Farewell, Arashi!
Arashi has officially disbanded after 26 and a half years as a group. They're a complicated group and a group that I have complicated feelings about. I should at some point do a history series on them if I ever have enough time because their rise to superstardom was slow and then sudden and then just… expected. They became inevitable. Arashi were National Idols; maybe even the last national idols.
We have a different perspective on idols living overseas but whenever I did visit Japan during Arashi’s heyday, their advertisements were always plastered everywhere. And by advertisements I don’t mean advertisements for the group, I mean brands using the group or the individual members as brand ambassadors. The list of Arashi’s advertising campaigns listed on Oricon has almost 500 items dating back to 2000 and that doesn’t even include solo endorsements.
(Early Arashi advertisement from 2000; poster for sale for ￥1600 here.)
(Arashi’s Matsumoto Jun and the great Miwa Akihiro in a 2019 commercial for chocolates.)
I was Jun-baited all the way back during the Hana Yori Dango (花より団子) years and followed along with Arashi both more and less closely all they way up until their hiatus in 2020. My favorite Arashi variety show was Mago Mago Arashi (まごまご嵐) which ran from 2005-2007 and featured the members (then in their early 20s) tagging along with elderly Japanese for a day and acting as surrogate grandchildren. It was sweet and very heart-warming.
Later on, both the members and their image would get a lot more polished but in those early days, Arashi could be quite raw and you saw real emotions break through the surface on Mago Mago. A series of episodes where Arashi are coached in rowing by a retired grandpa stand out for that. We see the members struggle and struggle and finally learn to work together as they prepare for a boat race.
Himitsu No Arashi-Chan! (ひみつの嵐ちゃん！), which ran from 2008 to 2013, was another favorite of mine—specially the “Mannequin Five” (マネキンファイブ) segments where the members would get dressed up and have their outfits voted on. Many fandom memes like Sho’s infamous “double parka” were born from Mannequin Five.
Over the years, as the members of Arashi became more in demand, their schedules became more crowded, and the group sort of faded to the background. Each of the members has had a very successful run in both television (drama and variety) and in film. Matsumoto Jun (who Jun-baited thousands and thousands of us in Hana Yori Dango) has become an accomplished actor and I finally had the chance to see him live on stage in London in 2024 and was blown away by his performance. Ninomiya Kazunari has long been known for his acting from Oscar-nominated Letters from Iwo Jima and just starred in Exit 8 which was screened at Cannes. Sakurai Sho became a newscaster and even interviewed Mikhai Gorbachev (!). Aiba Masaki has been beloved on variety television for literally decades now since he began playing with animals on Tensai! Shimura Dōbutsuen (天才!志村どうぶつ園) in 2004—and I believe the show is still running with Aiba under a different title since the passing of Shimura Ken in 2020. And Ohno Satoshi, a multi-talented man and wonderful artist, has now finally retired from show business.
Arashi were never extremely musical nor were they marketed as “self-produced idols.” They didn’t even pretend to write their own material (as some idol acts do these days) but they were very innovative with their concepts and, especially, their stage performances. They weren’t the best looking idols, let alone the best singers or dancers. But what they did have was a) charisma b) likability c) ambition and d) will power to see things through. Even before their popularity grew enough to start playing in massive domes beginning in about 2008, they were putting on innovative stage performances like Matsumoto Jun’s delightful 2007 stage for “YabaiーYabaiーYabai” (from Time) that features the idol using wirework to push past the limits of the stage, dancing in mid-air!
Arashi pioneered the use of the bluetooth enabled lightsticks to make the audience a part of the show. They also pioneered the use of those giant clear moving stages for dome concerts that have become standard for idol acts playing in Japan.
There are so many stages I could recount; so many favorites. The one on Music Station where they get blasted with cherry blossom petals stands out in my memory!
As an overseas fan, my feelings about Arashi are going to be different than those of someone on the ground in Japan. We were always locked out of irl participation. We never really had any way to get tickets to concerts or live events—although there were some loopholes if you were savvy enough and before crackdowns on foreigners buying tickets really took off. But I do know from listening to fans over the years that there was a sense, at a certain point beginning in the late 2000s and early 2010s—maybe even from 2010 onward, that Arashi almost grew too fast all at once. That they were in reach and then… they weren’t. You could get tickets and then you couldn’t. They were doing lots of group content and then they weren’t. Suddenly Arashi went from the friendly neighborhood guys to Arashi: National Idols who were now teeny-tiny on stage and that’s even if you could get a ticket to some back bench at Kokuritsu.
My impression is that Arashi did their best to mitigate that feeling among fans but when there is a massive influx of new fans coming in, big enough to swamp the existing fandom, it’s impossible not to alienate at least some of your old fandom.
After they hit it big, Arashi did yearly albums with an accompanying tour from 2010 through 2017. With the exception of Untitled, their 2017 release, these are some of the finest bubblegum boy group albums you will ever hear with some of the most innovative tour stages to accompany them. It was Arashi’s Imperial Phase and they took full advantage of it.
Do I enjoy the sounds of light funky disco? Yes. Yes, I do.
What about Showa-throwback faux-Spanish songs? Yes. Absolutely.
City pop? GIVE IT TO ME DIRECT AND UNCUT!
But by the time Untitled rolled around in 2017, it felt to me, personally, just my opinion, that their hearts weren’t really in it anymore. (I mean, the theme is untitled and unfinished? There’s really nothing left to say at that point.) The hiatus announcement in 2019 was both a shock and not a shock. Ohno—who has now officially retired from show business—in particular, just seemed tired.
Considering these guys have been working nonstop in the public eye since they were teenagers, a break and a real private life are both well deserved.
Nobody can ever usurp their place. Arashi were once-in-a-lifetime idols and I wish all the members well in their idol retirement.