On November 28, the Japanese game company Bandai Namco held the “Game Carnival 2025” event in Shanghai. During the event, Japanese singer Maki Otsuki was performing the ending theme song “memories” from the first season of the anime “One Piece” when suddenly, all the lights went out, the music stopped, and the performance was abruptly halted. The organizers cited it as an “unforeseen circumstance”.
A video circulating online showed Maki Otsuki’s surprise as the screens and lights on the stage went dark while she was singing. She looked bewildered as two staff members came on stage, took away the microphone, and escorted her off the stage. The audience reacted with shock, exclaiming phrases like, “Unbelievable” and “It’s a sudden stop, a nationwide sudden stop, witnessing it live… in this lifetime.”
In response to this incident, Japanese media veteran and Executive Director of a think tank on Indo-Pacific strategy, Akio Yaito, posted on social media platform X, stating that a ludicrous incident occurred in Shanghai, China, that evening. While Maki Otsuki was performing “memories” on stage, the screens and lights suddenly went out as Chinese officials cut the power, forcing the performance to halt. The event organizers explained the stoppage as due to “unforeseen circumstances,” but it was perceived as forced intervention by the Chinese government against Japanese artists.
Yaito analyzed that the Chinese authorities’ difficulty with Japanese artists’ performances is primarily to pressure the Japanese government through artists and fans to compel Prime Minister Naosae Takamichi to retract comments related to Taiwan. He criticized the Chinese government’s indiscriminate forced methods, demonstrating disrespect towards art and human rights, resulting in significant losses for artists, organizers, and fans.
He mentioned that numerous Japanese artists’ concerts in China were unexpectedly canceled recently, including performances by Ayumi Hamasaki, Minami, Hanabu, and Yoshimoto Kogyo, forming a rare phenomenon of large-scale cancellations. Ayumi Hamasaki’s Shanghai performance, which was scheduled for the next day with over 14,000 ticket holders, was suddenly called off. The stage that over two hundred staff members spent five days constructing had already been dismantled. Ayumi Hamasaki apologized to her fans on social media.
The incident sparked strong condemnation from Japanese netizens on social media towards the Chinese government’s actions. They believed that the Japanese government mustn’t yield to such rogue behavior and supported Prime Minister Takamichi’s refusal to retract her statements.
This incident also caused a stir in the Chinese-speaking community. Writer and independent commentator “TheXiangYang” expressed on social media platform X, “The lower one’s level of knowledge, the more blind confidence one has. The so-called ignorant fear nothing. Dictators are full of confidence with a trail of nonsense, abbreviated as ‘nonsense confidence’; tightening their belts confidently on their chosen path, known as the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’… Confucius said it best, ‘petty people do not understand fate and have no fear, they are disrespectful to great people, and they scoff at the words of the saint’. What do you think Taiwanese people are defending? Isn’t it just this kind of freedom from becoming like this!”
Dissident residing in the United States, Zi Li Yang, mentioned, “Since Xi Jinping openly ousted Hu Jintao, it’s not strange for an actor to be taken off stage midway. The land of China no longer cares about dignity, and in any occasion, only ‘strength’ matters.”
One netizen commented, “It seems like in ‘The Pianist’ or some other movie, there was a scene where the Nazi SS waited for the Jewish pianist to finish playing before taking action.”
There were also Chinese netizens on Weibo gently criticizing the situation, saying, “In my view, if Japan’s performances need to be restricted, it should be done with the right methods. Cutting off the power halfway through a performance, not allowing them to finish setting up the stage, and leaving the artist to sing alone in an empty venue just appears undignified.”