J-Pop To Fly In Singapore?

Though Korea now dominates the Asian pop music scene, some Asian fans remember a time when Japanese pop stars were the only game in town.

In the late ’80s and ’90s, in fact, many Taiwanese hit songs by stars like Jacky Cheung and Leslie Cheung were basically Chinese-language covers of contemporary Japanese hits.

One such fan, 44-year-old Irene Ang, has started a company in Singapore called Fly Entertainment.

She aims to bring more J-pop stars to her country with the help of top Japanese talent agency Amuse Inc., which so far this year has sent three Japanese rock bands to play in Singapore as well as J-pop dance diva Namie Amuro, who had never performed in the republic before.

Executive director Nobuyuki Soma told The New Paper that he and his company used the concerts to “test the waters,” and will likely start sending more Amuse artists to Singapore with the help of Fly subsidiary Running Into the Sun, which has so far worked mainly with K-pop artists.

Ang says she is keen to work with J-pop artists because everyone else in Singapore is obsessed with Korean stars. “People think it’s easy to promote K-pop concerts in Singapore,” she told the paper, “but it’s risky because K-pop concerts are costly to set up.”

Soma insists that he does not intend to compete with K-pop artists. He doesn’t think Japanese and Korean artists need to share a finite audience.

He sees K-pop being about “packaging, great dancing, good-looking and fashionable people,” while J-pop is about originality and variety. In that regard, he sees Singapore as a gateway to Southeast Asia.

He just opened an Amuse office in the city-state.