Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

This is going to be as short and sweet as possible, as I’ve been a writing fool with only 5,000 more words to go in NaNoWriMo (and then after that I can actually FINISH the novel…)

With all the brouhaha that’s gone on in the J-Pop blogosphere ever since Maki Goto suddenly graduated from Hello! Project (in one of the worst cases of bad timing, just around the time her brother got busted for burglary), the following reasons have been brought up and/or suggested as to what led to Gocchin’s departure from Hello! Project and Up-Front Works (which probably won’t be contractually official until the new year starts: Musical differences, image differences, health reasons, psychological reasons…

But what about if the differences were because of something else?

A couple of months ago, an mp3 (taken from an audience recording) was circulating of Maki doing a live cover version of Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie”. Much was made in the blogosphere of Maki both doing the song and adopting a “Makira” character when she performed it live.

Suppose… just suppose… that Maki Goto left Hello! Project and Up-Front Works because she wanted to break into the American market a hell of a lot sooner than Hello! Project and Up-Front Works?

Picture it… you’re Maki Goto and you’re sitting at home between recording and live dates and blog posts, and you’re going online and seeing that Puffy AmiYumi and Dir En Grey are making regular appearances in America, Hikaru Utada is trying to sneak herself in as well, several other J-pop and J-rock artists are making appearances in the States, and talk is already afoot that BoA is going to try to hit the USA in 2008. You think to yourself… “Great. Why not H!P? Why don’t we try over there? We already have fans buying the imported CDs or doing downloads…”

You go to a UFA meeting, bring the idea up, and get a “Not yet, we’re working on the rest of Asia first.”

You get impatient, you throw in that Shakira cover just to see the reaction it could get from fans…and one fan records the show, makes an mp3, and flows it to the World Wide Web.

You gauge the reaction, go to another UFA meeting, again bring the idea up, get a “Be patient, Gocchan…”

…and you go home, have a cup of tea, then get an epiphany… an epiphany that reads, “Fuck this waiting shit! I don’t just want to be a Japanese singing star! I want the world and I want it now!”

You go to one last UFA meeting, drop a bombshell, and agree to wait until the last date of your tour to publicly drop another bombshell… look for another label and agency, wait out the rest of your UFA contract until 2008 starts…

And as for the rest of the story? We’ll just have to wait and see what 2008 brings for Maki Goto.