ESSAY 9
THE KOHAKU DEBACLE: THIRTY YEARS LATER
by Jeffrey C. Branch
Lord knows I’ve rambled enough about this particular topic over the years I’ve had the website up, but on this, the 30th anniversary of the first, and perhaps only real scandal that tainted Pink Lady’s pristine reputation, I thought I’d present the definitive and, perhaps, final word on the incident that I maintain to this day, derailed Mie and Kei’s then unparalleled reign as Japan’s top recording stars.
For any neophytes reading this who aren’t totally familiar with the rich and storied history of Pink Lady and have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a quick primer. On New Year’s Eve in Japan, millions of people gather to watch Kohaku Uta Gassen, an uber-popular show where all the most popular entertainers of the day are paired off onto two teams, one red, the other blue and take the stage to sing medleys of their best tunes. For well over fifty years now, Kohaku has been THE show to watch, in fact, it’s more than just a TV show, it’s an institution. Anybody who’s anybody in Japan’s entertainment industry all but break their necks to get on Kohaku as the prestige from appearing is unlike anything else. So, where, do you ask, did the scandal involving Pink Lady come from? Glad you asked. Sit back and let me explain.
In 1978, Pink Lady were basking in the warm glow of unprecedented success in what I’ve come to call their “Miracle Year”, a year in which everything Mie and Kei touched turned to gold. They cranked out four more number one hit songs, with “UFO” and “Southpaw” winning two of Japan’s top music awards; July saw perhaps their biggest concert ever, “’78 Jumping Summer Carnival” that packed something like 100,000 people into Korakuen Stadium; the girls invaded America for a show in Las Vegas, hell, they even starred in their own motion picture and an animated biographical series. In that year, Mie and Kei turned iconic and it seemed they could do no wrong, and they didn’t. As for their handlers, the suits at Trust & Confidence, that’s another story altogether, and that’s where everything went to hell in the proverbial handbasket.
Ever since I learned of the events surrounding Pink Lady’s absence from the 1978 edition of Kohaku via the 1996 Mark Schilling compendium, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture, I’ve been of the opinion that Mie and Kei’s handlers, full of themselves because of the incredible success of Pink Lady (which, in turn, made T & C a fortune), believed that Japan’s entertainment industry revolved around their megastars instead of the other way around. Operating under that warped mindset, the T & C bigwigs withheld Pink Lady from performing on Kohaku in favor of headlining a special that competed against Japan’s most beloved show. To give you a modern perspective, that would be like pitting a Ron Popeil infomercial up against American Idol. In other words, a huge mistake just waiting to happen. And that one mistake exploded like a nuke.
The sheer numbers alone were positively staggering as a whopping 72 percent of Japan’s television audience was tuned in to Kohaku that night, that’s three out of every four TV sets in the whole damn country. Not even Simon, Randy and Paula could generate those kind of blockbuster ratings. And that’s not all, a group of kids from a school for the blind were bussed in and put in the audience for the doomed PL special, including a segment where Mie and Kei made their way through the crowd of kids to press the flesh, fighting back tears at times because the girls had been so moved by them. That led the Japanese media to slam the girls, accusing them of using those kids as props for their show, an accusation I never believed was true, but they wound up catching hell for the misguided actions of their handlers who planned that catastrophe.
But the fallout from what I’ve called “The Kohaku Debacle” didn’t end there. “Zipangu”, Pink Lady’s first single of 1979 only reached #4 on the charts, snapping their impressive string of nine straight chart topping hits. Sadly, Mie and Kei never had another hit song as subsequent releases only resulted in a steady, inexorable decline as the girls were unable to recreate that special magic which made their music so popular, and that in turn, led to their break-up. Fellow PL fan Lady-X took that theory one step further. In a previous essay, she surmised that the Kohaku incident might have resulted in PL's handlers wanting to avoid further controversy. Lady-X thought that, after Kohaku, the songwriters and producers watered down the girls' songs and lyrics, to make them less edgy than past songs like "Pepper Keibu" and "Wanted".
Call me a conspiracy nut, but I’ve always believed that Pink Lady’s fortunes took a nosedive almost immediately after Kohaku. Nor was it a coincidence that the show’s producers, probably acting out of spite from having been snubbed, didn’t invite the girls to perform in 1979 or 1980. In fact, it wasn’t until 1988 that Mie and Kei finally returned to the Kohaku stage after whatever bad feelings between both parties had been ironed out. What about PL’s handlers? Perhaps they realized after the fact that they screwed the pooch, thus their attempt to introduce the girls to American audiences, trolling for fresh popularity in the States while Mie and Kei’s star was dimming at home. But that experiment, culminating with the disastrous Pink Lady & Jeff failed miserably, hastening the end which came on that cold and rainy day in late March 1981.
As for Mie and Kei, I don’t blame them one bit for what happened. After all, the girls, like the majority of young singers under the control of talent agencies in the 1970’s, were indentured servants and had no say on how their careers should be run, they simply followed the orders of their handlers when they were told to pass on Kohaku, though I suspect the girls probably knew what a horrible mistake that was. During my more quiet moments, I wonder what life would’ve been like for Mie and Kei if their handlers hadn’t botched everything and let them perform on Kohaku. Would they kept on cranking out chart topping songs? Would the girls had garnered so much attention and became, dare I say it, a global phenomenon like The Beatles or ABBA? Or would Pink Lady still came crashing down like they had. In the end, I guess we’ll never know.
Like I said in the beginning, this figures to be the last word from me on the Kohaku debacle and how it wrecked Pink Lady, at least for a time anyway. As history taught us, Mie and Kei remained beloved by their fans for many, many years after that regrettable incident, eventually becoming the undeniable legends of not just Japanese pop music, but Japanese pop culture as well. And for that, I remain extremely grateful.