Friday, March 29, 2013

The right time to announce your marriage if you are a Japanese celebrity

This article from Real Life offers an interesting view why Japanese celebrities like to announce their marriages during the year-end and March in case you are wondering why there's a series of such announcements in this month alone. Now, will we get any more surprises in the last few days of March?

As the sakura blooms in spring, the entertainment world is also seeing a series of happy marriage announcements.

On 1 March, Tsutsumi Shinichi who has been tagged as the "co-star killer" by entertainment reporters and widely reputed as the extraordinary playboy of his time, announced his marriage through his agency's website. His wife is an ordinary woman who's 32 and 16 years his junior who he met four years ago.

Spring has also come to the rakugo world where Kokontei Kikinojou and NHK announcer Fujii Ayako announced their wedding to the media via a fax statement on 13 March. The couple met during a programme on NHK-BS and dated for three years before getting married.

Naka Riisa and Nakao Akiyoshi who were first FRIDAY-ed last year, announced their marriage on 21 March with a joint statement and that she is already three months' pregnant. In response to this, there were many disappointed comments online from fans.

On the following day, another bombshell came from Sakai Masato and Kanno Miho who met through the movie "Ooku" and it was met with bewildered frowns from entertainment reporters who had never found out about their relationship until this marriage announcement.

On 25 March, Amano Kousei and Hinagata Akiko got married and it was especially sweet for the latter who had gone through a divorce in the past.

The following day, the horse racing world also saw jockey Fukunaga Yuuichi announce that he is going to marry FujiTV announcer Matsuo Midori. Their relationship had already been known in the racing world so it wasn't a surprise after all. Matsuo will leave FujiTV in September to support her husband so this news was met with happiness and sadness from her fans/

On the same day, Yoshizawa Hisashi who is a familiar face to longtime drama lovers, also announced his marriage to model Kiriyama Maki even though the actual marriage registration took place on 3 March.

*Note that on the same day this report came out, comedian Yabe Hiroyuki announced that he is going to marry former TBS announcer Aoki Yuko in April.

Why is that marriage announcements seem to be following one another recently? Actually, there is a perfect reason for this trend.

According to an insider in an entertainment agency, marriage announcements tend to be concentrated during the year-end and end of fiscal year i.e. March and this has been a longtime practice. During this period, everyone will be busy with various things thus public concern about the marriages will generally be low. Especially if we are talking about shot-gun marriages, sudden marriages (short dating period) or even marriages where someone is a third party (i.e. one party snatches the man/woman from a longtime partner), it will be more desirable to announce their marriages during this period so that the media won't have time or interest in digging for more information which can hurt the celebrities concerned.

At the same time, this has brought about another interesting trend where entertainment reporters are very free during this period. In the past, they may have to spend a lot of time to do research but during this time of the year, the celebrities would be the ones announcing their marriages and offering the information to the media so they effectively have nothing much to do.

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