Saito Eisuke on spreading Asian entertainment to a global market

The following translation is of a Finders Magazine interview with Japanese music industry insider Saito Eisuke about his time working with BTS in the Japanese market. Mr. Saito brings up some points that I have rarely seen discussed in English but which I think provide important and very necessary context when looking at BTS.

The Japanese market has been a target of Korean artists since before the term “K-Pop” was even coined. The early 2000s brought the original “Hallyu Wave” (the term comes from the Chinese reading of the characters 韓流 lit. Korean wave) to Japan with the mega-popular drama Winter Sonata (this drama is referenced in the article) along with solo artists like BOA, Rain, Kangta, and Se7en. Around 2010 there was a second wave which saw massive mainstream success from boy groups BIGBANG (also mentioned below), TVXQ (still very popular among idol fans in Japan), and 2PM, as well as girl groups KARA, T-ARA, 2NE1, and Girls Generation. 

The second Korean wave also saw the swift rise of actor/singer Jang Geun-Suk, which I remember very vividly. This was around the time that I really remember seeing the lines of cultural transmission start to reverse. We began to see Japanese remakes of Korean dramas like You’re Beautiful (mentioned below) and The Devil, both of which were remade into showcase dramas for idols from domestic powerhouse Johnny’s & Associates. It’s impossible to understate how popular Jang Geun Suk was during that brief window of about 2010-2013. (His anan cover stories mentioned below were indeed legendary.) He was a beautiful young man and very talented but it still took an industry insider like Mr. Saito to bring those qualities to the attention of Japan’s idol fans.

Ironically it turned out to be a silver lining for BTS that they came from a young company like Big Hit who didn’t have previously existing connections in the Japanese market. It was because they didn’t have a pre-existing relationship with a Japanese record label, talent agency, or promotional team, that Mr. Saito was able to make an end run around what I like to call the “K-Pop News Ghetto” and present the group directly to the mainstream media.

One thing that is important to understand--which I think Mr. Saito presents obliquely but I am going to just state plainly--is that, yes, BTS had a spark to them and were clearly an engaging and talented group but their artistic content and the fan response were very standard K-Pop boy group material. Mr. Saito was able to help generate a credulous response from mainstream media because they had no context for what they were seeing.

Take BTS’s debut song, “No More Dream”. The song strongly calls back to first generation boy group superstars H.O.T.’s debut song “Warrior’s Descendants” (listen to the bass line) as well as to their first generation rivals Sechs Kies “School Byeolgok”. These ties to previous K-Pop groups were meant to be so obvious to fans that BTS actually covered both the H.O.T. and Sechs Kies songs in a medley with “No More Dreams” in one of their earliest television appearances (which is an utter delight and you should click through!). 

Artistically, musically, and stylistically, in their early years, BTS very much followed in the wake of popular hip hop themed groups of the era like B.A.P. and BLOCK B, as well as the undisputed kings of global K-Pop: BIGBANG. (I winked at this with a run of Coffee/cafe themed songs in episode 40 if you want to check the tracklist there). 

This is not to deny that BTS weren’t talented or that what they were doing wasn’t engaging because it was. (I was a big fan until about early 2019.) But it’s undeniable that what they’ve done best, especially in the American market, is exactly what Mr. Saito lays out as the Japanese media strategy: presenting standard K-Pop or idol artistry as unique to the group itself. It’s painfully clear that, especially after 2019, most (if not all) coverage of BTS exists inside a context-free bubble. 

Check the MVs for “Blood Sweat and Tears” (2016) and BIGBANG’s “Bae Bae” (2015); “Mic Drop” (2017) and Arashi’s Arashic (2006)   along with their 2013 performance of “Cool & Soul”; Suga’s “Daewichta” (2020) and Mino’s "FIANCÉ" (2018); “Boy With Luv” (2019) and Teen Top “Ah Ah” (2015); BTS’s “Dope” (June 23, 2015) and UNIQ’s “EOEO” (April 23, 2015)  even use the same saxophone sound. To be VERY clear, none of this is “plagiarism” by any stretch of the term (in fact most of this is simply the K-Pop trend machine at work) but it does demonstrate that BTS were and have remained very much inside the artistic realm of mainstream K-Pop in just about every way that matters… except their media strategy. With that, I think we can all safely say that BTS (with the help of Mr. Saito) really did pave the way.   

