Q&A Month! (2012): Question 5

The holiday threw me off a bit but I am back and ready to try to get everything back on schedule as I want it to be. And since I keep getting new questions I know the best way to help do that is to get to answering them.

The deadline for questions is of course the end of this month, so if you have something you want me to try to answer make sure you leave it in this post.

This question is the first from kawaii:

i wanna ask about jr life. do you think jr tachi get paid for concert,photo magazine & shokura? or jr tachi must spend fee for dance lesson?? just curious...


When it comes to pay for the Juniors it is a lot of guessing based off of tidbits of information gleaned from various sources. It is considered a fact that they do get paid something for concerts and live performances like that. Though it is said to be a rather small amount, which would make sense business-wise when you are having concerts that use hundreds of Juniors as back dancers.

And I am sure they get the standard pay for things like endorsements and acting as anyone else would in the entertainment industry. Much like with debut Johnny's they get paid a salary but if they have activities like product endorsements or acting they get that pay added on, which is part of how Nakai Masahiro from SMAP earns as much as he does, because he has a lot of work on variety programs and of course his endorsements.

For magazine photo shoots I am unsure about. I do not think I have heard anything either way about that.

I do not think they have to pay for their dance lessons, as it seems like the lessons are more just teaching them the moves for whatever performance they are going to be in, not to become better dancers so much.

Of course this really only relates to the younger Juniors as I believe the older Juniors, like those in the dance umbrella groups and long time Juniors like Sano Mizuki or Kazama Shunsuke get paid on the same salary system as debuted Johnny's. But again that is mostly speculation from going off what little is known about pay in Johnny's.