemu, has been arrested on drug possession charges. According to police in Kanagawa Prefecture, Daishi was arrested June 2 after receiving a report at the end of May that he was buying stimulants. He has denied ever using drugs. Psycho- formed in 1999 and released the first of seven major-label singles in 2002. Though dressing up is all part and parcel of being a “visual kei” band, and Psycho- have one of the more outlandish looks, Daishi looks almost normal in comparison. He was in the middle of a solo tour at the time of his arrest and a concert planned for today has been cancelled. Release of a DVD, due for June 22, has been postponed.

• A planned pre-release event for the upcoming Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise blockbuster “War of the Worlds” has been cancelled. The world’s-first screening, planned for June 13 at the Nippon Budokan, was cancelled by distributors UIP due to concerns about videotaped copies leaking out on the Internet prior to its worldwide opening on June 29, as happened with the latest Star Wars release. Both Spielberg and Cruise were slated to appear at the event along with 7,000 lucky applicants to a magazine contest. Instead, they will both attend an arena event on the 13th at the trendy Roppongi Hills.

• Singer-songwriter Oda Kazumasa (57) started a national tour in Shizuoka yesterday. With 41 arena shows and a total of 290,000 seats, it’s a record-breaking tour for an over-50 solo artist. But Oda’s powerful performance belies his age, as he runs up 500m during the course of a single song.

SMAP announced yesterday that they are to go on a 5-city tour from July 30, their first nationwide tour in two years. They will play 21 shows at 7 venues, including the National Stadium in Tokyo. Yoshida Takuro, The Alfee and others performed at a concert there in 1985, and the stadium welcomed the Three Tenors in 1996. But this is the first time that a single group will perform at the venue, built for the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 and these days better known for hosting the national soccer team. As the name SMAP comes from “Sports Music Assemble People,” the group are selling the stadium shows as a return to their roots. They’ll kick off the tour at Sapporo Dome and finish at Tokyo Dome. They will also play four straight nights at the Yahoo! Dome in Fukuoka and Nagoya Dome, both historic firsts for the venues. The tour will also coincide with a new album, currently in production.

• Popular talento and model Yamada Yu (photo, 20) has ended her romance with actor Ito Hideaki (29), according to this week’s edition of Friday magazine. The two had been seen together a lot last month, visiting each other’s homes in Tokyo. The gorgeous Yamada is one of the most visible faces in the media these days, promoting a wide variety of products from cosmetics to Vodafone. The dashing Ito has been romantically linked to such celebs as actress Mizuno Miki and Fuji TV announcer Nakano Minako.

Heavy metal band Seikima II are to make a comeback, six year’s after they broke up on New Year’s Eve 1999. The band’s name is a pun on the expression “end of the century” (seikimatsu), so the break up and it’s timing were almost unavoidable. But vocalist His Excellency Demon Kogure (photo, 42 – though his “official birthdate is 98038 B.C.) remains popular and still always wears his trademark elaborate stage makeup. He has released three solo albums and has a successful career as a variety show guest and sumo commentator. The band plan to launch a “black mass” national tour in the autumn, as this year marks their 20th anniversary (on earth, that is). Demon is to announce more details on his live radio show on June 6 (6/6). Seikima II were the first (and perhaps only) heavy metal band to appear on Kohaku, the New Year’s Eve song spectacle on ever-so-respectable NHK.

• Manga artist Aoyama Goshou (41), who created the popular “Meitantei Conan” character, has married voice actress Takayama Minami (41). The pair tied the knot on May 5, Takayama’s birthday, according to this week’s Josei Seven weekly magazine. Aoyama has been drawing the Conan character for over ten years since it first appeared in the weekly Shonen Sunday manga in 1994. He is one of the highest earning managa artists and has been the 5th-highest taxpayer in the literary world for the last two years, paying almost ¥140 million in income taxes last year. Takayama narrates the lead character’s voice in the weekly NTV anime version of Conan on Monday evenings.

Sumo elder Futagoyama Oyakata died of cancer on Monday at the age of 55. The father of two of the most popular sumo wrestlers of modern times, Takanohana (photo) and his elder brother Wakanohana, died of oral cancer after a long period at a Tokyo hospital. His funeral will be held tomorrow and the Japan Sumo Association will hold a memorial service at the Kokugikan in Ryogoku, where all Tokyo tournaments are held. A popular ozeki (champion) in his heyday, he fought under the name Takanohana, and had a stellar career record despite being small for a rikishi (wrestler). He was perhaps even more successful as a coach, as both his sons reached Yokozuna (Grand Champion), the highest rank in sumo. Wakanohana, a sports commentator since his retirement several years ago, spoke of his father’s love, often expressed as strictness and anger as he taught the “gentler” of his two sons the fighting art. Takanohana, the better wrestler who won 22 tournaments to become the dominant wrestler of the 1990s, said he was having rtrouble accepting his father’s death. The first time he saw his father’s tears was when he became a sumo pro at the age of 15. He promised never to cry himself until his father’s death. He took over as stablemaster from his father following his retirement in 2003.