As always with my translations, this is meant to be just for personal entertainment use only. I do this for fun and for language practice. Please do not copy or reproduce. The link to the original article is at the top of the post and I highly encourage you to visit the page yourself for the images.

This is part one of a two-part series.

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Saito Eisuke, the producer supporting BTS’s “Japan Invasion,” tells the “behind the scenes story of global K-Pop” [Serial] Spreading Asian Entertainment to a global market (1)

Media worldwide already reports on BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) seemingly every day and they have been nominated for a Grammy award for the second year in a row. Many books and articles have been written analyzing, “How did they get to this point in popularity?” but not many know of the large contribution of a Japanese producer to the group’s Japanese debut and then to their growth afterwards.

This person is Saito Eisuke, who formerly worked for the large entertainment agency Amuse, and has experience handling artists like the Southern All Stars and Hamada Mari. While a company employee of Amuse, he participated in bringing Japanese artists to an Asian market and even now after leaving the company he had a hand in bringing Korean talents to the Japanese market. As an industry insider he witnessed the birth of K-Pop from the Hallyu Boom and the dawning of a new era as it gained popularity even in foreign countries. 

In this article he tells the “behind the scenes story of BTS’s Japanese expansion” and at the same time also shows the business model that says: “K-Pop, the first foreign hit = Japan.” In other words, you could also refer to the same expertise when thinking about overseas expansion for Japanese artists. 

Interviewer: Yoneda Tomohiko; Jinbo Yuki

Article: Jinbo Yuki

Saito Eisuke

After working for the Western music division of Victor Music Company (today’s Victor Entertainment) he was transferred to the Japanese music promotions department. He worked with the Southern Allstars, Takahashi Mariko, Agawa Yasuko, Hamada Mari, and others. He also worked planning EZO’s American debut, TBS show Ikasubanndo Tengoku, Nippon Cultural Broadcasting’s “Miss DJ”, Fuji Television’s All Night Fuji, among other things.  He worked as assistant director of the promotional department, business planning, Taishita Label Music Company (Southern Allstars’ label), commercial cross marketing and so on. In 1991, he joined the board of Amuse Inc. as the head of the international division. He launched “AMUSE Hong Kong”, “AMUSE Taiwan”, “AMUSE Beijing”, “AMUSE Seoul”, and so on and signed Kaneshiro Takeshi, BEYOND, Sandy Lam, Karen Mok to management contracts. He helped plan and produce things like the Shanghai Television co-production with AMUSE “Chinese Star Search” and so on. 

In 2001, he became a board member of e-License (today’s NexTone) and director of the House of Culture of Japan in Paris. In 2005 he founded entax. He participated as a producer for the Asia Content Center and opened the Korean division. He worked on dramas like the Jang Geun Suk vehicle Mary Stayed Out All Night and the Kim Nam Gil vehicle Red and Black.

In 2013, he established the Copyright Protection company “ONE ASIA MUSIC” in Taiwan (e-Lisence and SPACESHOWER contributed financing) and at the same time founded “Beijing China Sixth Vision Company'' in Beijing, China. He then worked as a producer for BTS in Japan.

In 2020, he joined Fortune Investment Company as a deputy general manager and today works as an advisor to several Chinese companies.

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Unexpectedly happened to notice a single photograph. A shocking meeting with BTS. 

Before talking about meeting BTS, I’ll quickly give a summary of my association with Korean entertainment. In 2001, I left AMUSE and helped launch e-Licence (today NexTone), a copyright agency for musicians. The turning point that lead to today is that somebody invited producers from Japanese video production companies to help promote the Korean drama Mary Stayed Out All Night and the drama’s star actor/singer Jang Geun-Suk. 

