JOHNNYHitachuan, president of the JOHNNYS office, was born on October 23, 1931 in Los Angeles under his real name, Kitachuan Expansion. His father was a monk at Mt. Takanoyama (note: Japanese monks are allowed to get married ah ~), and later went to the U.S. to serve as the abbot of the Los Angeles branch of the True Sect's Higashi-Honganji Temple.JOHNNY KITAGAWA is the oldest son in the family. His mother died when he was very young. After the start of the Pacific War, Japan and the United States were at loggerheads, and people of Japanese descent were discriminated against in the U.S. JOHNNY KITAGAWA, along with his father and sister, MARY KITAGAWA (TAYAKO KITAGAWA), were interned in a California forced internment camp, and the family was sent home on the first Japanese-American exchange ship that departed from Los Angeles on June 18, 1942, which was the first of many Japanese-American exchange ships that were to return to the United States. Until the end of World War II, JOHNNY KITAGAWA lived in his parents' hometown of Wakayama City, Wakayama Prefecture, to escape the war.On July 9, 1945, an air raid on Wakayama burned the KITAGAWA family's home to the ground, forcing them to move away from there.
After the war JOHNNY KITAGAWA went to the United States again with his sister and attended the local Los Angeles high school. After high school he became a stage manager for a theater and was exposed to the American SHOW business. The splendor of the stage captivated JOHNNY KITAGAWA, and he began to aspire to the world of show business.
In 1950, a generation of Japanese singer-songwriters, Mikon Skylark, went to the U.S. for a public performance, accompanied by Haruhisa Kawada, who had discovered and trained her. The Los Angeles performance was held at the Los Angeles branch of the Shinshu sect's Higashihonganji Temple, where Johnny Kitagawa's father was the abbot. Therefore, Johnny Kitagawa was in charge of the stage management for the show. This laid the groundwork for him to be recognized by Haruhisa Kawada and to develop a deep friendship with Skylark Mekong. With this in mind, JOHNNY KITAGAWA soon returned to Japan with his sister, who had just graduated from Los Angeles City College, with the intention of making a career in the Japanese entertainment industry.
After returning to Japan, he first worked as an interpreter's assistant at the U.S. Embassy, and in 1951, when the Korean War was heating up, Johnny Kitagawa enlisted in the U.S. Army as a private on the Korean Peninsula. When he was demobilized and returned home after the war, he received a veterans' demobilization allowance, so he quit his job at the embassy and went to Sophia University to further his studies at the Faculty of International Studies (at that time). While at the university, he took an active part in organizing a number of performing arts events, such as a public performance by Kasai Shibuuko, and gradually expanded his network around the performing arts world, and in 1955, he formed a band out of interest and started to play music. Although the band disbanded after he graduated from college, he gained a lot of useful experience as he was also in charge of the band's agency work, which laid a good foundation for him to shift his focus to artist management in the future.
In 1962, when Johnny Kitagawa saw that a friend of his had organized his own baseball team, he followed suit and taught baseball to boys from the nearby Yoyogi High School in the plaza of WASHINGTON HIGHTS (where Johnny Kitagawa lived in an apartment at the time), a U.S. military-occupied site next to the current Yoyogi Stadium in Harajuku, and organized a baseball team named after him. He organized a baseball team named "JOHNNYS" after his nickname, and this baseball team was the predecessor of the JOHNNYS office. One rainy day, he took the kids of his youth baseball team to a movie theater to escape the rain, and the movie "West Side Story" was playing, and JOHNNY KITAGAWA was so impressed by the story of the movie that he decided to devote himself to the entertainment business, and soon established the "JOHNNYS Office". The name of the office does not mean "JOHNNY KITAGAWA's personal office", but it comes from the name of the baseball team, which means "the office that JOHNNYS belongs to". Of course, the members of the baseball team became the first artists of the office. At that time, JOHNNY KITAGAWA's sister, MARY KITAGAWA, was running a bar in Akasaka, and Taisuke FUJISHIMA, a famous writer and a friend of the Emperor, was a regular at the bar, and MARY KITAGAWA married FUJISHIMA later on. In the year JOHNNY Kitagawa opened his office, MARY closed her own bar and went into the office to take up the position of manager.
The JOHNNYS office is now known as an office specializing in male idols, but in the early days of the company, it was only an office specializing in musical performances, and it also had female artists, and even female Jr. JOHNNYS was not strong enough to run its own business in the early days, so it entrusted its brokerage business to "WATANABE PRODUCTION". In addition, JOHNNYS office's initial success had a lot to do with SONY Records. At that time, JOHNNYS office had no ability to train new singers on their own, and Sony Records was just starting up, so they set up a training school for singers in cooperation with "Hidewa Rejidans" office, and JOHNNY Kitagawa and MARY Kitagawa sent the children discovered by the office to be trained at the training school. MARY KITAGAWA even drove the kids to the school every day. At that time, Johnny Kitagawa was said to be obsessed with the youth baseball team, and was not very enthusiastic about the training of artists. At first, the school was not very welcoming to the JOHNNYS kids because they were naughty and rowdy, and had no talent for singing. However, they were gradually impressed by Mary Kitagawa's enthusiasm and sincerity, and became more and more dedicated to the development of JOHNNYS artists. Thanks to this relationship, many JOHNNYS artists later signed their record contracts with Sony Records, and the idol trend swept Japan in the 1980s, with CDs selling well, making Sony Records rise to prominence, and building its own recording studios with first-class equipment, making it one of the giants of the Japanese recording industry. However, the honeymoon between JOHNNYS and Sony did not last into the 1990s. The reason for this is unknown.
In 1970, the JOHNNYS office became independent from "WATANABE PRODUCTION", and JOHNNY KITAGAWA split from "WATANABE PRO", taking with him the "WATANABE PRO" label. Johnny Kitagawa broke away from "Watanabe Productions" completely, and took Mr. Shiranase of "Watanabe Productions" to join his own office. Mr. Shirakanase is now the Director of Public Relations at the JOHNNYS office, and is in charge of JOHNNYS' external media relations. This person is very good at dealing with the media, and he is in control of all the SPROTS tabloids except for the Nikkan SPORTS, so basically, when there is any negative news about JOHNNYS, the SPROTS tabloids that are most interested in reporting this kind of news are all silent, which is a testament to the power of Shiranobo Sekai.
Kitagawa Hiromu
Commercial name: Tsuzuki Stazio (293792410)
Residence: 4-6-9 Azabujuban, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106-0045
Telephone number: 03-3454-7688
Jackie Shirabo 7688
Type of business (7119) Other real estate leasing and lending
Employment December, 2003
Birthdate Showa 6, October 23
Place of residence Tokyo
School
Home 〒106-0032 5-18-201 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Home 〒106-0045 4-6-9 Azabujuban, Minato-ku, Tokyo
Tel. 12-18-201, Minato-ku, Tokyo