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The story
With the lineup announcement for NHK’s Kōhaku Uta Gassen (the broadcaster’s New Year’s Eve song contest) reportedly landing next Monday the 16th, the Hello! Project board lit up over whether Juice=Juice can even make it. The group has a self-produced live show booked at Kanadevia Hall that same day, and posters piled on pointing out the scheduling collision with Kōhaku’s press conference and the broadcast itself. A quote from prediction YouTuber “Kunio” — claiming “80-90% of people are saying Juice is appearing at the Record Awards and Kōhaku” — got cited too, though plenty doubted how reliable that really is. Also flagged as a bad sign: on the COUNTDOWN JAPAN 26/27 timetable, Juice=Juice is slotted on a smaller stage than other groups, which some read as a worrying sign for their drawing power.
What people said
Yeah, that settles it.
Just rehearse in the morning and duck out before the show, easy.
Rehearse in the morning and they'd make both the press conference and the live show no problem.
"Even people from Kawalabo and the Sakamichi camp (the Nogizaka46/Sakurazaka46/Hinatazaka46 family of groups) are saying there's no real hit song this year.
If anything counts as a hit, it's Juice's, they say. I'm hearing this from people I'm fairly close with.
I get fierce pushback — maybe people just like playing contrarian — but more than half are telling me Juice is appearing at the Record Awards and Kōhaku. Actually, more like 80-90%."
"People I'm fairly close with," lol
And there's media interviews after the conference too.
If it's the 16th, Juice is probably toast.
Once the show's done, that's just the artist's own scheduling problem to sort out.
"If Juice doesn't make Kōhaku this year, there's no Kōhaku for Morning Musume's 30th anniversary next year either."
Anyone could've told you that.
Honestly, the members have stopped saying the word "Kōhaku" since summer.
Juice=Juice fans (a slang pun on "juice") are saying there's basically a gag order in place, lol
Did they even say "Kōhaku" before summer, though?
If they're actually getting in, are they really going to keep teasing it like this?
Do that and they won't get invited back next time.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HVYuju7aUAAArCz.jpg
That doesn't count as teasing.
If they'd invested properly in Juice this past year instead of spreading resources thin, there was a real shot at this.
was that just to distract from missing Kōhaku?
Just go watch some quiet stream somewhere and chill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFa9wxXK5Hs
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/sFa9wxXK5Hs/hq720.jpg
If they're right, they take the credit;
if they're wrong, they just call it wishful thinking.
■ EARTH STAGE (40,000 capacity)
FRUITS ZIPPER
■ GALAXY STAGE (20,000 capacity)
Sakurazaka46, CANDY TUNE, MonaKi, CUTIE STREET, iLiFE!!, ME:I, ≠JOY
■ COSMO STAGE (8,000 capacity)
Juice=Juice, Airi Suzuki
Sure, technically it has nothing to do with it.
But when the expected draw is this different in terms of popularity, it's hard not to worry.
I'd put Juice=Juice's Kōhaku odds at under 50/50.
Riding this momentum, they're aiming for an even bigger stage. Dambara leaned in with, "There are a lot of big year-end events and shows coming up, so I want to be super busy." Inoue showed the same drive: "I've always said I want to be on Kōhaku!"
https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/a0a3b9a045e782120652f6e1788e524c3c1f2d89
Even if the conference runs 12:30-13:10 and the scrum interview 13:10-14:00, it's only a 20-minute drive from NHK Hall back to Kanadevia Hall,
so they'd be back by 14:20 — about an hour before showtime.
If they were actually appearing on Kōhaku, they wouldn't book a schedule like that in the first place.
Just hand Kanadevia Hall off to another group.
Makes more sense to assume these got added because they already missed the cut.
Clean and simple, honestly —
saves Juice fans from holding onto hope all the way till next week, lol
There's still the late addition slots, so they could hang in there till the end, lolol
Last year's (2025) 76th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen — AKB48's spot wasn't announced until December 3, 2025.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
NHK’s Kōhaku Uta Gassen lineup is typically announced in multiple rounds from mid-November through early December each year, with additional-slot announcements sometimes not coming until December (in 2025, AKB48’s spot wasn’t confirmed until December 3). Within the thread itself, accounts of the announcement date conflict — some say the 16th, others the 13th — so it’s worth noting that nothing is officially confirmed yet. The core debate: Juice=Juice has a self-produced live show scheduled at Kanadevia Hall on the 16th, and whether that collides with Kōhaku’s press conference or rehearsals is in question, along with whether event bookings can really be read as a signal of whether a group will make the cut. The prediction YouTuber’s comments are based solely on his own personal connections rather than any official announcement, and the COUNTDOWN JAPAN stage sizes are just a rough gauge of expected turnout, not something that directly determines Kōhaku eligibility — a point several posters in the thread raised themselves (“that’s unrelated”).
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hello! Project board) thread “Kōhaku Uta Gassen lineup announcement is next Monday (November 16).”
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