Today Jang Geun-Suk is a star in Japan but when I first started working with him he was an unknown. What brought him to attention was the drama broadcast in 2010 in Japan called You’re Beautiful but in 2011 he starred in Mary Stayed Out All Night which was broadcast at the same time as an encore broadcast of You’re Beautiful and the combination made him extremely popular.  

If Jang Geun-Suk appeared on the cover of anan, it would be sold out. There was a very successful Mary Stayed Out All Night live event at the Budokan and Osaka Hall and expensive goods sold one after the other. His parents were his management and their house became a two-story one and they suddenly had five cars. His manager’s wrist watch became a Rolex… that’s how it was back then. After that, I worked with several Korean artists (Kim Nam-Gil, No Min-Woo).

At that time I thought, “Once this cools down I want to start a music business in China” but when I went to a meeting with a Korean entertainment company, I happened to see a photograph that a staff member was carrying. It was a photograph of four male idol trainees wearing blazers.

When I asked what group it was, I was told, “Trainees from the recently formed agency Big Hit Entertainment.” Then afterwards they became BTS members.

Because I became interested in them, I went about getting an appointment to meet with company staff and the day after or the day after that I was able to meet with the company founder Bang Si-Hyuk. He really liked Japanese idols, especially Nakamori Akina. We quickly hit it off and he showed me two or three of the songs the seven members had practiced together in rehearsals. At a glance I could see they were overflowing with talent. As a music business insider, even looking at them as K-Pop artists, they were perfect from the beginning.

Hard Selling BTS Before Debut When Japanese Record Companies Were Reluctant 

Then soon after I wanted to sign a contract to act as their producer for the Japanese market, and I went around to ten different Japanese record companies and talent agencies but of those ten, seven turned us down. “Bangtan Sonyeondan is a terrible name” “They aren’t from (major Korean talent agencies) SM Entertainment or YG Entertainment?” “Are they hot in Korea?” were the types of responses I received. After all, there are Japanese record companies who will flock to content that is trending in Korea. If it’s not, everybody will ignore it. As somebody who had worked for a record company, I wondered if that was really okay.  

Fuji Television was one of the companies that listened favorably. Because I had a connection to one of the higher ups I reached out with a proposal and got the response, “Mr. Saito, hey, this is good. We’ve got [radio station] Nippon Broadcasting System and [record label] Pony Canyon, can we try something together with them?”

So, first it was decided they’d appear on Mezumashi TV [note: a Japanese morning show kind of like NBC’s Today Show], then I was friendly with a then-executive director at Nippon Broadcasting System who had previously worked with me managing Southern All Stars, Hamada Mari, Takahashi Mariko and so on and who asked what he could do to support me, and I decided that I want to try with Pony Canyon too, and so the plan came together. We talked to a marketing company called Promax, which had tag teamed with Korean talent for many years with the Disc Garage series

The plan for the Japanese market was settled, so what should we start with? Actually, the very first thing we did was gather about ten groups of middle school girls on who went to Korean school (there are many children of Koreans who come to Japan for work and so on who attend at private schools licensed under Japan’s School Education Law) and had them watch videos and listen to non-BTS K-Pop groups. Then we gave them group interviews like, “What do you think?” In the end almost everyone gave a positive response to BTS, a strong vote of confidence like, “Yeah this is cool!”  

Why do K-Pop idols gather so many fans immediately following a Japanese debut? 

Next, for Japan, we put together the debut event “Bangtan Sonyeondan 1ST JAPAN SHOWCASE” but unfortunately because there’s still the view that an artist who is not yet popular in Korea but who gains a spark in Japan will be seen as “Sent From Japan.” Before a Japanese debut, you must cement Korean popularity.   

