“It felt like I came face to face with a dream I’ve had ever since I was little,” ENHYPEN member HEESEUNG said after wrapping up the concert at Kyocera Dome spanning January 21 and 22 as part of ENHYPEN’s MANIFESTO tour in JAPAN, said. The seven members of the group stood on that stage just like they describe in “Future Perfect (Pass the Mic)” when they sing, “I wanna stand on my own feet / Everything else is meaningless.” At just two years and two months into their careers since their debut, they made it to one of Japan’s dome stadiums faster than any other fourth-generation idols.

The response to ENHYPEN in Japan didn’t happen overnight. I-LAND, the audition show where ENHYPEN was first formed, received votes from viewers from 178 different countries around the world, including Japan, building up a fanbase that extends beyond Korea and into Japan and across the world. “Most of the K-pop groups that debut in Korea usually enter the Japanese market only after promoting for some time in Korea,” the marketing team at BELIFT LAB said, “but ENHYPEN built up their fandom in countries across the globe, including Korea and Japan, right from their debut.” Member NI-KI also made a name for himself prior to the debut in Korea, appearing via video call on the popular Japanese variety show Shin Nihon Danji & Nakai on Nippon TV. His remote appearance, a consequence of the group’s inability to greet fans in person due to COVID-19, was a smash success. The ratings for the show jumped 0.7%p over the previous week, reaching 3.3%, and words related to NI-KI and ENHYPEN were the most-searched terms on Yahoo! JAPAN, the country’s largest web portal. ENHYPEN was the first overseas artist to become a regular host of the show of All Night Nippon X, a late-night radio show celebrating parent series All Night Nippon’s half a century of history, every Monday night. A representative for All Night Nippon said the show chose ENHYPEN because “they were becoming popular for how much Generation Z supports them.” Similarly, HYBE JAPAN said, “We feel the greatest benefit to them taking on the role of host on All Night Nippon, a show with a dedicated fanbase, is that they could promote themselves to a group of people who are otherwise difficult to reach. We’re extremely grateful for this opportunity as both ENGENE and the production crew, who watched the members improve day by day, responded well to it.” ENHYPEN also made an appearance on CDTV Live! Live! New Year’s Eve Special! 2022 on December 31, which showcased artists who were active during 2022. “That end-of-year appearance was an opportunity to symbolize ENHYPEN’s 2022,” HYBE JAPAN said, “and while more and more young people aren’t watching TV, the end and beginning of the year has the most viewership of live TV of any time during the year, so we feel it was an opportunity to get fans of other artists to know about ENHYPEN, too.”

Another way ENHYPEN spread the word about their group was through their collaboration with Coca-Cola. “It had the effect of imprinting the artist’s status on the Japanese fandom and public at large and it was also a good opportunity to confirm that the core fandom was sturdy and prove that it and the target consumer base of all the companies align,” HYBE JAPAN explained. The label saw numerous positive signs: a global brand like Coca-Cola wanting to work with ENHYPEN, ENHYPEN’s global and Japanese fandoms’ growing, and an effect of synergy. The group’s appearance at the Prada fashion show on January 15 was another opportunity to promote themselves. “That there are Japanese fans who look highly upon ENHYPEN’s promotions outside of Japan, that there was a stark difference between the class they showed at the Prada show and the way they looked so young in the behind-the-scenes clips, and ENHYPEN’s unique fictional universe were all really beneficial things since they let ENHYPEN leave an even greater impression and helped attract more new fans,” HYBE JAPAN said. All this meant that ENHYPEN, after making a name for themselves with K-pop fans around the world through I-LAND, was able to generate a lot of interest among younger Japanese listeners through the promotions they did there on the back of their popularity in the country.

ENHYPEN gained global recognition during the audition process and their early promotions in Japan were tied to the release of their debut album, all allowing the group to turn the interest brewing for them in Japan into a strong fanbase. Although their debut album, BORDER: DAY ONE, was a “Korean” album, it sold 71,000 copies in Japan in its first week and went to number two on the weekly Oricon Albums chart. At the same time, the album topped the daily Oricon Albums chart for the week of December 4, was number one on the local iTunes Top Albums chart and LINE MUSIC’s real-time Top 100 chart. Released on July 6, 2021, their first Japanese single album, BORDER: Hakanai, sold 150,254 copies on the day it was released, making it number one on the daily Oricon Singles chart, as well as the weekly singles chart, selling 200,000 copies in its first week. Their second Japanese single album, DIMENSION: SENKOU, and their first Japanese studio album, Sadame, each reached number one on the weekly Oricon Singles and Albums charts with 306,000 copies and 233,000 copies sold in the first week respectively. Including physical sales in Korea, they were on the weekly Oricon Albums and Singles charts for seven consecutive weeks. “The success of the number ones on Oricon, a certified Japanese chart, act as proof of the group’s external growth and is an indicator of ENHYPEN’s popularity and growth in Japan that can be used as PR with media representatives,” HYBE JAPAN noted. They received a lot of support from Japan not just with their Japanese releases but when they released Korean albums, too, and Japanese people showed a lot of interest in all their work, and this seems to show how loved ENHYPEN is in Japan.”

