We are ARASHI, 27 Years with the Storm, and What Comes Next [Part 3]

In 2017, ARASHI sat at the undisputed summit of Japanese entertainment. Their streak of consecutive number-one singles continued to grow. They were fixtures at the annual NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen, Japan's most-watched musical broadcast. Five-dome tours were routine. Fan club membership had surpassed two million. By every conceivable metric, the group was not declining but accelerating.

To understand the magnitude of what was about to happen, international readers need to appreciate what ARASHI meant to Japan at this point. They were not merely a popular music group. They were the hosts of two of the nation's most-watched variety shows. Their faces appeared in advertisements for everything from airlines to electronics to instant curry. Sakurai Sho delivered the news on Monday evenings. Matsumoto Jun was one of the most sought-after dramatic actors of his generation. Ninomiya Kazunari had starred in a Clint Eastwood film. Aiba Masaki was a beloved television personality. And Ohno Satoshi was recognized as a genuine visual artist. For an entire generation, ARASHI was not background music, they were the fabric of daily life.

Behind the spotlight, however, a different kind of storm was quietly forming, one that would shake the foundations of Japan's pop culture landscape.

June 16, 2017, A Hotel Room in Osaka

It began with a group message from Ohno Satoshi.

"There's something I want to talk about. After work tonight, could everyone come to my room?"

The date was June 16, 2017. The five members had traveled to Osaka a day early for "Arashi no Wakuwaku Gakkou," an educational entertainment event scheduled at Kyocera Dome the following day. That evening, the four gathered in Ohno's hotel room.

What Ohno said next would alter the course of ARASHI's history.

"I want to end my activities as a member of ARASHI by the year 2020. With our twentieth anniversary and the year 2020 as a natural turning point, I think it might be time to fold ARASHI and for each of us to walk our own path. I know this is selfish, but I want to experience what it's like to live freely, unbound by anything, even if it's just once."

In a 2022 appearance on TBS's "Kin Sma," Matsumoto Jun revealed that Ohno's initial intent was even more drastic: "At first, what Ohno said was that he wanted to leave, to quit, that he wanted to stop working entirely." This was not a proposal for a hiatus. Ohno had come prepared with the resolve to withdraw from the group and retire from the entertainment industry altogether.

For those who have followed this series from the beginning, this moment lands with the weight of inevitability. Ohno had told Johnny Kitagawa he wanted to quit twice before he even debuted. He turned off his phone for two weeks after the group's launch. Eighteen years later, the reluctant leader was once again asking to be released.

Four Reactions, Four Personalities

Sakurai Sho grasped the situation immediately and understood his role in it. "I knew that it would be difficult for one person's feelings to determine ARASHI's future. But at the same time, you can't use the feelings of several people to chain down someone else's life. We needed to find a landing point where everyone could agree. And in that moment, I felt, that's my job."

Matsumoto Jun was the only member who said he was not surprised. "I had also talked about closing the group while we were still in good form," he later admitted. The fact that the person at the center of ARASHI's creative vision had independently entertained the same thought speaks volumes about the psychological weight of sustained peak performance.

Aiba Masaki's response was the most visceral: "I was so shocked I literally fell over backward." Ninomiya Kazunari, whose birthday fell the very next day, initially thought the gathering was a surprise celebration. "I thought it was a birthday party," he recalled with a rueful smile.

One Year of Conversations

What followed was not a swift decision but an extended, deeply personal process. Ohno met with each member individually to hear their true feelings. The five then engaged in repeated discussions over the course of many months. In February 2018, they informed their agency. By June 2018, they reached their final conclusion.

The answer: neither disbandment nor withdrawal, but an indefinite hiatus, "活動休止" (katsudō kyūshi).

It had taken approximately one year to arrive at a formulation that honored Ohno's need for freedom without severing the bonds between five men who had spent nearly two decades as a unit. Sakurai later reflected: "Having gone through that period, our bond became thicker than it had ever been."

January 27, 2019, The Sunday That Shook Japan

On the afternoon of Sunday, January 27, 2019, at 5:00 PM, a video message from all five members was posted to the ARASHI fan club website.

"We, ARASHI, have decided to suspend our group activities as of December 31, 2020."

At 8:00 PM the same day, the five held a press conference at the Johnny & Associates office in Minato, Tokyo, lasting approximately one hour and twenty minutes. In a deliberate choice meant to prevent fans from feeling the occasion was funereal, they arrived not in dark suits but in natural-toned jackets, warm colors instead of mourning black.

Matsumoto Jun spoke to the core of what held them together: "The thing I feel most strongly is that each of the five of us loves ARASHI."

Aiba Masaki posed a question that would echo through the years. "When we debuted, I said I wanted to create a storm across the entire world. Twenty years later, I don't think we've actually done that yet. So Leader, when you face the same direction as us again, we can do it, right?" Ohno smiled. "Shall we start a storm?" Aiba grinned. "Right? Whenever you're ready. Someday."

It was simultaneously a farewell and a promise, the kind of exchange that only people who have spent half their lives together can have.

