SMAP, Japan's Biggest Idol Group, Really Is Breaking Up. How Did It Spend 25 Years Becoming a Miracle?

Fans won't be the only losers. Japan's economy will take a hit too.

On September 9, 2016, Takuya Kimura and his group SMAP will mark 25 years since their debut — but this time there will probably be no anniversary celebration. Last Sunday their agency, Johnny & Associates, announced that SMAP will disband on December 31, although all five members will stay with the agency. SMAP's official fan club said it would stop taking new members effective immediately.

As soon as the news broke, fans launched a campaign to buy up copies of "The Only Flower in the World" (《世界上唯一的花》), SMAP's best-known single, aiming to push sales past 3 million copies as a last tribute to their idols.

"The Only Flower in the World" now tops Amazon Japan's music sales chart, with Vest — the greatest-hits album SMAP released in 2001 for their tenth anniversary — in second place. When word of a breakup first surfaced this January, fans ran a similar campaign, driving sales of the single to 2.686 million copies in under four months.

On January 13, media reported that because SMAP's manager, Michi Iijima, was leaving Johnny & Associates, the group's other four members — everyone but Kimura — planned to follow her out, which would have split the group. The agency confirmed that some members were indeed considering going independent. Kimura eventually talked the others into staying, and on January 18 he apologized to fans on SMAP×SMAP and said the group would carry on.

Judging by what followed, that "carrying on" amounted to little more than keeping up appearances. According to reports, the five still performed professionally in front of the SMAP×SMAP cameras, but backstage the rift kept widening: they used separate dressing rooms, stopped joking around with each other, and the mood turned awkward.

Group activities also thinned out over the course of this year. Japanese media reported that the agency's president, Johnny Kitagawa, pressed SMAP to hold a 25th-anniversary concert and release an anniversary single so as not to let fans down, but he could not change the members' minds. The agency then proposed pausing group activities to let everyone cool off, and later offered a further compromise: an "indefinite hiatus." Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Shingo Katori and others argued that a hiatus would only keep fans hoping, and if the five never performed together again, that would be deceiving them — better to announce a breakup. After a meeting last Thursday, the agency decided to respect the members' wishes and set the end of the year as the date.

Each of SMAP's five members put out a statement yesterday. Four said much the same thing — thanks for the support, an apology, a request for understanding. Masahiro Nakai, for instance: "I'm sorry for the trouble I've caused, and for all the worry. Thank you for looking after me all this time — please understand how things have ended up. I'm truly... sorry..."

Kimura's statement read as far more pointed. "I find this disbandment deeply regrettable," he said. "But whether it's a 25th-anniversary concert or any other group activity, if the five of us can't move forward together, we can't do anything at all. That's a reality we have to accept. We failed to look after the feelings of the fans who supported us and of all the staff who worked with us, and it has come to this. Right now I can't find the words for how I feel."

Because Kimura did not stand with the rest of the group during the earlier "Iijima affair," many fans see him as one of the main reasons for the breakup. Some fans are also unhappy with Johnny & Associates' own statement: SMAP brought the agency untold revenue, they say, yet its notice of the disbandment ran to a hastily written page — as if the agency were playing down its own part in the affair and pinning the blame on friction among the members.

Once the group splits, the members will go their separate ways, and their individual careers may not suffer much. Masahiro Nakai, currently anchoring Rio Olympics coverage, has drawn plenty of praise and is expected to build his career mainly as a TV host. Blade of the Immortal, the film starring Takuya Kimura, comes out next year and is expected to travel well beyond Japan again, with Kimura likely to stay on the acting track. Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and Shingo Katori all have film and commercial work lined up, and are unlikely to feel much effect in the near term.

