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The story
WEST., a group under STARTO ENTERTAINMENT, announced on September 24 that it is ending its activities. Twelve years after their 2014 debut — and after renaming from “Johnny’s WEST” to “WEST.” in 2023 — the group is calling it quits, with Ryusei Fujii and Nozomu Kotaki declaring they will leave the group entirely while the remaining five members go on to work individually. On 5ch, the news sparked surprise given that the group reportedly already had work booked under the group name starting October 1, and reactions also spread over the fact that the announcement coincided with a stretch in which several members had one after another revealed marriages or relationships, fueling all kinds of speculation about the circumstances and reasons behind the breakup.
September 24, 2026, 13:00
STARTO ENTERTAINMENT announced in a bombshell statement on the 24th that the Kansai-born seven-member group “WEST.” is ending its activities. Via their fan club, all seven members appeared together in a video to announce, “We’ve decided to close down the group.” Twelve years since their 2014 debut. In 2023 they renamed the group from “Johnny’s WEST” to “WEST.” Now they are closing the book on 12 years of history, bowing their heads to fans with “our deepest apologies.”
WEST. debuted in April 2014 with the single “Ee Janaika.” The group started out with seven members: Daiki Shigeoka, Terushi Kiriyama, Junta Nakama, Tomohiro Kamiyama, Ryusei Fujii, Takahiro Hamada, and Nozomu Kotaki.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Member Rundown
Junta Nakama (38) … Single
Takahiro Hamada (37) … Announced marriage to a non-celebrity woman (2026)
Terushi Kiriyama (37) … Announced marriage to volleyball player Maiko Kano (2025)
Daiki Shigeoka (34) … Married a non-celebrity woman, announced birth of first child (2026)
Tomohiro Kamiyama (33) … Announced marriage to a non-celebrity woman (2025)
Ryusei Fujii (33) … Announced departure from the group (2026)
Nozomu Kotaki (30) … Announced departure from the group (2026)
WEST. (12 years active) … Announced group breakup (2026)
Nakama's also got that rumored romance with the 'Jamboree Mickey' dancer (a Tokyo Disneyland performer who went viral for her energetic parade dancing)
V6 was something else — so many of them ended up marrying fellow celebrities
Didn't SMAP not actually fight among themselves though?
It was just Mary (a top agency exec) and their manager who clashed
We don't really know whether they fought or not, and that's not even the only factor anyway
Kimura and the rest split over their views, and the plan to go independent fell through
With drama like this going on, fangirls just looking for some peace might end up drifting over to MILK.
Isn't MILK about washed up too though?
Up until last year their songs were popular enough that even people who didn't care about them knew the tunes, but this year I have no clue what they're up to or what they've even released.
I just saw news yesterday that they crossed the million mark.
If anything, they're at their peak right now.
By that logic Snow Man is washed up too then —
I don't know any of their songs at all.
Hikaru Genji didn't have that much drama though, did they?
They did a proper farewell tour and wrapped things up cleanly.
This is probably the worst one since SMAP.
How could they keep working after kicking out the two single guys?
No way that flies lol
Nakama said years ago that 'if even one member leaves, the group is done,' so this is just the natural outcome
They could probably manage it if they shifted to catering to middle-aged women fans like Junretsu does lol (a group known for its devoted older female fanbase)
With the agency in total chaos over the Timeless situation, if WEST. says 'we're breaking up' right now, the people involved might just go 'yeah yeah, sure, whatever' instead of pushing back?
Though I doubt it's really that simple lol
The fact that they had group work already lined up starting October 1st, yet they're breaking up the day before on September 30th, suggests the agency itself is in such chaos it doesn't even have a handle on its own schedule.
If they'd waited any longer, they'd get accused of being cold for bailing while Timeless is in such a state.
Right now they'd probably get begged to stick around and carry the agency through it.
Maybe it's really as simple as them having a falling-out, reaching a point of 'I don't even want to look at your face anymore,' and it just became impossible to continue.
The departure announcement was sudden too.
Background and Key Points of Discussion
WEST. is a seven-member group that kept performing under the name “WEST.” — renamed from “Johnny’s WEST” — even after the former Johnny’s agency rebranded as STARTO ENTERTAINMENT in 2023, and this breakup marks a major turning point for the group in its post-rebrand era. What drew the most attention on the thread was that the breakup was announced the day before group-branded work was reportedly already scheduled to begin on October 1, and that this coincided with a period in which several members had, one after another, revealed marriages or relationships. Some commenters compared the intensity of this breakup to that of the legendary SMAP, though SMAP’s split is generally attributed mainly to conflict with the agency itself, a different set of circumstances from the deteriorating relationships among members being discussed here. It’s also worth noting that posts pinning the breakup’s cause on any specific member’s responsibility are speculation not based on any official statement, not confirmed fact.
※This article is compiled as an excerpt and summary from the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[STARTO ENTERTAINMENT] WEST. Announces Breakup, All 7 Members Apologize, Fujii and Kotaki Declare Departure Too, but “It Ends as All 7” — Members to Go Solo Going Forward ★2 [Ailuropoda melanoleuca★]“.
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