FMPJ President TatsuyaNomura discussed how the Music Cross Aid foundation got started and shared his thoughts on the current state of the Japanese pop music industry.
The live entertainment industry in Japan had been growing at an uninterrupted pace since the year 2000, supporting the Japanese music scene as CD sales continue to plummet. But this year, the coronavirus pandemic put that growth to a halt, with most concerts being cancelled or postponed since the end of February. Many people working in the music industry found themselves out of jobs, and numerous smaller concert venues have been forced to shut down permanently.
But this resulted in a massive loss of revenue, so we spoke with the government to explain that Japanese music culture will be lost if this current situation lasts, but it took a long time before the industry was able to receive any kind of financial aid. We felt that it was necessary to construct a system within the private sector to support one another, so that everyone will be able to fully recover when we're able to hold concerts again someday.
One of the first places in Japan that a COVID-19 cluster occurred was at a small concert venue -- called"live house" in Japanese -- so some of the first private aid efforts to kick off were to save these venues, because their profit-making structures meant that they would go under after a short span of time.
It could be due to the insular climate of an island nation, and perhaps also because most people seem to believe that there's no need for artists to make political statements. From personal experience, expressing my opinion at the risk of being criticized usually meant that the risk was greater than the merit.
Ever since that video, many people in the industry started to realize that"the politics of this country can't be trusted," and the lid has come off, so to speak, an example of which is the recent Twitter protest involving many celebrities opposing the Abe administration's recent move to extend the retirement age for prosecutors to its benefit. So I think that voices in entertainment and its power to reach people will change society and politics from now on.
Many challenges still remain in terms of reopening live events in Japan, but new efforts such as online concerts are being started, which is a positive trend.
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