We spent the last afternoon of 2008 ice skating at the public rink on the Midway Plaisance.   At home in the evening, we played board games and then settled in for our annual ritual:  watching NHK's "Kohaku Uta Gassen," four hours of show-biz schmoozing interspersed with dozens of pop songs.  Especially if you live away from Japan, it's a convenient way to acquire a snapshot of the past year in the culture industry of Japan. 

   Highlights included Mori Shin'ichi's over-the-top rendition of "Fukuro" (Mother) and Kobayashi Sachiko's annual stage-set-pretending-to-be-a-formal-gown spectacle.  Enya did a satellite remote appearance from Ireland, and this year's enka sensation Jero sang his "Umiyuki" (Sea snow) with his tearful mother in the audience (I wrote about him here this past February).   

   The show also featured its first-ever appearance by megastars Mr. Children.  Their "Gift" was adopted by NHK as its Olympic theme song this past summer, so perhaps the band had no choice.  The tune is vaguely Beatlesque, more specifically McCartney-esque:  here's a clip of Mr. Children performing it on another recent television appearance.   The rendition last night seemed clearly modeled on the Beatles' famous 1968 performance of "Hey Jude" on the "David Frost Show." 

   The biggest surprise of the evening, though, was the presence of political scientist Kang Sang-Jung as one of the invited jurors, alongside the usual roster of athletes, actors and actresses.   It was a bit like having Jay Leno invite Michel Foucault to sit on his couch for an interview, or Dick Clark sharing the microphone with Noam Chomsky during the Times Square countdown.  Kang takes seriously his responsibilities as a public intellectual, always looking to engage in dialogue with people outside of academia, but this was perhaps going too far.  He looked especially uncomfortable during the performance of the theme song from Miyazaki Hayao's anime Ponyo on the Cliff.  The jurors were given hand puppets of the title character and had to wave them in time to the music.  (The song was, I have to admit, one of my favorites of the evening).

   Then again, given the widespread presence of both open and closeted zai-Nichi Koreans in the world of enka music, perhaps Kang's presence was appropriate.  He also made a somewhat political comment during the brief segmet in which he was interviewed, saying he hoped the show would help encourage the many people feeling economic distress these days.  I wonder what he thought, though, of the strongly nationalistic bent to a number of the performances--another new wrinkle to the show.

    Well, now it's time to bid farewell to Kitajima Saburo, Ishikawa Sayuri, Tendo Yoshimi and all the others -- farewell, that is, until next December 31.