Akagumi won rightly and fairly beating the guys on every count from the beginning of the show. Starting with a mature and solid performance of Ayumi Hamasaki, the ladies set the tone right. The first half of the event was a landslide in their favor with heavy winning hitters such as AKB 48, Manachan and Kana Nishino. In a 4.5 hour show that extends from 7:15 to 11:45pm, by 8:45, the ladies had a 100,000 vote advantage over their counterparts.
The second part of the show balanced things out slightly with the guys trying to make a desperate catch up in vote count. All efforts started to fall short when the ladies kept counting wins consistently with great performances throughout the remaining part of the event. Kara, Perfume, Girls Generation, Kumi Koda, and the return of Ayaka, where just a few names on stage that consolidated the ladies’ lead. A brilliant performance delivered by Lady Gaga pretty much called the show in favor of akagumi, but the ladies did not stop there. Sachiko Kobayashi increased the lead with a beautiful performance. The tone was once again strengthen by Yumi Matsutoya and her impeccable “Haru yo Koi.” Along the way all topped with classic songs by the classic faces of Seiko Matsuda (in a duet with her daughter Sayaka Kanda) and the great voice of Sayuri Ishikawa, the show was unequivocally called in final favor of the ladies who ended up winning by a margin of about 20,000 votes.
Shirogumi was not in a tremendously bad shape, but they were badly beaten and apart from Exile and their Rising Sun followed by SMAP and their SMAP Aid, there wasn’t anything to keep in mind as being a great determining factor at the time to vote.
Learnings from the 62nd edition
The issue of the earthquake and its aftermath was always present and while it could not have been possibly ignored, the two teams played it differently. The winning ladies referred to the inescapable reality in a soft, refined and tasteful way that almost never showed any images of destruction or suffering. They did it with music, with music that appealed to the heart, with music that made us all look forward and expect a better future when all wounds are healed. The guys had a different approach that ended up playing against them with constant images of destruction and suffering, with an almost exaggerated presence in the affected areas and an approach that positioned them as looking backwards, stuck in a moment they can’t progress from.
In the year where all TV rolled to Digital, the audience participation from home and out of home made a great impact at the time of counting votes. This year’s Kohaku was won and lost by the power of people expressing themselves with a remote control and a mobile phone and this ladies and gentlemen is what has made this spectacular event in Japan better and more exciting.
