What a view | Netflix documentary Arashi’s Diary: Voyage follows the final tour of beloved J-pop group
One of Japan’s biggest boy bands might have graduated to ‘idol group’ status some time ago, but candid, access-all-areas footage shows why they remain so popular 20 years after they started
Beatlemania never really went away: it just found new objects of its affections, some in Asia.
Prominent among those has been Japanese “idol” outfit Arashi, which since starting out two decades ago has sold more than 54 million copies of albums, singles and videos, and counting; 53 number-one singles (a Japanese record); 20 number-one DVDs, 18 of those consecutive; live audiences of more than 14 million people; industry awards galore and almost as many costume changes.
Arashi stopped being a “boy band” and became an “idol group” some time ago. Its five members are in their mid to late 30s but have remained well scrubbed, polite and, offstage, unobtrusive: saccharine to some, son-in-law material to others.
Arashi means “storm” and the group has, after a slow start, continued to kick up exactly that. So imagine the horror of 80 per cent of the collective when one of them decided that, after two decades, he wanted time out. “Shock waves over Japan” was among the headlines – in a country that has suffered nuclear devastation.
The announcement and its aftermath comprise the nub of the oddly affecting, surprisingly poignant Netflix documentary series Arashi’s Diary: Voyage, which follows what may be the farewell tour of a pop-culture juggernaut, because no one knows if, from December 31 this year, it will be break or break-up for the famous five.
Satoshi Ohno, approaching 40 and “the eldest, technically the leader” of the group, decided in 2017 that he had a “desire for freedom” beyond its confines. “Ohno breaks up the band” is an observation this column finds impossible to resist, and regardless of whether that turns out to be true, the traumatic news was still reverberating a few months ago when Covid-19 descended.