Winner of AKB48’s Upcoming “Janken Tournament” to get a solo debut!

| 48 / 46 Group | Posted by TokyoGirls'Update on Aug.07.2014

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It’s been revealed that the winner of AKB48’s “5th Annual Janken Tournament” will be rewarded with the chance to make her solo debut. The announcement was made late at night on the 6th by Shinobu Kayano, the group’s general manager, on “AKB48’s All Night Nippon” radio show (broadcast every Wednesday at 1 a.m.).

At the beginning of the show, for which the weekly on-air personality was HKT48’s Rino Sashihara, Ms. Kayano announced that the winner of the rock-paper-scissors tournament would make her solo debut, and that should a member who has already made her solo debut win the tournament, the prize would be a solo concert.

So far, there have been only eight AKB members who have made solo debuts; excluding the three original members Tomomi Itano, Atsuko Maeda, and Tomomi Kasai, they are Misaki Iwasa, Mayu Watanabe, Rino Sashihara, the pianist Sakiko Matsui, Yuki Kashiwagi, Minami Takahashi, Asuka Kuramochi, and Kaori Matsumura (SKE48/indies).

The regular members of AKB48, as well as those who are concurrently in AKB48 and other groups, will advance unconditionally to this tournament, but Sashihara will make her appearance from the preliminary round which will be held tomorrow, the 8th, during “AKB48’s Summer Festival” at Makuhari Messe in Chiba.

Producer Yasushi Akimoto also made an appearance at the opening of the radio show. During the same show two years ago, in June of 2012, since scandalous reports had surfaced of Sashihara having maintained a relationship with a man in the past, and since Mr. Akimoto had sentenced her to transferring to HKT, when Sashihara opened the show by calling out its title, “AKB48’s All Night Nippon,” Mr. Akimoto retorted with no hesitation, “You’re not in AKB.” Afterward, with the help of her friend Lily Franky and scriptwriter Yuichi Fukuda, Sashihara wrote her first book, “Gyakutenryoku ~Pinchi wo Mate~” (meaning “the power of reversal: wait for the tough times;”), focused on everything related to her successes and failures. The book, published by Kodansha, will go on sale August 11th.

AKB48 official website : http://www.akb48.co.jp/

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