Well, I hadn't thought it would come quite this quickly but in the past week, I realized that this milestone was very much around the corner. And sure enough, it has finally arrived.
I had been wondering what I would write about when it came to Article No. 10,000. I knew that I couldn't really just devote it to any regular song or album. But then, I remembered that yesterday I had posted Masako-san's（マサ子さん）"Psynomey" and noted that the short-lived duo had been one of the competing bands on late-night TBS music program "Miyaki Yuuji no Ikasu Band Tengoku" (Yuuji Miyake's Cool Band Heaven) which ran from February 1989 to December 1990. However, unlike shows including "The Best 10" (ザ・ベストテン) and "Enka no Hanamichi"(演歌の花道), I barely remember catching it despite the fact that I was in Japan for several of its months on air.
Well, one reason is that the show, and henceforth, I will be referring to it by its short name "Ika-Ten"（イカ天）, was televised on early Saturday mornings between 12:30 and 3:00 am. I know that I was off on weekends, but frankly, I did want my beauty sleep (not that it ever did me any good). Although the times that I did stay up, I was doing more channel surfing than actual viewing, I recollect coming across brief snippets of "Ika-Ten" but I wasn't really all that big on rock bands at that time, so really any talk about the show itself has been based on YouTube excerpts.
I guess because of the nature of the show which was basically the Battle of the Bands involving up-and-coming amateur groups and the difficulty in placing a 2 1/2-hour program during prime time, "Ika-Ten" got the graveyard shift. However, I think that played to its advantage and coolness factor since the high school kids would most likely, without their parents' knowledge, try to catch the late-night show and all of these potentially kakkoii bands.
Yuuji Miyake（三宅裕司）was the overall host of the show and he later had an even longer run as a music show emcee when he joined the NTV Saturday night program "The Yoru mo Hippare"（The 夜もヒッパレ）. But with "Ika-Ten", he ended up quarterbacking a program that became a very bright if brief social phenomenon as it became must-see TV for the young generation at that time due to the groups duking it out and the presence of the latest Band Boom in music. Even that short nickname eventually became one of the top buzzwords for 1990. Twelve bands came onto "Ika-Ten" every episode to vie for a number of awards with the most coveted one being the Challenger Prize. Winning this particular award meant that the band would go up against the incumbent winner of the previous episode, known as the Ika-Ten King（イカ天キング）, to see if it could dethrone the band and become the next king. Five straight weekly victories as King meant promotion to Grand Ika-Ten King（グランドイカ天キング）and the promise of a recording contract under a major label and the end of the band's appearances on the show.
Of course, before all that, the band has to play in front of a panel of judges which included music celebrities including songwriters Ginji Ito（伊藤銀次）and Reiko Yukawa（湯川れい子）, some of whom could be quite harsh in their assessments. There were also a couple of lamps at each judge's table that were able to be switched on and off: Red was known as the Wipe（ワイプ）which was a bad signal leading to the footage of the band playing getting increasingly smaller. Blue was Kansou（完奏）which I think meant "play to the end".
The system led to some notoriety right from the first episode on February 11th 1989 when a band known as Hysterics (above video) got the Wipe treatment. Well, the Hysterics' leader and female vocalist didn't take that too well and decided to drop trou and everything else below the waist right in front of the camera in anger (the band was disqualified). It was only the quick thinking and reaction of the cameraman and director that prevented the show from getting an R-18 rating. Of course, being in the wee (no pun intended) hours of the morning, I really don't think the TBS switchboard lit up like a Xmas tree, and heck, when there is a bunch of edgy rock bands on stage going for blood, sparks will tend to fly. Besides, the incident brought tons of publicity to the show. Supposedly, the singer left the band and the band itself soon broke up thereafter.
"Ika-Ten" also had issues of drug use among the staff in the two years that it was on, according to a 2016 book focusing on Japanese entertainment scandals. All of the shows including "Ika-Ten" that the staffers had been connected with were shut down for a while at least. In addition to that news, there was also a change in the judges and the lessening of the Band Boom in 1990 which led to the show dropping in popularity, so the decision was made that it would finish its run at the end of the year. However, there was a one-off special version which was broadcast during in the last week of 2007.
Even though I never really caught "Ika-Ten", I personally think that it was a significant show because a number of bands that we've all gotten to know got their start there and have been part of the J-Pop scene. There are a few that I hadn't even realized were competing on "Ika-Ten".
To finish off, here is a brief sample of some of the Ika-Ten Kings and Grand Ika-Ten Kings.
Flying Kids: 3rd Ika-Ten King and 1st Grand Ika-Ten King (5 weeks: March 4th - April 8th 1989)
Jitterin' Jinn: 6th Ika-Ten King (1 week: May 20th 1989)
NORMA JEAN: 11th Ika-Ten King (4 weeks: August 5 - August 26th 1989)
Begin: 12th Ika-Ten King and 2nd Grand Ika-Ten King (5 weeks: September 2nd - September 30th 1989)
Tama: 14th Ika-Ten King and 3rd Grand Ika-Ten King (5 weeks: November 11th - December 9th 1989)
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