With this being the circumstance, for BTS, half a year after their Korean debut they had their first Japanese live event. When it comes to the Japanese debut of idols who are gaining popularity just in their home country, at this point, the crowd may be as small as 2000 people but with local news you can also gather sharp-eyed, proactive fans.

There’s a music industry theory that you should launch a group with big events of about 2000~10,000 people in order to gather attention. However with regards to BTS I thought we could deliberately not do that, instead starting small and gradually increasing the size step by step. So in December 2013, they held two performances at the Shibuya concert venue “TSUTAYA O-WEST” and for the 600 person capacity venue we received about 46,000 ticket requests.     

To talk a little about why they had this level of popularity right after their debut, for this project (as with many K-Pop groups) things began with their official audition. In Korea we also posted an absurd amount on social media, including live videos and broadcast programs. Then on TV they had aggressive promotions on the entertainment themed cable television Mnet (in Japan we have something like Spaceshower TV) music program. Even in Japan, there’s the Mnet sponsored K-Pop live event “KCON” that brings in about 10-20,000 people.   

At the beginning, we thought the target demographic of Japanese fans was middle school students. With the youngest member Jungkook 15 years old at debut, we went for the image of “my generation’s star” where in the family everybody has their favorites like, “My mom liked Winter Sonata, my big sister likes BIGBANG, and I like BTS”. 

At the same time as the first live event was being held in Japan, special limited time offers to join the fan club were prepared and in the end more than 3,000 fans gathered in front of the venue. The fan club price was also marked down from the average market price of ¥10,000 to ¥6000. The details were carefully planned to the point of thinking about the moms who loved the Hallyu Wave and brought their daughters, asking about the fan club price.

Up until this point there wasn’t too much that was changed from other K-Pop idol debuts but what was notably different was that I introduced them to the mass media corporate executive class. The second floor guest seating was prepared and I don’t even know how crowded it was up there. But most of them were unaware that this kind of scene was common at K-Pop events. Therefore, seeing this excitement firsthand when they went to their next meetings they said, “Do you these guys Bangtan Sonyeondan?” and the word spread. Afterwards this would be effective.    

Then the first concert was a big success. The next month, January 2014, there was an encore show “Bangtan Sonyeondan 1st JAPAN SHOWCASE ~NEXT STAGE~” at Zepp Tokyo and Osaka Nanba Hatch which were immediately sold out. The same year in June, the debut single “NO MORE DREAM ~Japanese Ver.~” was released and made it to number 8 on the Oricon chart. I think it was at this point the fan club membership grew to over 10,000 fans.

Regarding growth in the Japanese media, generally media coverage would be focused around specialty Korean entertainment magazines and so on but for BTS this was not the case at all. At the time of debut we got a page each in [Japanese girls fashion magazines] CanCan and Olive and in [newspaper] Yomiuri Shinbun there was an article titled, “The New Wave of K-Pop Emerges”. There was also coverage in the late-night slot at Nippon Broadcasting System. Korean artists don’t usually get this kind of mainstream coverage so we were aiming for a strong reaction like, “Who in the world are these guys?!”   

Uniquely, more than other companies, they had a powerful presence on the LINE company owned Korean entertainment speciality web publication “Kstyle”. This was overwhelmingly supported by middle and high school students and Kstyle was the fastest to publish BTS news. They pushed the content for us and then were the only ones to get green room interviews and so on.

Soon, in the summer of 2014, the Europe and South American fan meetings tour (BTS 1st Fan Meeting in Europe & South America) was prepared and following on from October a seven city, ten performance world tour (2014 BTS Live Trilogy-Episode II: The Red Bullet FIRST HALF) including Taiwan and the Philippines and so on. The Japanese stops on this world tour were at Tokyo (International Forum Hall A) and Kobe (Kokusai Hall).

