I remember I enjoyed reading The Guardian's series of articles on the Japanese music scene called "Turning Japanese". Some of them showed somehow misunderstanding of the scene but the others were so interesting. One of these great articles is entitled "Turning Japanese: The seedy underworld of music moguls". It discussed a dark side of a massive boy-group-only management company "Johnny's Jimusho"(means Johnny's office) and its CEO Johnny Kitagawa, and how the Japanese society deals with a hugely controversial "idol market". The article is worth reading it.
Why am I talking about this? Well, it's because I just heard Lady Gaga's official youtube account was suspended. This news made me (and I hope many Japanese people) reacknowledge irresistible power of Johnny's Jimusho.
"Lady Gaga's YouTube Account Suspended for Copyright Violation" - Billboard.com (14/7/2011)
Lady Gaga hosted a footage of her TV performance from a weekly Japanese TV show "SMAP x SMAP". However, soon its broadcaster Fuji TV made a claim on copyright infringement and youtube's "cyber police" Media Interactive, Inc. took down the account for a while.
If you have alrady read the Gardian's article above, you will notice that "SMAP x SMAP"'s host is the most successful Japanese boy band SMAP, who belong to Johnny's Jimusho. It's the most powerful and money-making company in the Japanese entertainment world. Nobody can resist it. It should be the same for Fuji TV. Even if Lady Gaga's the world biggest pop star of today, SMAP I guess should be much more important for Fuji TV no matter what people in the world say. Johnny's Jimusho is known its intolerance of copyright infringement so it's natural that Fuji TV made a claim to protect SMAP from "the infringement by Lady Gaga" (and protect themselves for their own business with Johnny's).
That's a bit story behind the news as far as I can tell. There should be different interpretations on this issue but I believe my interpretation is not too far from the reality...
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