Asia: Scalper Sentenced, Red Velvet To Tour U.S., Flying Out For Sir Paul

A father and son are making headlines in Japan due to their love for Paul McCartney. The former Beatle was in Japan for four concerts last week, including his first-ever show in the city of Nagoya in central Japan. Takushi Takeyama, a 48-year-old tax accountant who lives in the city, and his 16-year-old son Junya, attended the show on Nov. 8 after seeing McCartney’s two shows at the Tokyo Dome on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1. However, those weren’t the first times the Takeyamas had seen McCartney in concert.

 According to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, the pair flew to Germany in June 2016 to see McCartney perform after Junya had accompanied his father to a Tokyo show the year before and became a big fan. At a concert in Berlin, father and son dressed up in costumes reminiscent of those the Beatles wore on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album and wore them while sitting in the front row holding aloft a banner that read, “My son skipped five days of school in Japan. Please sign his absence card.” After McCartney completed one of his encore songs, he invited them onstage and talked to them. He also signed the absence card that Junya had brought with him and joked that Takeyama was a “very bad father.”

Then, last September they traveled to Canada to see McCartney perform and thank him in advance for playing in their home city of Nagoya. McCartney acknowledged them from the stage. 

Since the German concert, the Takeyamas have attended every McCartney show in Japan. And this time, when McCartney played Nagoya, Takeyama’s mother and older sister also attended.

 “We always had to travel to see Paul,” Takeyama told the newspaper. “It is almost like a dream that he is visiting Nagoya.”

The famous Minamiza kabuki theater located in Japan’s old capital of Kyoto reopened Nov. 1 after two years and nine months of being closed due to anti-earthquake renovations. The theater is situated in the Shijogawara district, which is said to be the place where kabuki, a traditional theater form that targeted the hoi polloi, originated. The original Minamiza was built 400 years ago, and the present structure was completed in 1929. It closed for renovations in February 2016.

The exterior of the building has been retained and the interior and its equipment refurbished. Removable seating was installed on the first floor so that the stage floor could be extended when the need arises. 

The new building will be celebrated with a special two-month production schedule that runs until New Years featuring kabuki superstar Matsumoto Koshiro and his son, Ichikawa Somegoro. The theater was designated by the government of Japan as a “tangible cultural property” in 1996.

A woman in her 20s has been sentenced to 10 months in prison by South Korea’s Busan District Court for “pretending to sell tickets” to concerts by K-pop stars online and pocketing the money, Yonhap News reported. The woman, whom the court did not identify by name, had been charged with fraud.

Starting in December 2017, the woman posted messages on internet bulletin boards that she had concert tickets for sale for acts such as BTS, EXO and Shinhwa. Over the next seven months she managed to make the equivalent of about $9,900 on 63 deals, charging between $35 and $391 for each ticket. Among the victims were non-Koreans, including one Malaysian tourist who bought a fake ticket for a Shinhwa concert for $195.

The judge in the case acknowledged that the suspect did not pay any compensation after she was caught, and that the victims had filed a petition to see her punished. He noted that the stolen money “was not for survival, but for personal purposes,” such as buying accessories and cosmetics. For this reason, he sentenced her to a prison term, even though this was her first criminal conviction.