(the) Road to the Deep East

After the debut of 'black enka singer' JERO, it looks enka industry revived a little. Last month, another Japanese enka singer made his debut with a single 'Roppingi –Giroppon-', and this song became number 1 hit at Oricon Enka charts surpassing Jero's Umiyuki after 4 months.

(clip from youtube)


This Enka singer named Nezumi Senpai is characterized by his unique past career as well as the unique lyrics of this debut song. Amazingly, before he became a singer, he was an porn movie actor and director.(AV danyuu, kantoku.)

This fact that he was an AV actor had already been reported and some people had already known about it, but Shukan Bunshun revealed that the works he directed was NOT the usual one in which a man and beautiful woman just make love.

For example, ”Koumon Suki Suki! Anal Mama!!” - literary, the one some mothers challenges to anal sex.
http://www.crosscross.jp/works/-/detail/=/cid=crpd122/
The worst one is “Anta AV deteta desho?” (Didn't you appear on AV?), the one in which av company visits the house of an ex-AV actress and threat her saying that they will tell her past career to families and friends to rape her.
http://www.crosscross.jp/works/-/detail/=/cid=crpd105/

After the hit of his debut single, he is invited to a lot of TV shows, and fans and Nezumi Senpai himself are expecting to appear on Kohaku this year. But seeing his past career, Gendai Net concludes, “it will be impossible.”

(article from Gendai.)
http://news.www.infoseek.co.jp/entertainment/music/story/03gendainet07025422/

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I agree that Nezumi Senpai won't be invited to Kohaku, but I it won't be because of his hardcore porn. Japanese people are very sensitve to now and present crime, but generous about the past ones. Even in the roster of last year, there are a drag addict and one plagiarist, and one yakuza's friend. It won't be so odd that one ex-hardcore-AV director joins to the list.

The problem is his music. Although his debut single is categorized in enka section by Oricon, but apparently, his music is not enka, and he is not a good singer. I say, it's wack enka.

Contrarily, of course, some still criticizes that he doesn't have a spirit as an enka singer, but JERO's umiyuki is perfect enka, and people will agree that he is a good enka singer of ill enka skill. That's why Japanese people accepted this gaijin singer. So, if NHK has to select whether JERO or Nezumi Senpai, they will choose JERO.

In addition, this year, there are a lot of other new singers who are eligible to be invited to Kohaku. Perfume, Superfly, Aoyama Thelma... and so on. Especially, Thelma belongs to the same record company as Nezumi Senpai, Universal Music Japan. It is said the seats for the Kohaku are allocated to each record companies, so I think Universal will use its right to promote Thelma. (And Universal has another hit-maker which hasn't Kohaku yet. GReeeeN. )

So my conclusion is, unless Nezumi Senpai's Roppongi becomes million hit, he will be just be performing at TV Tokyo's enka show on New Year's Eve.