JYP to hold auditions to recruit Japanese-speaking girl band

JYP Entertainment's flagship girl band TWICE. Courtesy of JYP Entertainment

By Dong Sun-hwa

JYP Entertainment, one of the “Big 3” music powerhouses, will begin recruiting Japanese-speaking aspiring singers to join a new K-pop girl band.

Applications will open in May. Women aged between 15 and 22 who have a good command of Japanese are eligible. Japanese nationality is not a must.

Park Jin-young, the founder of JYP Entertainment. Courtesy of JYP Entertainment

JYP and Japan's Sony Music will hold auditions in July and August at 10 locations, including Tokyo, Hawaii and Los Angeles. After the auditions, 20 people will be singled out. They will train at JYP's training center for six months, until the announcement of the final line-up in April, 2020.

The group will debut in November, 2020 and be managed by Sony. It will be based in Japan, but will target the international market.

JYP founder Park Jin-young has called this the “NIZI Project.” “NIZI” is a Japanese term meaning rainbow.

“I will keep JYP's color but will launch a global team that could shine with different colors like a rainbow,” Park said during a press conference in February in Tokyo. “I will look for people with 'naturalness.'”

So why are more Korean agencies including JYP focusing on Japanese market?

“Despite anti-Korean sentiment in Japan, K-pop is still influential,” Jung Min-jae, a critic who writes for online music magazine “IZM,” told The Korea Times. “I would say the genre is not as popular as it was in the past when TVXQ and KARA were thriving, but still, it is hot among Japanese teens and people in their 20s.”

JYP, established in 1997, is a label representing dozens of K-pop big names including girl group TWICE and boy band 2PM. TWICE, in particular, has created history by becoming the first K-pop girl group to have a “dome” tour in dome-covered stadiums in Japan.