Then there was the first regional tour of Japan which began in February 0f 2015 titled “WAKE UP: OPEN YOUR EYES” and that one began in Nagoya (Zepp Nagoya) and Fukuoka (Zepp Fukuoka). Tokyo (Makuhari Messe Event Hall) and Osaka (Festival Hall) were hall class venues but they’d also used the entire stage set up that they’d brought for the live house performances in Nagoya and Fukuoka. At every regional stop the media people who attended would excitedly say, “Wow, what’s up with this over-the-top stage!”    

Unfortunately because we did that, the tour itself ended up in the red but with the goods sales and fan club memberships increasing, if you look at the overall take it was a financial success. The calculations were done to that point.

Then in June of 2015 there was a fan meeting for the one year anniversary of the Japanese debut, which was held at Festival Hall, located at DiverCity Tokyo Plaza in Odaiba near the Gundam statue, the event was filmed and reported on by Mezamashi TV. This was the first time they appeared on national television. Because fans had deliberately been notified via the fan club about 10,000 fans assembled at the filming location.

As I’ve told you to this point, while fans were steadily increasing on a word-of-mouth basis, the chance for people who were previously unaware of the group to see them had a huge impact. That increases the effectiveness of the promotional activities. You shouldn’t just haphazardly promote, you need to fix your sights on a goal and a targeted result. 

A Promise with Bang Si-Hyuk “Aiming at the world market, growing a 100 billion yen business”

The fourth Japanese single “FOR YOU” was released in June 2015 and hit number one on the Oricon chart. In Korea there’s a culture of artist ranking with music show wins, based on CD sales, streaming numbers, fan voting numbers, and so on and at this point they got number one with a song (in Korea it was included on the mini album The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 1). At that time, for the tour “2015 BTS LIVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MOMENT IN LIFE ON STAGE” they were only up to 4000~5000 capacity venues in Korea but in Japan they were able to perform in Yokohama Arena [note: capacity around 13,000]. That said, the first day of the tour had to be in Korea. As mentioned before we needed to respect the “Korean Priority” while doing promotions. 

When I talk about the scale of the business here, this is something I haven’t told anyone before but when I signed a contract with Bang Si-Hyuk there was one thing that was promised: “BTS is going to be global. Therefore we’re not going to be satisfied with one billion or 2 billion yen, I want to grow into a 100 billion yen business.”

I told him, “Right now, I’ll take them to the pinnacle of the competitive K-Pop boy band market in half the time, even in Japan.” I think even if it’s not 100%, I was able to hold up 90% of my promise. 

If I remember correctly, in 2015 the fan club membership was about 30,000 people and the tour that year, “2015 BTS LIVE THE MOST BEAUTIFUL MOMENT IN LIFE ON STAGE” had about 42,500 people attend. By the end of my time with BTS in 2018, we were able to grow our tour audiences to 300,000 people. 

When I speak of the “Korean Priority”, of course this isn’t to dismiss Japanese fans as unimportant. For each venue during the spoken intermission they thought about what they could discuss that would make the audiences happy. For example in Osaka, the members asked us, “Speaking of [local specialty foods] okonomiyaki and takoyaki, which one should we try?” At the Yokohama Arena tour stop, they asked us for one thing. They wanted to have a conversation in Japanese with the theme of, “We started in small live house venues and with our fans we grew together to reach this large stage.” In truth, we’d been carefully planning that story since before they even debuted.

When we did the run-through with everyone for the Yokohama Arena performance, Lenzo Yoon (the current CEO), who had been a part of the BTS project from the very beginning, had this to say: 

“What do you think about focusing on South America as the next step for moving onto the global stage?”

At the time I didn’t understand why the South American market was that important but in 2014, the first fan meeting tour had gone to Brazil and the 2015 tour had also gone to Mexico and Chile.

Actually it’s not just BTS but since the 2010s K-Pop has grown very popular in South America. Even in the United States, it’s popular not just with Asian Americans but with Latino fans too. Isn’t it true that this is partly because there are hits in Japan, not just Korea? Still, my main focus was always on the Japanese market. I think Big Hit is incredible. They had a plan in mind from the very beginning and were able to carry it out successfully.