Japanese diva Kumi Koda was again the big winner at this year's MTV Video Music Awards Japan. Koda won three awards, including Best Female Video for "Yume No Uta," edging singer Ai Otsuka and comic DJ Ozma, who each won two awards.
The award ceremony took place last Saturday at the Saitama Super Arena in front of a packed audience of 12,000 fans who watched the show as it was broadcast live to viewers of MTV Japan. Repeat broadcasts will continue tonight.
Among the other winners were Ai for Best R&B video, Kreva for Best Hip Hop Video, Exile for Best Group Video and Shonan no Kaze for Best Reggae Video.
As usual, a smattering of foreign artists were drafted in to give performances, pick up awards and add some kind of international credibility to an awards ceremony that is really about domestic acts gaining recognition and showing off their fashion smarts in what sets out to be the most glamorous of Japan's various music awards ceremonies.
Among the foreign acts who appeared were New Jersey rockers My Chemical Romance, R&B singer Ne-Yo, British newcomer Mika, Daniel Powter of "Bad Day" fame and boy bands Mayday from Taiwan and Tohoshinki, who are also known as TVXQ in their native South Korea.
But the night belonged to Koda, who expressed surprise even to be in the running for an award this year after her success at the MTV VMAJ in 2006.
"Last year I won three awards. That's a lot of awards to receive, so this year I thought I'd just come here to enjoy it. But it was a surprise even to get nominated again," the sultry diva told members of the press after the awards show.
In addition to scooping the Best Female Video award, "Yume no Uta" also won Koda an award for Best Video of the Year.
"Using a ballad telling the heartrending tale of a man and woman, I wanted to make the kind of promotional video that would be popular among women like the one for the song 'You' was. The kind of song that really sticks in the heart," Koda explained of the video for "Yume no Uta," which is really one of a pair of related videos. "Working with [actor] Atsuro Watabe and [director] Kensuke Kawamura, we made this video with two stories, one in which a girl gets a call from her boyfriend and goes to see him and another in which a girl doesn't answer the phone and leaves the guy out in the cold. With these two girls we developed the stories for the promotional videos of 'Yume no Uta' and 'Futari de.'
"For girls out there, it actually seems that it was the sad story of 'Yume No Uta' that struck them much more than expected.
"Winning this award makes me think about what kind of thing I will make next and what the next connection will be."
Koda also won a special award for Best Stylish Artist. When asked about her fashion sense, Koda, wearing her hair up and sporting a long brown patterned dress, one of several outfits she wore that day, suggested she was opting for a more refined look.
"This year I'm going to turn 25, you know. As I debuted when I was 18, inside of me I feel it's about time I portrayed myself more as an adult. I think it'd be good to have the kind of sexy female image that comes just from being an adult. My fashion so far this year has had that objective in mind. Compared to the past, I've wanted more dresses with a greater sense of elegance this year."
Feeling less comfortable about showing off her talents on the Red Carpet walk into the stadium was Otsuka, who won awards for Best Pop Video and Best Video from a Film, both for the song "Airen Shashin," used in the movie Tada, Kimi o Ai Shiteru.
"This isn't the kind of thing you can easily get used to. I haven't walked down this kind of thing so much. So it's a feeling of 'Is it really OK for me to be doing this?'" Otsuka said, slipping into Kansai dialect.
Like Koda, Otsuka suggested change was afoot, in her case, moving on from a cutesy image to something more sincere.
"For me when writing this song ['Airen Shashin'] I really exposed my own feelings to an extent I never have before. It's a song that captures those feelings just as they are. It's an important song for me that's very dear to me. So to get this support so long after it went on sale makes me really happy."
The other multiple winner was funnyman DJ Ozma, who won Best Male Video and Best Dance Video for his novelty track "Age Age Every Kishi." Ozma, who was wearing a huge hat and star-shaped shades in the style of Bootsy Collins while inside the arena, chose to drop his trousers before accepting his award on the stage. If there was an explanation for this act it wasn't forthcoming in his acceptance speech. In fact, almost none of the acceptance speeches lasted more than a few seconds, making for some anticlimactic television despite the excellent camerawork of the live performances and spectacular crowd shots.
In general, though, this year's show was far better organized than on previous occasions, with almost no delays. It seems the demands of live television have helped MTV to turn the event into a much more slickly run affair. But the insistence on pitting two or three foreign acts in faux competition against domestic acts continues to grate. Typically, only those foreign acts who turn up to perform end up winning an award.
Among the foreign acts who appeared, My Chemical Romance took the press room photo call as an opportunity to take snaps of themselves. The band later explained that this was all a dream come true, as was the prospect of playing the Budokan earlier this week.
"We only started this band to write music from our hearts and to touch people with our music," guitarist Frank Iero explained. "We never expected to ever win any awards and now that it's come time to actually get these things it's just icing on the cake."
My Chemical Romance won Best Rock Video for "Welcome to the Black Parade," a track they said was written four years ago and had not quite made it onto previous releases. The band, who are among the biggest-selling foreign acts in Japan at the moment, said it was young Japanese fans that related to their music who had made them a success here.
"Young people really are smart people, especially in Japan, and they really relate to lyrics and people telling them straight how it is--life and death and dealing with these certain issues--and I think we have to understand that the youth today is a lot smarter than they are given credit for," said vocalist Gerard Way.
Another artist who suggested Japanese fans could relate to foreign music was the latest British sensation, Mika, whose camp hit "Grace Kelly," spent five weeks at No. 1 in Britain a few months back.
"I'm quite a J-pop fan and if you listen to a lot of that there's a lot of English lyrics there," explained the Lebanese-born singer, who performed outside the arena during the Red Carpet along with some giant monkey-costumed dancers. Of J-pop acts, Mika said he liked soundtrack composer Yoko Kanno, Puffy, Cornelius, Bennie K and even the shamisen-playing Yoshida Kyodai. "I think it's more than about language. I think it's about an aesthetic, it's about the melodies, it's about the production, it's about the feel. You know if I go to a live show of [Cape Verde singer] Cesaria Evora and I don't understand anything she's saying, I can still say I absolutely adored every single minute she was on stage. So clearly it's not about language. It's not about boundaries."
He also spoke of his vertiginous rise from college dropout to stardom.
"It's very surreal. When you think about it, about six months ago, I was doing shows in Birmingham and in Glasgow to 15 people in the U.K. and now here I am with some scary monkey on the stage doing a press conference here in Tokyo having just done the MTV video awards.
"It's kind of a dream come true. It's also a little bit terrifying."
* diba dapat Renai Shashin yung title nung kanta ni Ai Otsuka? * la lang ^_^ congrats to the both of them (ai otsuka & koda kumi) ^_^