Johnny & Associates — and Japan's economy as a whole — may take a real hit, though. When news of a breakup first broke this January, Katsuhiro Miyamoto, professor emeritus at Kansai University, estimated that the Japanese economy stood to lose at least 63.6 billion yen because of it. Miyamoto started from SMAP's roughly 25 billion yen in revenue in 2014, then added what fans spend on lodging and transport to attend concerts and events, the production costs of CDs and merchandise, and the knock-on effects on related businesses and their staffing — arriving at 63.6 billion yen that SMAP contributed to the Japanese economy that year. The effect of the breakup on this year's economy, he believes, will be "no less, and quite possibly more," than in 2014. And with SMAP's concerts and variety-show commercials gone, Johnny & Associates itself is expected to lose more than 10 billion yen.

SMAP had also been serving as cheering ambassadors for the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics, a role that ends with the group. The Tokyo Paralympics organizers have not yet named a successor.

A group a quarter of a century into its career, SMAP has already become a legend in the history of Japanese entertainment.

(The section below was first published on January 25, 2016, under the original headline "How Did Japanese Boy Band SMAP Become an Immortal Miracle Over 25 Years? | QDaily Business History," with edits)

How did SMAP get famous?

When Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Katsuyuki Mori (who later quit) and Shingo Katori first formed SMAP in 1988, the oldest, Nakai, was not yet 16; the youngest, Katori, was 11. Like the other boys at their agency, Johnny & Associates (more on what that agency means for Japanese show business shortly), they danced backup for their seniors in the group Hikaru Genji. Three years after forming, they officially debuted with the single "Can't Stop!! -LOVING-".

But a debut did not mean a smooth road. Three years to debut was slow going, and once they did, their first single sold miserably: with the bubble economy's collapse dragging them down, Japanese consumers no longer chased idols the way they had in the 1980s. SMAP found an audience only among young students, and there were rumors at the time that the agency would dissolve the group in 1994.

SMAP had no manager then; all day-to-day business reached the members through their leader, Nakai. Michi Iijima, at the time only an office staffer, couldn't bear to watch. She began dropping by their jobs more and more often, and gradually became their manager.

Under Iijima, SMAP started down a path no Johnny & Associates act had taken. From 1992 they became regulars on the variety show Yume ga MORI MORI (《梦中 MORIMORI》), something the agency had until then treated as off-limits. On variety TV, SMAP dropped every bit of idol dignity — cross-dressing, telling jokes, even taking on dangerous stunts like breaking bricks with their bare hands. To get noticed, the young men would do almost anything. It raised their profile, and it later became the standard route to fame for many of the agency's idol groups: go on variety shows, be funny, be memorable.

The biggest break came in 1993. That year, Michi Iijima got Takuya Kimura a role in the TV drama Asunaro Hakusho (《爱情白皮书》). He played a supporting character quietly devoted to the female lead, and the part fixed him in the minds of a large audience. In March of the following year, SMAP's 12th single finally reached No. 1 on Japan's Oricon weekly chart.

From then on, act first and fame will follow became a standard method for Johnny & Associates talent. SMAP's members were in fact fine actors: at the Television Drama Academy Awards, Kimura won Best Actor 10 times, Kusanagi 5 times, Katori 3 times and Nakai 3 times.

At 10 p.m. on April 15, 1996, the variety show SMAP×SMAP went on the air. Nobody then imagined how long it would run — even today it still pulls ratings close to 20 percent. The show let audiences see another side of the group: hosting, comedy bits, short skits, games, talk segments, even cooking.

The guests it booked were enough to give you pause: Wikipedia's list includes David Beckham, Shinzo Abe, Michael Jackson, Avril Lavigne, Tom Cruise, Lady Gaga and Mikhail Gorbachev. Running their own variety show drew in plenty of people who cared nothing for idols or music, and eventually turned SMAP into a "national supergroup."

"Only Takuya Kimura can surpass Takuya Kimura."

In 2001, HERO, a drama that rewrote Japanese television history, made Takuya Kimura a sensation and lifted SMAP's popularity further still. HERO, with Kimura in the lead, averaged ratings above 30 percent an episode — something Japanese television had never seen.

After that, Kimura himself became the miracle. Anything he touched turned into a hit, hence the line: "Only Takuya Kimura can surpass Takuya Kimura."

Look back at where he stood when he took the role, though, and it's fair to say HERO saved him. Why?