All this emphasized the meaning behind ENHYPEN’s Japanese albums and promotions and allowed for ENHYPEN to better reach out to their Japanese fans. The group issued a special poster in collaboration with certain CD shops for the release of BORDER: Hakanai and they also held a photo exhibition, while for DIMENSION: SENKOU, their second Japanese single album, they advertised heavily in subways and newspapers and fans could also collect stamps at designated sites set up to commemorate the release. “We feel the stamp rally succeeded at its intended purpose of generating publicity around ENHYPEN as well as the release of DIMENSION: SENKOU through social media and hotspots like Shibuya and Harajuku where the fans we’re targeting tend to be,” HYBE JAPAN said. “Notably, with the stamps limited to Tokyo, fans from other regions called for the event to be held nationwide.” Recently, there have been efforts with the release of ENHYPEN’s first Japanese studio album, Sadame, to give fans a chance to experience the promotional event more broadly by holding lucky draw events at Tower Records and HMV stores across the country.

HYBE JAPAN also revealed that they “release merch to mark the release of the albums and are working to create a more satisfying way for people to experience the artist by opening pop-up stores that share the same themes as the merch and albums.” Japanese fans were unable to see ENHYPEN in person for over a year after their debut due to the pandemic but they could experience a sense of immediacy with the artist through these promotions run in physical offline locations. “We sought to allow fans to feel close to the artist and build excitement for fan-centric, in-person events like concerts and release events while present in those spaces and we feel high levels of satisfaction therein leads to more purchases.”

ENHYPEN’s performance at Kyocera Dome was an opportunity to gauge how all of the efforts have influenced interest from the ever-growing Japanese ENGENE. Tickets for the concert sold out completely, filling all 80,000 seats. “It meant a lot to me, standing on that big stage at Kyocera Dome again five years later,” NI-KI said after the performance. “And I hope everyone keeps looking forward to the future, because I promise to become an even better artist and repay their support with more performances.” No doubt the concert was particularly meaningful for him given he previously stood on the same stage five years earlier as a part of SHINee Kids. For NI-KI and for all the ENHYPEN members, their performance at Kyocera Dome served as an opportunity to reinforce their sense of determination even further. “I’m going to be the kind of singer who dances and sings in every performance like it’s my last,” JUNGWON said. “I hope people will think of the dance break we originally did at MMA [Melon Music Awards], the part where we could see our fans up-close and the part where we were in a car as highlights,” SUNOO added. It was clear that this concert was bigger in scale and was updated to include bigger and more variety-filled movements than previous concerts, and more ENGENE showed up, too. The members of the group also paid close attention to their sound given the substantial size of the stadium. SUNGHOON had busied himself thinking about how to match the performance with the scale of the venue, explaining how they “thought about how best to pull this concert along since the size and layout of the stage got bigger.” JAKE similarly emphasized the amount of practice that they put in, adding, “We practiced knowing how much we wanted to show everyone all our energy and strength.”

“The Kyocera Dome concert in January was just the start, and laid the groundwork for a dome tour” in Japan and “we can expect ENHYPEN’s dome tour to start anytime now,” the BELIFT LAB marketing team revealed. “We feel a dome tour is a way to show not only Japanese fans but fans from around the world that they’re making their dreams come true and it’s also a way for them to tell a story about their connection with their fans.” The tour in Japan isn’t just about big concerts—it’s also a milestone for any K-pop artist. So when JUNGWON says the group will “show people how amazing a genre K-pop can be,” it shows that the group is now confident talking about his group’s future aspirations. It’s also why, in JAY’s words, “it’s going to be a journey to prove we’re artists who are worthy of everything ENGENE gives us,” and why they will “shout out to tell the people about ENHYPEN and share one voice with ENGENE.” Once trying to prove themselves on I-LAND, the boys have now come all this way—microphones in hand, speaking in their own voice.