Ninomiya Kazunari spoke quietly but with unmistakable resolve: "Being able to work together as five until the very, very end of 2020, that is happiness, that is joy. I want to make memories, even one second longer."

When a reporter asked whether the decision was irresponsible, Sakurai Sho answered with the calm authority that had defined his dual career as both an idol and a news anchor: "Our sincerity is this: we have set aside nearly two years to convey our gratitude. That is our good faith. We ask that you judge whether this is irresponsible based on our attitude and actions during that time."

A Nation Responds, And Surprises Itself

Within minutes, the top three worldwide trending topics on Twitter were all ARASHI-related: "活動休止" (hiatus) at number one, "ジャニーズ" (Johnny's) at number two, "SMAP" at number three, the last a reference to the only other Japanese group whose dissolution had carried comparable national weight. On Weibo in China, over one million posts were recorded, a testament to ARASHI's deep following across East Asia. The following day, the hashtag "#大野くんの夏休み" (#Ohno-kun's Summer Vacation) trended at number one in Japan, a sign that fans had chosen warmth over anger, understanding over resentment, love over blame.

This response was not accidental. It was the product of twenty years of trust. ARASHI had built a relationship with their fanbase that could absorb even the most devastating news without fracturing.

Applications to the fan club surged. People who had never formally joined, casual listeners, people who had loved ARASHI in high school but drifted away, parents who had discovered the group through their children, all rushed to secure membership before the final curtain. Membership would peak at over three million.

The Truth Behind 5×20, A Farewell Tour in Disguise

Part 2 of this series introduced the staggering scale of "ARASHI Anniversary Tour 5×20" (November 2018 – December 2019): fifty performances across five domes, a total audience of 2,375,000 people, the largest concert tour in Japanese music history. The tour was meticulously designed so that every fan club member could attend at least one show, a logistical undertaking that required unprecedented coordination.

But here is the part of the story that Part 2 deliberately withheld.

When the tour began in November 2018, the members already knew it would be their last. The decision to pause had been made. The agency had been informed. The final conclusion had been reached. Yet fans had not been told. For those first two months, every smile, every encore, every "See you at the next show!" carried a secret weight that only five people in the arena understood.

Consider what that must have been like. To stand before 55,000 people night after night, to sing "Happiness" and "A•RA•SHI" and "Love so sweet" with the energy the audience expected, while knowing, with absolute certainty, that a countdown was running. Every setlist choice was simultaneously a celebration and a goodbye. Every MC segment was both entertainment and a private farewell.

After the hiatus announcement on January 27, 2019, the meaning of the tour transformed overnight. What had been a twentieth-anniversary celebration became a prolonged goodbye. The emotional stakes of every performance multiplied. Ticket demand, already intense, became extraordinary. Fans who had casually planned to "catch a later show" suddenly realized there might not be a later show, not just of this tour, but of ARASHI, period.

Many fans who attended later performances described a strange, paradoxical beauty: concerts that were simultaneously the most joyful and the most sorrowful they had ever experienced. The joy came from being there, from witnessing five men at the peak of their craft performing with an intensity born of finality. The sorrow came from the knowledge that each song was one fewer remaining.

Ohno, according to numerous fan accounts, seemed to look at the sea of penlight differently during this period, as if memorizing a landscape he might never see again. The man who had once turned off his phone for two weeks to avoid the obligations of fame was now absorbing every detail of the fame he had chosen to leave behind.

The final performance took place on Christmas Day, December 25, 2019, at Tokyo Dome. The event was simultaneously broadcast to 329 venues across 617 screens nationwide, the largest live viewing in music history at the time. The concert film "ARASHI Anniversary Tour 5×20 FILM 'Record of Memories'" would go on to earn ¥4.55 billion (approximately $34 million), setting the record for highest-grossing domestic live concert film.

The best album released alongside the tour, "5×20 All the BEST!! 1999-2019," sold approximately 2.1 million copies, the first double-million seller in Johnny's history. It was named the IFPI Global Album of 2019, meaning it was the single best-selling album on the planet that year. The following year, it received Guinness World Record certification.

The best-selling album in the world in 2019 was a greatest hits collection from a group that had already decided to stop. The numbers tell a story that words struggle to contain.

The Pandemic Steals Their Final Year

The year 2020 was meant to be ARASHI's culminating act of gratitude, twelve months dedicated to thanking the fans who had supported them for twenty-one years.

The centerpiece was to be "Arafes 2020," scheduled for May 15-16 at the New National Stadium in Tokyo. An American concert at The Forum in Los Angeles, a venue synonymous with legendary performances, was planned as the realization of the dream proclaimed at their debut: to create a storm across the world. The global stage was finally set.

COVID-19 took everything.

Arafes was postponed, then reimagined as a pre-recorded, audience-free broadcast from the New National Stadium on November 3, their debut anniversary. An estimated five million people watched the stream. The Los Angeles concert was canceled outright. Plans for Asia-wide screenings were scrapped. The meticulously crafted calendar of farewell events disintegrated, one by one, under the weight of a global pandemic.

