Interview with K46 management committee chairman Konno Yoshio -- "Rock is in their being"

Keyakizaka46, a year rushing forward at high speed -- "Rock is in their being"

interview with Keyakizaka46 management committee chairman Konno Yoshio, from Nikkei Style web

Keyakizaka46 is the second idol group in the Sakamichi Series, following Nogizaka46. Its debut single, Silent Majority, had a strong message and conveyed the emotions of teens, and its support spread beyond idol fans. In its first week, the song sold over 260,000 copies, a rocket start that set a new record for debut sales by a female artist.

From that point, the group has continued to rise. Its second single, Sekai ni wa Ai Shika Nai (released August 2016) set a mark of 320,000 for its first week. The third single, Futari Saison (released November 2016) sold 440,000 in its first week. All three singles entered the Oricon weekly chart at #1. Futari Saison became an extended hit, climbing over 500,000 in sales and gaining a double platinum award from the Recording Industry Association of Japan.

Keyakizaka46 (first two rows, ~April 2017)

Keyakizaka46 had taken only eight months to reach sales numbers that it took Nogizaka46 a year and five months to reach (with its sixth single, Girls Rule). At the end of 2016, only nine months after their debut, Keyakizaka46 appeared on NHK's Kouhaku Uta Gassen. And their fourth single, Fukyouwaon (released April 2017) had sales of 630,000 in its first week. The Keyakizaka46 whirlwind is showing no signs of slowing down, and is having a big effect.



Faster than expected

Konno Yoshio of Sony Music Labels, who is chairman of the Keyakizaka46 management committee, says: "On the day before the release (5 April 2016), the Silent Majority music video on YouTube had reached over 300,000 views. Fans were flocking to support it far faster than we anticipated. When there began to be talk of Kouhaku, we wondered if the members would be able to take properly the tremendous speed with which this happened. Would they waver, or would they come to grips with the situation and show us a great performance? It was for this reason that we set up a one-man live for them to make a success of before Kouhaku. We thought they needed the confidence this would give them."

Konno Yoshio announcing the name "Keyakizaka46" in August 2015

Keyakizaka46 had a one-man live at Ariake Coliseum on 24-25 December. Over the two days they held three performances before a total of 27,000 fans, and AbemaTV broadcast live to an audience of 1.6 million people.

Konno says that the way Keyakizaka46 has grown most in the year since it debut is in "their expressiveness when they are performing their songs."

"When a new Keyakizaka46 song is finished, the first lesson for them is always given by choreographer TAKAHIRO, who communicates to them the theme of the song, starting by making sure that every member has a good understand of the meaning of the words. That process is done very carefully and takes time, but it is a source of Keyakizaka46's power. It has become more and more difficult to get all the members together for this, but we don't want to cut it short."

The end of last year, with the one-man live and the appearance on Kouhaku, was a climax. Entering 2017, the first big change was the appointment of a captain and a vice-captain. Captain Sugai Yuuka and Vice-Captain Moriya Akane were named at a handshake event on January 21, and then did a SHOWROOM broadcast as their appointment ceremony.

"If we had appointed a captain earlier, the members would have ended up just following rules, and would not have had their own consciousness about things. Our intentionally going without a captain for a while had the effect that the members all had their own sense of participating, in many settings."

But as they became a popular idol group, opportunities increased for members to comment to the media in press conferences and so on. For this reason, Sugai Yuuka was made captain, to speak for the group on the many occasions that were becoming necessary, and to be a mood-maker for them.

At the same time, a position that Nogizaka46 doesn't have, that of vice-captain, was established. It was given to Moriya Akane, who had shown on variety programs her strong spirit of never wanting to lose. "We expect her to be someone who can stir the group up, to support Sugai, who with her background as an upper-class young lady is more of a calming presence."

Then the group's first single of 2017, Fukyouwaon, was released on April 5th. Centre Hirate Yurina's line Boku wa yada [note: "I hate that," or "I won't do it"] made a strong impression, expressing the dissatisfaction felt by teens. The music video involved more intense dancing than any of their previous videos, and as in Silent Majority, they did not smile.

On the subject of Fukyouwaon, Konno says: "The song was aimed at the people who responded to the music and lyrics of Silent Majority. The group is centred on members who are in their teens and in middle or high school, so this is their song. It is a confident work, because of how much their expressiveness has grown in the past year," says Konno proudly.

Offers flowing in from the rock world

With this new song, 2017 will be a year of putting effort into live performances. In fact, offers are coming in to Keyakizaka46 one after the other from the rock world. They performed on Countdown Japan 16/17 at the end of 2016, and they will perform at the Rock in Japan Fes 2017 in August. And recently, the group's centre, Hirate Yurina, had a ten-thousand word solo interview in the April issue of Rockin' On Japan magazine

"On Countdown Japan, fans who had no interest in idols were excited by Keyakizaka46's performance. Nogizaka46 started from the image of a French high-school student, a lycéene.  Keyakizaka46 has more a feeling of England, with its rock and punk culture. I think rock is in their being, starting from Hirate Yurina, whose hair flies across her face during the intense dancing and who doesn't bother brushing it away."

Hirate Yurina, who sings at centre on all the music programs, has become the group's icon, so another matter is getting the names and faces of other members more widely known. Watanabe Risa has become an exclusive model for the women's fashion magazine non-no and her solo activities are increasing. But Konno says: "For now, our first task is to raise the unity and strength of the group as a whole, rather than to rush ahead with the appeal of each individual member."

-- from Nikkei Style web, adapted from Nikkei Entertainment magazine, May 2017.
________________________________________________________________

Two things in this piece strike me: (1) the fact that Takahiro is the one to introduce the members to the meaning of each song -- he's that important; and (2) that in general Konno is less concerned even now with developing potential substitute centres than he is with promoting and solidifying the group as a whole. They brought in the captains to take pressure off Hirate. And having Neru there helps, too. But as for giving Hirate a rest, that doesn't seem to be in their plans -- their plans as stated, anyway.

There's also the idea that management set up the one-man live in order to give the members confidence before they went to Kouhaku. That would be a reason for going for a slightly smaller venue in Ariake Coliseum, rather than stretching to something a bit bigger. In any case, the stratagem seems to have worked: they came out of those two days feeling on top of the world, and gave a great performance on Kouhaku.