History of Johnny’s and Associates

 Johnny’s and Associates inc. (J&A) is a talent agency which was founded in 1992 by Johnny H.Kitagawa (current executive producer). Contrary to common belief and its history of producing boy-groups, J&A is an agency to promote “musical stars”.

 Kitagawa, being a Japanese-American who grew up in Los Angeles, had been working as a stage manager for a certain theater in the US, and were very much impressed with the show business. After going to Japan (he got the Japanese nationality later on) to work, he took part in coaching a local baseball team at the US Army Washington Heights in his free time. That team (owned by his friend) had many members, and Kitagawa selected 4 good-looking boys among them to form a vocal group. This was Johnny’s, the first product Kitagawa offered, and the beginning of the long history of J&A.

 Johnny’s rights were at first owned by Watanabe Production, with Kitagawa being the personal manager, but he declared independence in 1992, with the help of his sister Mary Kitagawa(current vice president of J&A), forming the basis of Johnny’s & Associates.

The firm got the official permission as a Co.Ltd. At 1975.

 It took long for Watanabe Pro. to begin revenge in the boy-idol business: Their boys unit history begun in the 2000’s with D-boys.

 J&A had a long chain of producing a lot of boy-idol groups/stars after Johnny’s in the 70’s: Four Leaves, VIP, Johnny’s Jr. Special, etc., as well as Masaru Kosaka (father of Masato Kosaka of Johnny’s Jr), Jo Toyokawa, and Mayo Kawasaki.

This agency has a yearning towards producing almost solely male talents, although there were a few groups who contained female singers as well.

 The epoch of J&A arrived with the Tanokin Trio (Toshihiko Tahara, Masahiko Kondo, and Yoshio Nomura) in 1979, when they starred in the famous TV series “Kinpachi Sensei (series 1)”. The three boys (with only Kondo still remaining in J&A) made their record (that was before the CD era) debut separately, but did joint concerts and appeared in TV variety shows, etc. and locked many of the girls’ hearts in Japan until their split in 1983, leaving J&A with 3 individual artists (Nomura became a guitarist in his own band, the Good-bye).

 The “Kinpachi” series retained a good connection to J&A on the following productions as well, always allowing 3 to 4 Johnny’s Jr. Boys starring in each of them.

 The Tanokin followers got also a quite stable popularity (especially Shonentai, the longest existing group till now, and Otokogumi, the first successful boys band from J&A, featuring Kenichi Okamoto, father of Keito Okamoto of Hey! Say! JUMP), but it expanded even more with the debut of Hikaru Genji in 1987.  With 7 members (the still-existing in J&A being only Koji Uchiumi and Atsuhiro Sato), this group sung and danced on roller-skates, rising at once to stardom. They even won the “Nippon Record Award” with their million-seller hit “Paradise Ginga”. The group continued to be a living icon until their retirement in 1995 as a group.

 Their replacement was done by SMAP (Sports, Music, Assembled People) who, at first, was not at all promising. Their debut single “Can’t Stop Lovin’” hasn’t sold that much copies as their Senpais (forgoers), and this group used to be the least favorite of the exec. producer Johnny Kitagawa.

 The better side of SMAP came with the start of their appearances in variety shows, making people really laugh at them (a quite new phenomena in the Johnny’s talent world), which lead them to popularity. It was then the individual members’ talents begun to flourish: Nakai in MC, Kimura in acting, etc., which pushed SMAP more into the frontline.

Now they are the leading power in J&A, still making mega-hits and starring in most-seen TV shows.

 Encouraged by the huge success of SMAP, J&A continued to form and debut many younger groups in the show business, each of them becoming extremely popular among the audience even outside Japan.

Following are the current existing solo and group artists in J&A:

1. Solo Artists

Masahiko Kondo

Koji Uchiumi

Atsuhiro Sato

Kenichi Okamoto

2. Groups(with their debut year)

Shonentai (1985) - Noriyuki Higashiyama, Kazukiyo Nishikiori, and Katsuhide Uekusa (father of Yuta Uekusa of Johnny’s Jr.)

              SMAP (1991) – Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori

TOKIO (1994) – Shigeru Joshima, Tatsuya Yamaguchi, Taichi Kokubun, Masahiro Matsuoka, and Tomoya Nagase

           V6 (1995) – Masayuki Sakamoto, Hiroshi Nagano, and Yoshihiko Inohara (as 20^th                                                                    Century) with Go Morita, Ken Miyake, and Junichi Okada (as Coming Century)

              Kinki Kids (1997) – Koichi Domoto and Tsuyoshi Domoto

             Arashi (1999) – Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya, and

            Jun Matsumoto.

