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FACED with falling standards in the local TV and music industries, Hong Kong teenagers are turning to Japan for kicks.

  After more than three years in the shadows, the Land of the Rising Sun is making a comeback here, with young people leaping at its new wave of TV love dramas and its new genre of music - borderless sound.

  Among the most popular musical acts are Chage and Aska (C&A), Shizuka Kudo, Yoshida Esaku and J-Walk. Their tours here have pumped up the sales of Japanese CDs and boosted the ratings of TV programmes such as Tokyo Love Story, The 101st Proposal, Asunaro The Ordinary People and Saimon Fumi's Selection.

   Veteran promoter of Japanese artists Jessica Wong Wing-sze, who brought C&A to the Hong Kong Coliseum for two sell-out concerts in April, said the revival of interest in Japanese showbiz has been triggered by the TV dramas and their chart-topping title songs.

  'When ATV showed The 101st Proposal with the number one single Say Yes as the title song, C&A's Mutual Understanding [a compilation of the act's singles including the title song] was all sold out immediately.

  'We had to ship in more copies to cover that [album sales totalled more than 50,000].

  'But we still have to bear in mind that the tremendous increase in radio airplay for Japanese hits was the result of the overblown cover versions that local artists did,' Ms Wong added.

   The resurrection of Japan's teen-idol gimmick industry has been sparked by 'borderless-sound' music, known as B-sound music to insiders.

  B-sound artists such as Maki Ohguro, Zard, B'z, Dreams Come True, Mr Children and Scns, have struck a chord with Hong Kong music lovers.

  Neil Chan Sai-kit of HMV's Japanese CD section said: 'There is a group of B-sound young followers that keep a good track of the Japanese pop charts.

  'It is also a good sign to see that these teenagers are now buying CDs of singer-songwriter artists such as Ohguro and Zard, instead of blindly following the pretty idols.'  In the '80s Japanese idols were the gods and goddesses of Hong Kong teenagers. The frenzy for stars such as Masahiko Kondo and Akira Nakamori once overshadowed Hong Kong's Canto-pop kings and queens.

   Now the clean-cut casts of the new Japanese TV dramas, most of which are adapted from Saimon Fumi's romance comics, are becoming the new monarchs of the teen-idol world.

  Felix To Chi-tak, programme manager of ATV's Home Channel, which initiated a wave of Japanese romantic TV dramas, said teenage viewers favoured charming actors such as Esaku, who starred in Unconditional Love.

 ATV has the rights to eight Japanese TV programmes, some of which have not been shown yet.

   Some of the popular shows such as the beauty-and-the-beast drama, The 101st Proposal, have been re-run, receiving very high ratings.

  La Salle College fifth formers, Paul Yip Hok-wang and Andrew Leung Tze-wung, say the shows have made them interested in Japanese music.

  'I started to buy C&A's CDs after watching the show and now I even listen to other Japanese artists,' Paul said.

  For Andrew, Japanese programmes break the monotony of seeing the same local stars over and over again in productions here.

  'They [the Japanese TV stars] are so fresh to me, it is more fun watching them than the local ones.' 



Japan's rising stars