Snark levels were on full blast for ‘Kohaku’
The 2014 edition of NHK’s venerated song contest, “Kohaku Uta Gassen,” broadcast on Dec. 31, was remarkable for several reasons, though the performance that generated the most remarks was the one by the equally venerated pop-rock group Southern All Stars, their first on the show in 31 years.
Getting the band to agree to perform was a coup for the public broadcaster because the All Stars have traditionally spent New Year’s Eve playing for fans in their home base of Yokohama, as they were this time, so NHK arranged for a live feed from the concert venue.
When SMAP leader Masahiro Nakai introduced the group, front man Keisuke Kuwata showed up on screen sporting a chobi-hige, which the Asahi Shimbun translated incorrectly as a “small beard.” It’s really a small mustache, the kind, as Asahi went on to say, that Charlie Chaplin wore in the movie “The Great Dictator,” a roundabout way of explaining that it’s a style made notorious by a certain 20th-century German chancellor.
After the usual pleasantries, the band played their 2013 single, “Peace and Hi-lite,” which the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun described as the “theme song of the Asahi Shimbun,” implying that it has a left-wing slant and thus clashed with the other token middle-aged rocker appearing on “Kohaku,” Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi, whom Bunshun labeled “the guru of the right.”
The media’s indirect way of describing the Southern All Stars moment softened the impact of the group’s perceived dig at authority, though whose authority they were digging at wasn’t stated. The mustache and the purport of the song, which Kuwata has described as being about Japan’s contentious relations with its neighbors, could have been aimed at the current administration, a supposition reinforced by a similarly irreverent moment that occurred at another recent All Stars concert when Kuwata clearly criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who happened to be in the audience. In any event, Kuwata apologized on Thursday, saying somewhat disingenuously that he intended nothing political and the mustache was simply for entertainment purposes, which may be true. The name of the band’s December tour was adapted from a popular 1970s variety show featuring comedian Cha Kato, whose trademark is a chobi-hige.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/01/17/national/media-national/snark-levels-full-blast-kohaku/#.VLsJYCeUc7Q
