The Red & White Year-End Song Festival airs every year on December 31 on Japanese network NHK. Airing since 1951, the 72-year-old show was recognized in 2017 by Guinness World Records as the longest-running annual TV music competition for a single nation. The most notable feature of Red & White is that, as the name hints at, female and male singers are split up into two different teams represented by one of two colors. It’s become a tradition for families to get together and watch every year. It’s even become a cliché of manga and anime where people stay home at the end of the year to watch it.

Because Red & White marks the end of the whole year, NHK is very selective about who gets to compete. Not only do they take into consideration which artists have done promotions that year and how well they performed, but they also run polls and surveys to come to their decision. That means, if a singer appears on the show in the end, it’s a good measure of their popularity.

On November 13, NHK announced their finalized lineup for the 74th annual Red & White Year-End Song Festival. With the nature of the program and its selection process in mind, let’s look at a brief rundown of the artists we’ll see this year.

​Johnny’s not invited 

Red & White traditionally had a policy of limiting the number of artists from any one label in a given year, and idols from Johnny’s—recently renamed SMILE-UP—were no exception. Even from 1997 onwards, only two of their artists, SMAP and TOKIO, were invited to the event. But then, in 2009—the 60th anniversary of the show—ARASHI made their first appearance, after which it became more common for multiple groups from under Johnny’s to appear in the same year—but this exception extended to their label alone. Johnny’s received flack in 2015 for taking up seven out of 26 spots on the white team, and just last year, the roster included Johnny’s groups SixTONES, Snow Man, King & Prince, KANJANI∞, KinKi Kids, and, in a first, Naniwa Danshi. But you won’t be seeing any of Johnny’s groups represented this year, and that’s because all of Japan’s networks—NHK included—have boycotted Johnny’s groups due to the late founder Johnny Kitagawa’s sex scandal, which has been in the news since March. While this marks the first time in 43 years that Johnny’s will be totally absent from Red & White, we’ll be seeing a new generation of J-pop and K-pop singers in their place.

​The rise and rise of J-pop 

2023 has an impressive lineup of first-timers. The men’s white team includes Mrs. GREEN APPLE, who wrote the song “Force” off TOMORROW X TOGETHER’s first Japanese album; 10-FEET, who performed “Dai Zero Kan,” the ending song for the massively popular THE FIRST SLAM DUNK movie, which hit theaters back in January; and MAN WITH A MISSION, who has been going strong for 13 years now. Tatsukya Kitani, the singer-songwriter who got his start as a Vocaloid producer and also sang the opening theme song for the first few episodes of the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen, will be making his first appearance on the program as well.

New to the red team are ano and ATARASHII GAKKO! ano, who had previously been a member of idol group You’ll Melt More! before leaving in 2020 to pursue a solo career, is well known in Korea for a viral photo of her that stands in major contrast to a similar but also very different viral photo of Kanna Hashimoto, playfully known as the most beautiful woman of the millennium. As of December 20, ano has 316,000 subscribers on YouTube and all her videos, when taken together, have been viewed over 86 million times. She’s also a trendsetter, winning the music category of awards given out by TikTok for the first half of the year.

ATARASHII GAKKO! is a high-concept, four-member girl group known for putting on blood-pumping performances while uniformed in Japanese sailor suits. Their song “OTONABLUE” was viewed a staggering 2.5 billion times on TikTok this past June, and their appearance on YouTube channel THE FIRST TAKE—similar to the Korean YouTube series Killing Voice—saw some 10 million views in the span of just 10 days.

Aimyon, who’s written lyrics for ATARASHII GAKKO!, will be making her fifth appearance on Red & White this year. Also on the list, for their second year, is mixed-gender rock band Ryokuoushoku Shakai, a group that’s been growing in popularity. YOASOBI, too, is making their third appearance. YOASOBI dominated Japan’s streaming scene this year, with “Idol,” the opening theme song for the anime Oshi no Ko, surpassing 390 million views on YouTube. Considering they also did the opening songs for Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, as well as the one-year anniversary music video for the game Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, they’re sure to put on a memorable performance.

​Going “borderless” with anonymous artists 

This year’s Red & White will give the floor to three artists who keep their identities a guarded secret in their own ways: MAN WITH A MISSION, Ado, and Strawberry Prince (aka Sutopuri).

MAN WITH A MISSION is a five-person band whose members don wolf masks for all of their performances and other appearances. You can still see their faces a bit through the wolf’s mouths, but it’s as though an unwritten rule keeps the camera from ever lingering on them long, as seen in their first appearance on THE FIRST TAKE back in June.

Ado, who also keeps her identity under wraps, will be performing under her own name at Red & White for the first time. She did, however, make an appearance last year under the name Uta, the character in ONE PIECE Film: Red whose singing voice she provided. Ado started putting on concerts in Korea from 2022, but always keeps herself in the shadows—literally.

