Aki-P talks about Keyakizaka46

This is from the October issue of Nikkei Entertainment magazine. A couple of points from the article have been mentioned in English, but I don't think the whole thing has been translated. There are more ideas here that I find interesting, and that give us a glimpse of the big boss's thinking.

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Special Interview -- Akimoto Yasushi

Akimoto Yasushi is the general producer of both the AKB48 groups and the Sakamichi Series groups. He differentiates between them with the keywords "energetic, powerful, tough" for AKB, and "lycéennes" [French for "high school girls"] for Nogizaka46. As for Keyakizaka46, which debuted in April and has had a rocket start, what sort of vision does he have for them?

In over 40 years doing this kind of work, if I start with the idea in my mind "let's go with this kind of theme," things have never gone well. With Nogizaka46, it was only after writing various kinds of music for them that I realized: "Oh, I've been writing as if they were French schoolgirls."

With Keyakizaka46, whether it was while speaking with the girls who had been selected in the auditions or when I was choosing songs for them, I gradually came to realize what I wanted to do. I didn't write Silent Majority thinking of making idols who don't smile.

The teen years are a period of incompleteness, when one is still confused about one's values. It isn't just Keyakizaka46, but AKB48 and Nogizaka46 as well, whose members I could be talking about here. You can't plan the thing known as "human life" just pat, in a single line. It's like using soft pencil to draw a sketch: you do version after version, with many wrong lines, until finally the sketch is done. During the teen years, you draw with a soft pencil -- many versions and many wrong lines -- and things reveal themselves along the way.

If I absorb the doubts and confusion of that age and they are in my head, then they will likely come out in the lyrics. It would mean nothing to an adult, but to that sensitive age it sounds as if "the rain on the asphalt is mouths telling me the answer." In that sense, what I wanted to do was write the confusion of the Keyakizaka46 girls answering their own questions.

The image of a drama club in a girls' high school

For Sekai ni wa Ai Shika Nai, which has surpassed their debut single in sales, Akimoto himself was present at the recording to give advice on how to direct the members.

We started with the poetry readings because I wanted to get those nuances across directly. In order for the members to understand why we were doing this, and what kind of phrasing to use, we had them do it for us on the spot. We saw from that what the feeling from each one of them was, and decided who should do which part.

In my mind, I thought the image of a drama club in a girls' high school would be interesting. For example, if Hirate was on stage and ran toward us, how would she say the lines? In this way, we could talk together about how the lines should be said and what they meant, as we proceeded with the recording.

Those girls have grown at an unbelievable rate, like sponges soaking up water. As producer and as lyricist, I keep trying various kinds of stimuli on them, wondering what they will do. The choreographer TAKAHIRO, and the costume designer, too, have also been enjoying themselves trying various ideas and seeing how the girls take them.

And in performance, as the opportunities to show things in front of people pile up, their ability to perform is gradually increasing. If we had given them these lines and these lyrics at the beginning, the feeling, and the sound produced by their vocal cords, would have been different, I imagine. But by doing them over and over again, they begin to feel it, and I think it begins to take on reality.

Previously, Takahashi Minami said the happy words: "I had good adults around me." Because of their different environments and the different kinds of influences they come under, everyone walks a completely different path, don't they? So we give Keyakizaka46 various environments and do the cooking according to how they receive them. I think it is my role to give them these new environments, one after the other.

It was the same with the drama they were suddenly given -- and not an ordinary drama, but one in which all of them had important parts. They had workshops before they started. They began from "what is acting?" but by the end of recording, they had grown into different people. For lines that would have embarrassed them at first, as time went on and one person freed themselves from their embarrassment, those around them did, too. That's the advantage of a group.

In fact, a lot of the lines were lines that a normal high school girl might say. Rather than lines for the sake of the story, the theme was just how far they could convey a feeling of noisy irresponsibility. So I said to the scriptwriters: "Something like this wouldn't happen in real life, but I want you to write dialogue close to what you think they might say if it did."

Keyakizaka46's strength is that they have the points of view of both creators and audience. They are like an audience in being normal high school girls. But I think they are now very much also people who have something to convey.

For example, AKB48 were in an entertainment course at high school, and already in the glittering entertainment world. And Nogizaka46 were in fashion or music and gave the feeling of a technical college. They have differing goals and differing value systems, and they live freely. The girls in Keyakizaka46 are normal girls taking normal courses. It's like: "Really? I had no idea she was in entertainment." In that sense, they are absolutely life-size people.

You might say that Keyakizaka46 had their break-out earlier than AKB48 or Nogizaka46. But to be honest, I still don't know. In the end, life is a marathon.

It might seem quick, but Nogizaka46 was established on the foundation of AKB48, and Keyakizaka46 is advancing on a road cleared by Nogizaka46. Their environment is larger altogether, I think, and fate has favored them in many ways. Their elder sisters' hard work has made people anticipate them more. It's like a track and field club where the activities of the elder sisters means people expect the younger sisters to be faster, and they are given lots of chances.


Hirate is a being into whom one can read too much
The centre, Hirate, has a lot of attention focused on her, and in fact I think she is amazing. Having had 40 years of seeing people called stars, I realize one can read too much into it, but she's a star. In normal life, Hirate may be an ordinary 15-year-old,  but in Silent Majority, the power of her eyes, and the way she brushed her hair aside and kept on looking at the camera, etc. -- those things excited the audience's imagination. In general, all entertainment has to fulfill the audience's imagination. And for a creator, too, having a resource like Hirate to use makes the breadth of imagination even greater. I think she has that kind of appeal.

Of course there are lots of other members there of interest. Watanabe Rika is awfully ponkotsu [awkward, incompetent], but there's nothing unlikable about her. Watanabe Risa's "cool beauty" aspect is nice. And I think Nagahama Neru is a girl with a mysterious charm.

This is something you could say about Nogizaka46, too, but I think the fact that they are all different is good. When the various colours on the palette mix together, the colour becomes "Nogizaka46-like." But they come together on their own.

Someday Keyakizaka46 will be like this, but so far they don't have a group colour. As "beginners", they're all going in their own various directions. But their singing in unison has its own interest. Their voices may slide, and the intervals may be a bit off, but when it all mixes together, they project a mysterious charm. Rather than being pros making their debut, they were like kids in the audition hall putting out a CD just as they are, doing things live. For them to be at ease like this seems to me a good thing.

From time to time AKB48 produces what is called a surprise by means of intentional training. But in the cases of Nogizaka46 and Keyakizaka46, rather than training, those girls' futures will be in directions they themselves want to go. So we have no intention for the Sakamichi series groups to have sister groups or kennin [members who appear with two groups at the same time] or move from one senbatsu ["selection" of members who appear for a particular group] to another. To have a school tradition of freedom, and to go forward making the school rules themselves, maybe that's what will be "Keyakizaka46-like."

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Akimoto Yasushi 秋元 康
Born 2 May 1958. Started writing for broadcast media in his high school days. Has been a lyricist since 1983, and has made many hits, including Misora Hibari's Kawa no nagare no you ni. Planner and lead writer of TV programs; planner of and original story-writer for films; etc., etc. General producer of the AKB48 and Sakamichi Series groups.