A series of Japanese singers, including Ayumi Hamasaki (47), have had their performances interrupted in China. The incident occurred amid heightened tensions between Japan and China following Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s (64) speech to the Diet regarding the Taiwan contingency. Taiwan is a country that harasses even entertainment business, which has nothing to do with the conflict between nations. What exactly are they trying to accomplish? Ayumi Hamasaki’s “current appearance” ***
Request to cancel the concert
Hamasaki announced the cancellation of her Shanghai concert on November 28. It was the day before the concert was to be held and just as preparations were underway to set up the venue. The Chinese side suddenly requested that the concert be canceled. The production team was a mixture of Chinese and Japanese, with as many as 200 performers and staff members. Hamasaki later performed without an audience on November 30, rewarding the production team’s wishes, but the fact remains that the concert was canceled. Hamasaki, who is said to be “one of the most famous Japanese in China,” made her CD debut in 1999 in China. In 2002, she was invited to an event commemorating the 30th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between Japan and China, and performed her first live concert in the Chinese capital, Beijing. Since then, she has visited China frequently. In the 2000s, Hamasaki gained enthusiastic support from young people in Greater China as a singer who symbolized Asian pop culture. Now those fans are in their 30s and 40s, and many of them are financially well-off. Last year, she held five concerts in four Chinese cities, Shanghai, Chengdu, Ningbo, and Guangzhou, and tickets were sold out almost as soon as they went on sale.
The music was stopped during the singing. ……
Of course, Hamasaki is not the only popular singer in China. Many other Japanese were forced to cancel their performances. The worst was the case of Maki Otsuki, 52, known for the theme song to the anime “One Piece,” who was forced to leave a venue in Shanghai on November 28 after her music was stopped while she was singing. The local government’s public security bureaus, or police authorities, must have been aware of the central government’s intentions and forced the cancellation of the performance,” said Kota Takaguchi, a journalist and translator familiar with the situation in China. As President Xi Jinping (72) is increasing pressure on Japan by demanding that Gao Shi retract his comments, the local government must be willing to do its own “work. However, it is impossible to do something as drastic as shutting down a Japanese company’s factory. I believe that this is why they are targeting the entertainment industry in order to achieve quick “results. This is because, despite its relatively small size, it has a large social impact.