Another artist making their Red & White debut this year is Strawberry Prince, a whole new kind of group who always appear as anime characters. Starting out in 2019, they mostly perform through YouTube and TwitCasting, and have since become wildly popular in Japan, with their videos on YouTube collectively amassing more than 7.6 billion views. They’ve been making regular appearances on TV TOKYO under their group name since 2022. They also appear in person for things like handshake events and concert tours, and such events are the only time they reveal their faces; on YouTube Live, they use CGI to hide them. There’s something else unique about the group: member Rinu is a transgender man, making him the first to compete on Red & White, and the second transgender person at the event since Ataru Nakamura performed in 2007. It’s a significant moment and it’s truly fitting given that the theme of the show this year is “borderless.”

Red & White is actually at something of a crossroads. Last year was the 73rd time the event was held—the first time in three years with a live audience due to the pandemic—but viewership nonetheless was on the decline, attracting the second-lowest number of viewers in the show’s long history. With its focus on family-friendly broadcasting and appealing to the widest possible audience, the event has been criticized for losing its relevance in the 2020s as far as the performances go. But what should we expect from nearly anonymous artists at an event that’s seen as outdated as Red & White is? We’re likely to see some very different performances on the show this year.

​K-pop brings the winds of change 

You might be wondering: When did Red & White first extend an invitation to a Korean singer? The answer is 1987, and the singer was Cho Yong-pil. For a while after that, the only Koreans to grace the stage were classic artists: Patti Kim, Kim Yonja, Kye Eun Sook, and the like. But then, in 2002, BoA—by then officially promoting in Japan—became the first Korean artist to dance while singing at the event, and she showed up every year from then through 2007. TVXQ appeared on the show in 2008 and 2009, making them the first idol boy band there. And in 2011, when Hallyu, or the Korean wave, was truly exploding, they made another appearance, this time alongside Girls’ Generation and KARA.

Korean singers have made fewer appearances on the show since then, owing to both political tensions between the two countries and to the pandemic. It wasn’t until last year that K-pop started to make a comeback on Red & White. Three girl groups were on the red team: LE SSERAFIM, IVE, and TWICE, the latter of whom had been on the show several times since 2017. This year we’ll see MISAMO—a subunit of TWICE featuring MINA, SANA, and MOMO—LE SSERAFIM, NewJeans, Stray Kids, and SEVENTEEN. It marks the first invitation to a K-pop boy group since TVXQ last performed. If you include NiziU, the group formed through the JYP-led Japanese competition show, and JO1, similarly formed out of Produce 101 Japan (CJ ENM), that makes seven groups with K-pop roots—the most ever.

You could argue these K-pop idols are filling the void left by Johnny’s groups, but there’s also a case to be made that K-pop has simply become too big in Japan to ignore any longer. We’ll have to keep watching the show to find out where K-pop’s headed in Japan.

​The rise of the Sakamichi Series 

AKB48 hasn’t been back to Red & White since 2019. In October, Yuki Kashiwagi, who joined AKB48 in 2007 and was active for seventeen years, announced she would be leaving the group next March, leading many fans to hope to see her at this year’s Red & White; this is the last year she was eligible to perform on the show. In the end, however, the organizers invited members of Nogizaka46 and Sakurazaka46 (who didn’t make the cut last year) of the Sakamichi Series instead—AKB48 Group’s rivals. Sakurazaka46’s return to the event is notable given that there’s a sort of curse for girl groups who are cut from the lineup typically failing to make a comeback, but clearly the group broke the curse in this case.

AKB48 and the rest of the 48 Group have rarely made any appearances at the event since the late 2010s. Most notably, AKB48, the first and most recognizable of the 48 Groups, were invited in 2007 and then again every year from 2009 to 2018, nearly breaking the record for most appearances by a single girl group, which still belongs to Morning Musume, part of the Hello! Project collective.

There are probably several reasons AKB48 hasn’t been back, but the biggest is likely the 2018 assault against former NGT48 member Maho Yamaguchi that went public in 2019. AKB48 wasn’t invited back to Red & White in 2019 and there continues to be fallout to this day. But where AKB48 left a gap, Nogizaka46 and the rest of the Sakamichi Series—each working hard and possessing their own unique image—have stepped in. Nogizaka46 has been enjoying an upward rise to stardom since their debut in 2012 and are now among Japan’s top girl groups of the 2020s.

But drawing the most attention in the Series is Sakurazaka46. The group has already been on Red & White every year between 2016 and 2019, back when they were known as Keyakizaka46. Following star member Yurina Hirate’s departure in 2020, the group changed their name and rebuilt their image. The group’s new image has fully taken root and they’ve only grown since then. Their latest album, released in October, sold more than 440,000 copies in its first week, and their return to the Red & White stage is proof that their new strategy is working.

What’s next for the world of girl groups in Japan? On top of the homegrown Sakamichi Series groups, plenty of Korean groups—NewJeans, LE SSERAFIM, IVE, and aespa, to name a few—have made waves in the country. With that in mind, what should we expect from the two biggest forces in the Red & White competition? Whatever happens, we’re sure to be treated to endless possibilities from K-pop and J-pop.