                 Tackey & Tsubasa (2002) – Hideaki Takizawa and Tsubasa Ima

    NewS (2003) – Tomohisa Yamashita, Keiichiro Koyama, Yuya Tegoshi, Takahisa

    Masuda, Shigeaki Kato, and Ryo Nishikido
         

KAT-TUN (2006) – Kazuya Kamenashi, Jin Akanishi, Junnosuke Taguchi, Koki Tanaka, Tatsuya Ueda, and Yuichi Nakamaru.

Kanjani ∞ (Eight) (2006) – Yu Yokoyama, Shingo Murakami, Subaru Shibutani, Ryo Nishikido, Shota Yasuda, Ryuhei Maruyama, and Tadayoshi Ohkura

Hey! Say! JUMP (2007) – Kota Yabu, Hikaru Yaotome, Yuya Takaki, Kei Inoo, and Daiki Arioka (as Hey! Say! BEST) with Ryosuke Yamada, Yuto Nakajima, Yuuri Chinen(son of Takashi Chinen,  Barcelona Olympics bronze medalist in gymnastics), Keito Okamoto(son of Kenichi Okamoto), and Ryutaro Morimoto(as Hey! Say! 7)

Added to them, there are a large group of boys called Johnny’s Jr., who back up their senpais at TV and concert performances. There are boys who keep their individual positions as actors as well. They consist of more than 100 boys (and a lot more Kenshuseis/ trainees, below them), and there are various units within the Jr. already, looking for a chance to debut.

Thanks to

fahlyu

I’m going on Hiatus again~ And I think I won’t be online for a long time this time T______T

All the works in college forced me to do so. I don’t understand why the lecturer really loves giving so much work for the students to do. And being a reporter in School Magazine, and as one of Student Council member, and as a member of Choir Group, and as a President of a new club in my college, I have a lot of works that waiting to be done. -sigh- I wonder if I can relax in the next two weeks ~

For curing my ‘Getting the work done!’ illness, I tried to write some fanfic about my three favorite pairings. Not good of course, because it’s unbeta-ed. But I promise I will ask my beta to beta-ed it for me. (cleo_chan, pwease help me~~~~~~ *starry eyes*)

Now, end of the excuse~

Candy (TegoMass)

For

yuyako16

Peaceful Sleep (HiroSuke)

For me xD

Birthday (KusaPi)

for

dephi

Hope you all enjoy! ^______^

Minna-san, hisashiburi~~~~  Long time no see xD

It’s been a long time since I last posted in this journal. It’s not that I want to neglect my journal or something like that. I’m sick, even until now, even though I’m better now, for 2 weeks, and my parents didn’t allow me to touch my computer. That’s why~~ T____T

I really miss you all~~ -hugs- And I really miss writing fanfics and translating something. If you have something in mind, whether you want me to write fanfic for you or translating something for you, just tell me and I’ll do it for you! ^_____^

Anyway, just want to share something about my friend.

I have a friend who is really nice to me. When I’m sick, she visit me everyday and brought a lot of food with her. And guess what? She gave me Arashi Time Concert DVD! Iyei~~ ^^ Hope God blessed you forever dear~~ xDDD

How about you guys? Mind sharing your story with me? Something unforgettable?

Somehow, I got this weird feeling yesterday, about didn't want to sleep, but really need the sleep. But in the end I gave up and go to bed and sleep, because I'm really tired and worn out and didn't have any energy left. At first I sleep peacefully. But after a few minutes, or maybe hours, I don't really know myself, I opened my eyes and the only thing that I can see is... garbage xD But in the pile of the grabage, there is Kitayama. Realy. I'm not kidding. He stood there, and barking orders to the other worker. And how lovely it was to found that the other workers are all my ichibans, with addition of all Arashi members, in worn out clothes. I can't help myself and I laughed loudly, only to find them glaring at me. And... that's the end of my dream xDDD My father woke me up. So yeah, it ended lols~ Anyway, before I sleep, I think about Kitayama, and end up dreaming about him. So maybe, our mind and dreams are connected with each other? xDDD

Now, facts about Kitayama~

And about Kitayama~ He really got me to translate the new ending of Shokura in 2008.04.13 because of his 'ugly face' xD

OH! MY DREAM! (Shounen Club 2008.04.13 Ending)

By : Jyanis Jr.

NB : Translated this because Kitayama is soooo damn kawaii! xD Never mind the other Junior, because I can’t see other people than Kitamitsu xDDDDDD -is biased-

And somehow, i read the kanji of Chikara wrongly xDD So i decided to edit it and posted it again here~

Chikara

By : Kitayama Hiromitsu