Start with what happened just as SMAP was breaking through: Katsuyuki Mori announced he was quitting. He left in May 1996, saying he wanted to chase his own dream — auto racing. Outsiders speculated that Mori had entered a race in 1995 without telling the agency, which was angry enough to let him go. Johnny & Associates did not allow its idols to ride motorcycles outside of performances, for fear of injury or a ruined face, let alone take up anything as dangerous as racing. In the end Mori told the press he had left of his own accord — whether the agency pushed him is impossible to confirm. From then on the agency cut as much of Mori's footage as it could from later broadcasts, trying to create the impression that he had never been part of SMAP at all.

Kimura, too, kept testing Johnny & Associates' strict controls. In 1997 he went public with a girlfriend — intolerable to an agency that forbade its talent any romantic scandal. In Japan, a star's popularity swings hard, and often falls, once they start dating or marry. The clearest case is Masaharu Fukuyama: after this national heartthrob married last September, his popularity dropped sharply, his wife received a stream of threatening letters, and his agency's share price fell too. Rumor has it the couple now live apart to avoid more trouble.

Pressure from the public and from the agency likewise ended Kimura's relationship with that girlfriend, Kaori Ito. His answer was to marry the next one — Shizuka Kudo, his wife today — quickly and publicly at the end of 2000, a year later. That pushed his conflict with the agency to its peak.

HERO proved him right. Kimura became something Johnny & Associates had never produced: a star who married at the height of his career and kept his popularity anyway.

He became a star in China at about the same time. On the strength of HERO and, later, the film 2046, he was among the first Japanese idols to break into the Chinese market. Back then Takeshi Kaneshiro and Takuya Kimura were the two Japanese men everyone knew, and "looks like Takuya Kimura" turned into stock phrasing in mushy romance novels and in teenage girls' descriptions of their ideal man.

The commercial miracle Kimura and SMAP built

Kimura kept rising along with his bandmates, and after "The Only Flower in the World" sold 2.5 million copies in 2003, Michi Iijima set up a company, J-Dream, to handle production, distribution and rights for SMAP's video output on its own, with Johnny Kitagawa as chairman and Iijima as general manager. It was the only case at Johnny & Associates of a manager running a subsidiary, and the company sidestepped the agency's usual financial arrangements.

According to Japanese media, members of Arashi — the agency's most popular group among young people today — each take home around 20 million yen a year, after taxes, the agency's cut, a share held back for future benefits, and a portion spent on company shares. SMAP had to do none of that: their income was managed directly by Michi Iijima and J-Dream, and each member's ran to about 100 million yen, with Nakai, the highest earner, at around 500 million yen.

The run of milestones kept going. In 2005 SMAP's cumulative single sales passed 20 million, making them the fourth act on the Oricon chart to reach that mark. Five years later, on September 15, 2010, they announced at a concert that they had become the first Johnny & Associates act to sell more than 10 million concert tickets in total. Today SMAP still brings the agency more than 25 billion yen a year, with CD sales topping 35 million copies.

Albums, concerts, variety shows, dramas, films — working on every front at once put them in every kind of media and kept their exposure climbing. For more than two decades, whenever people in Japan switched on their favorite programs, SMAP was there: in dramas, variety shows, music shows, commercials. How could a group like that ever go out of style?

The "pretty-boy dream factory" behind SMAP

Anyone who follows Japanese show business knows that you cannot discuss the country's hottest male stars without running into Johnny & Associates, the "J family."

Founded in 1962, the agency now has a lock on the overwhelming majority of Japan's young male idols. Behind Arashi, TOKIO, Kanjani∞ and the other boy groups young Japanese women favor today sits a powerful and rather frightening business empire. Run by a brother and sister — 84-year-old Johnny Kitagawa (born Hiromu Kitagawa) and his older sister Mary Kitagawa (born Yasuko Fujishima) — this family firm is Japan's pretty-boy dream factory in the most literal sense, selling male idols to one generation after another for more than half a century. SMAP included.

