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arashi

Mega-hit Japanese boy band Arashi is disbanding

Long hiatus to become permanent following farewell tour.

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Arashi members Sho Sakurai and Masaki Aiba get married… Wait, that didn’t come out right

Boy, they really do like doing everything together.

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Which other J-Pop stars will join former Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya’s YouTube channel?

One of Japan’s pop princes has started his own channel, but he’s heavily implying that he’ll borrow a little help from some of his famous friends.

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2020: The year of ARASHI that never was

Even ARASHI can’t always get what they want.

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Japanese boy bands debut new hand-washing song with dance moves and English lyrics 【Videos】

Arashi, Hey! Say! JUMP, KAT-TUN, and former Smap member Kimutaku are just some of the members to appear in these videos.

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Arashi’s greatest hits named world’s best-selling album of 2019

The veteran boy band becomes first Japanese artists to achieve such a ranking.

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Japanese net mourns 2020 hiatus of mega-idols Arashi, group explains reasons for the decision

The number-one multifaceted male pop group in Japan has inadvertently broken the hearts of millions.

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Police on the lookout for Arashi “fan” who stole articles about the group from public library

One fan of the boy band is taking their idol worship too far.

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Rivalry between mushrooms and bamboo shoots in Japan as people vote for their favourite chocolate

Jun Matsumoto from boy band group Arashi is leading the new campaign.

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Woman arrested for scalping tickets to Japanese boy band Arashi’s concerts

Sparks online questions about why she was singled out.

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Annual New Year’s Eve singing competition Kohaku will be invaded by Star Wars

Disney is getting its hands on all it can this year—you’ll even be able to catch a special performance by Star Wars characters and Arashi at annual singing contest Kohaku Uta Gassen this year.

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  • Dec 18, 2015

Is the year-end Arashi Concert about to go high-tech with facial recognition for attendees?

Rumors are flying around the Japanese internet that facial recognition technology may be introduced at least partially at the Arashi concerts being held later this month.

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Who’s still buying physical media in Japan? Top 20 singles lists for the year reveal the answer

With a large music market and some of the world’s highest prices for physical releases, Japan has been very slow in adapting to digital distribution. Rights holders are finally warming up to the idea, though, and it doesn’t look like it’s ruining the industry in Japan. What downloadable music does seem to be doing, though, is splitting the country’s pop music market into two distinct parts, as the lists of Japan’s top 20 single downloads and CD purchases for the year are almost completely different.

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For many of Japan’s most successful music acts, there’s a huge gap between their popularity at home and abroad. Five-man vocal unit Arashi has been at the top of Japan’s boy band heap for years, and while they’ve picked up a few ardent devotees in the U.S., their fan base there is miniscule compared to their legions of followers in Japan.

This became even clearer than usual last week, when Arashi had a concert in Hawaii. The effective cost of a ticket bought in Japan for the event calculates out to some 100,000 yen (US$925), but in Hawaii, you could pick up a ticket for less than a fifth of that price.

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We ask Arashi fans why the boy band is so popular… because we couldn’t figure it out ourselves

Arashi is a common Japanese word meaning “storm” but utter it to any Japanese person and images of the top male idol unit in the country will likely cross their minds before those of cloudy skies and overflowing gutters. Not a day goes by without Arashi appearing on some television show, and every album they release is pretty much guaranteed to hit number one.

However, the thing is… we don’t understand why they are so successful. Not to take anything away from Arashi as performers – they’re good looking chaps who have a sound easier to digest than a cup of warm yogurt. We just don’t get why they stand above all of the other boy bands on the scene in Japan who seem to be and do exactly the same thing. So, we sent our reporter P.K. Sunjun to interview Arashi fans and get to the bottom of the group’s appeal.

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Trio busted for forging 3,700 idol group autographs

Diehard fans of popular Japanese idol groups like Arashi, Hey! Say! Jump! and AKB48 may want to double-check that signed poster they bought online. Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Chiba prefectural police arrested three people last week for an elaborate idol merchandise scam. It seems that the scheming trio forged signatures of eight popular idol groups onto merchandise, put the fake goods on online auctions, then defrauded the winning bidder. Police believe that the three made about 3,700 of these items, which duped people out of 6,700,000 yen (US$67,000)!

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