Closing The National Stadium

The stadium was built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and has been one of Japan’s main venues for large-scale concerts in the past 50 years.

The doors will close for good on May 31. Many of Japan’s top pop stars will perform at the concert, including Perfume, L’Arc-en-ciel, Sekai no Owari and Ukasaku-G.

The May 28 show will be called “Yell for Japan” and feature a special backup band of top-level musicians. The May 29 show is called “Japan to the World,” and will feature Japanese artists who are active internationally.

Paul McCartney will close out the stadium with two concerts May 17-18. To take advantage of the concerts, Universal’s Japan arm is rereleasing his latest solo album, New, with a bonus DVD.

The company will also rerelease a box set of the five Beatles albums released in Japan, all with track listings unique to those versions.

Generally speaking, the albums were closer in form to the American versions of the Beatles records.

For instance, the first two Beatles albums released in Japan had the same titles as those released by Capitol in the states: Meet the Beatles and The Beatles Second Album. However, the songs on both records are slightly different from those on the American versions.

The other three albums in the box are A Hard Day’s Night, Help and the entirely unique-to-Japan The Beatles No. 5. The price of the box is 15,000 yen, or about $148.