Every single live performance in 2020 was held without an audience.

In their final year before the hiatus, ARASHI did not see a single fan in person. Not once. No final handshake events. No last backstage encounters. No moment of looking out at a sea of penlights and knowing, viscerally, that this was the end. The goodbye that two years of careful planning had been building toward simply... didn't happen.

For fans, the cruelty was unbearable. Many had already purchased plane tickets and hotel reservations for Arafes. Some had saved for years to afford the trip to Los Angeles. The pandemic did not merely postpone their farewell, it erased it entirely.

At the 62nd Japan Record Awards ceremony, a new honor, the "Special Achievement Award", was created specifically for ARASHI, recognizing artists who had "earned broad public support over many years and made extraordinary contributions to the development of music culture." It was a recognition that transcended the usual competitive categories. ARASHI was no longer being measured against other acts, they had become a category of one. This ceremony became their last television performance before the final night.

The wound of the stolen farewell, the handshakes that never happened, the tears that fell in living rooms instead of arenas, the goodbyes typed into smartphones instead of shouted from stadium seats, would become the direct catalyst for the 2026 Last Tour, five years later. The universe owed ARASHI and their fans a proper ending. It would take half a decade, but the debt would be paid.

December 31, 2020, The Night the Storm Subsided

New Year's Eve. At 8:00 PM, the livestream "This is ARASHI LIVE 2020.12.31" began broadcasting from Tokyo Dome.

Fifty-five thousand seats sat empty. Five voices filled the silence. Each unoccupied chair held the ghost of a fan who should have been there, who had planned to be there, whose last chance to say goodbye in person had been erased by a virus that cared nothing for human milestones.

The setlist read like a twenty-one-year autobiography. Songs from the dark years, when half-empty arenas were the norm. Songs from the golden era, when every single debuted at number one. Songs that had soundtracked weddings and graduations and late-night study sessions and long train rides home. The five performed with a focus and intensity that belied the emptiness of the venue. They were singing not to 55,000 absent fans, but to millions watching on screens, in apartments, in hospital rooms, in cars parked in convenience store lots, on phones held under blankets.

At 9:30 PM, the stream paused. The five appeared via live broadcast from Tokyo Dome on the 71st NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen, the first time any artist had simultaneously performed at their own concert and appeared on the national New Year's Eve broadcast. During their performance of "Kite" (Kaito), the song written for them by Kenshi Yonezu, members took turns speaking to the nation.

Matsumoto Jun's words broke Japan.

"In just over two hours, the year will change, and our storm, our ARASHI, will go quiet for a time. After the storm passes, I hope that a beautiful sky with a rainbow will spread out before all of you."

The metaphor was perfect in its simplicity. A storm passes, and what remains is beauty. The group's name had always contained this duality, destruction and renewal, upheaval and the calm that follows. In his final message on Kōhaku, Matsumoto turned the very name "ARASHI" into a benediction.

After returning from Kōhaku to complete the concert stream, Matsumoto delivered his final words of the night, and perhaps the most revealing words of his entire career. "Johnny-san, thank you for bringing me into Johnny's when I was thirteen." His voice trembled. "Being one of these five, being with these four, that is the greatest dream that came true."

Each member spoke in turn. The room was empty, but the words carried to millions of screens in millions of homes where families sat watching on New Year's Eve, tissues in hand, children asleep on the couch, the final minutes of 2020 ticking away. Social media timelines filled with crying-face emojis and screenshots of tear-streaked faces, not of the members, but of the fans themselves, photographing their own grief as a form of communal witness.

For many, it was the most emotionally intense New Year's Eve of their lives. The usual festivity of ōmisoka, the countdown, the toshikoshi soba, the anticipation of a fresh start, was suffused with mourning. The new year was supposed to represent renewal. Instead, it represented loss.

The clock struck midnight. January 1, 2021.

ARASHI was gone.

For millions of Japanese viewers, the transition into the new year was inseparable from the end of ARASHI. The fireworks, the temple bells, the first sunrise of 2021, all arrived in a world where, for the first time in over two decades, there was no active group called ARASHI. The silence that followed was not merely the absence of music. It was the absence of a constant, something that had been there for so long that its disappearance changed the shape of the everyday.

The new year dawned. Matsumoto Jun had once described an unspoken rule among the members: "We made a point of never appearing together as four in public." The reason was simple and selfless, they did not want to give fans false hope.

Ohno Satoshi disappeared to the remote islands of Okinawa. The remaining four began walking their separate paths.

The stopped clock hung on the wall. Would it ever start again? Could it? And if it did, what would it mean for the man who had asked to be set free?

Continued in Part 4: "The Stopped Clock Starts Again, 2021–2025: Five Years of Silence and Resolve"

Has a beloved artist or group in your country ever announced a hiatus or breakup that felt like a national event? Did fans respond with anger, with grace, or something in between? Tell us in the comments, we'd love to hear how your country says goodbye to its musical heroes.

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