Japanese media : SNSD to become symbolic to East Asian music industry

After analyzing the strategies and key to SNSD’s success in Japan, Japanese media believes that the girls are on their way to be the symbol or identity of the East Asian music industry which is expanding globally.

In the October issue of the monthly Nikkei Entertainment Magazine published by Japan Nikkei Report, the main reasons for SNSD’s success in Japan were revealed through an interview with SNSD’s Japan director Tsuchiya Nozomu.

Tsuchiya Nozomu said, “The question of ‘How to bring SNSD, Korea’s national superstar, into Japan?’ was the start of everything. It was not merely an ‘advancement into Japan’, but as part of the process of pushing SNSD onto the world stage and we intended to create a proud idea of ‘Our turn has come in Japan’, while showing their natural images.”

While talking about the secret behind choosing ‘Genie’ as the debut song, he said, “(Through the song) their attractiveness can be brought out as a whole, just like the attractiveness of sports. People received the shock physiologically.”

In the beginning, two songs of SNSD that were already successful in Korea were translated into Japanese, before the announcement about the sale of Japanese single was made.

The debut song was chosen from the two shortlisted songs, ‘Genie’ and ‘Gee’.

Tsuchiya Nozomu added, “As I was troubled over ‘How to show off SNSD’s attractiveness in a direct way?’, I thought of ‘Genie’ – a song that contains the most amount of group dance. I then persuaded the company into choosing it instead of ‘Gee’ which was decided as the debut song earlier on.”

After pointing out the fact that although lyrics are seen as very important in the Japanese music industry but it might become an obstacle between international borders, Nikkei Entertainment saw the merit in the ‘Impact & Repeat’ concept of ‘Mr Taxi’ lyrics in SNSD’s first Japanese original album.

As Nikkei Entertainment quoted from Tsuchiya Nozomu, “Despite the challenges ahead and productions that might be possibly seen as aggressive, SNSD has overcome them through improving their ability and efficiency in their work. As SNSD possesses America’s ‘Big Entertainment’, Europe’s intelligence and Asia’s delicacy, they can exist as the symbolic center of the East Asian music market too.”