A strict and comprehensive system turns out one idol group after another. Boys in their early teens, or not yet ten, can send in an application to Johnny & Associates and, if picked, become a Junior, or Jr. During this stage they train in singing, dancing, gymnastics and more, so their performing skills develop across the board. Most of their stage time comes from dancing backup and doing backflips while their seniors sing — exactly what SMAP once did — or from singing along and appearing on programs with them. This is their chance to show what they can do: a lucky few catch the eye of audiences and of the agency before they ever debut, but most stay unknown.

Seniors pulling up juniors is not only how popularity gets built; it is also how the work gets taught. Teenage boys have to master a wide range of skills, including planning segments and improvising skits — the groundwork that later let SMAP, and every other idol group, handle any kind of show format. Meanwhile a Jr.'s living conditions are tightly controlled: no manager, no car service, no salary. They get by on the pocket money the agency hands out, which is meant to build their independence.

Once a group has acquired enough skill, name recognition and age, the agency brings its members together to debut as a unit, and from there they enter Johnny & Associates' formidable entertainment-capital machine.

Johnny & Associates owns two record labels, a concert-production company, a film-production company and two advertising companies, plus businesses in merchandise, publishing, rights management, fan-club operations and stage shows — more than a dozen entertainment companies in all. It is a business empire built to measure for idols. Here you can consume your idol in every available form: CDs and DVDs, photo books, stage stills, ads, even calendars. The agency guarantees that as long as you are willing to pay, your idol will fill up your life in every possible shape.

With that whole set of idol infrastructure in place, making a given group a star is no great challenge for the agency. Better still, its acts can lift one another. Kis-My-Ft2, a young group that debuted in 2011, overlapped heavily with SMAP in variety appearances, songs and performing style. That earned the newer group a boost from its seniors, and by 2015 it ranked fourth on the Oricon chart for act earnings (counting revenue from singles, albums, DVDs and Blu-rays). At the same time, it put SMAP in front of younger fans who might not have known the group well. The agency also uses its considerable resources to keep its various groups from releasing music on the same day whenever it can, holding competition among them to a minimum.

Having produced so many idols, Johnny & Associates gained leverage with the media. Its talent are regulars on the music programs of the big commercial broadcasters, TV Asahi and Fuji TV among them — TV Asahi's Music Station has a Johnny & Associates act on almost every week. News and variety programs need the agency's talent to pull ratings too: Shingo Katori of SMAP once hosted 24-Hour Television, Japan's annual charity telethon.

Any magazine that wants to print a photo of a J-family idol, and any TV program or website that wants to use footage of one, has to get the agency's permission and pay for the license. To the agency every photograph is something to sell, so entertainment magazines and programs hoping to please their audiences have to court it and pay for the right to use an image. Japan is the world's second-largest music market, and an agency with its own magazines and its own record and video companies would happily print every photo only in its own products — it never has to worry about moving them. The rule has loosened somewhat in the internet era, but next to its peers this remains a perverse way to make money and keep control.

The agency keeps fans corralled in its own Fan Clubs as well. If you want to see a SMAP concert or follow their latest news, you join the Fan Club that Johnny & Associates runs, which gets you into the ticket lottery and gives you access to updates. Idols are not allowed to post on any social media or blog outside the Fan Club; their weekly diary entries go up on the agency's official site, readable once you have joined the right club. SMAP's Fan Club has around 1 million members — only the agency's second-largest now — but at 4,000 yen a year, that is still 4 billion yen in revenue. It also helps hold fans' loyalty, since it remains the only way they get any contact with their idols at all. Johnny & Associates talent may not sign autographs, and may not accept any gift from a fan other than a letter. If you want to write, you join the Fan Club.

Most of the agency's acts are evergreens. Among the big Johnny & Associates idol groups still working today, TOKIO debuted in 1994, V6 in 1995 and KinKi Kids in 1997 (though they had been active since 1992). Arashi, the top-earning act on the Oricon chart last year, debuted in 1999. Even the best of them, though, never surpassed SMAP.