Greetings all! I'm Kazumi Miyazaki, Representative for the International Red-White Singing Festival!

Kazumi Miyazaki (Right) with Keisha Claudia and Suzumi Kasai

Since 2006, I worked as a consultant for foreigners in Japan that lived here and wanted to work here. With this, I was able to see many different problems that foreigners here face.

One big thing that I saw was that the foreigners that come to Japan that wish to make a positive impact on the Japanese working society, and the Japanese workers, had a little chance for interaction. To be able to help formulate this mutual understanding, we created the 1st International Red-White Singing Festival!

The main aim being for Japanese people to sing in a foreign language, and the reverse for foreigners with them singing Japanese songs. This year's festival will be taking place in September!

The 7th International Red-White Singing Festival had a wide range of participants from all over Asia, The Americas, and Europe numbering around 400 people, while we also had 550 Japanese participants as well!

For the Japanese people that were able to see foreign people have such a passion for singing in Japanese, and vice versa foreigners seeing Japanese people singing in their own native language it was an extremely joyous experience. It allowed everyone to feel a connection that they previously didn’t have.
Although these foreigners are living and working together with Japanese people in Japan, we know that it is inevitable that there is not much chance for cultural exchange and interaction. But we think that with this event, where both foreigners and Japanese people try to find common ground singing in each other's languages, we feel that everyone can start to have an understanding of the others backgrounds and cultures.

We want to create an atmosphere where we create a respect for each other's culture, for respecting each other's languages through song, and through song and this festival create a stronger bond between everyone!

In 2011, as a result of the Tohoku Earthquake, a multitude of foreigners that were in Japan left the country. Nevertheless, there were many that stayed, those that had made a living here, those that had a family, those that chose to stay.
Many Japanese people lost someone, be it a family member, a friend, a co-worker, in this awful event, and many foreigners were the same. They had the chance to leave Japan and return to the safety of their own country but they didn't do so, instead looking to help Japan recover in some way.
These foreigners should be seen as being special friends to Japan.
The Tohoku Earthquake was one of the big reasons for the creation of this festival. After the initial shock in March, with the head of the Japanese Tourism Agency we launched the first-ever International Red-White Singing Festival and had a great number of foreign participants.
With a collective of young people joining in to help with the exchange of culture and so on, we finished the festival with a shower of applause.

With this result, a great multitude of media, both domestic and foreign, picked up this story and featured it on their sites and in the papers! We were both extremely grateful and quite shocked how far we reached!

Realizing the potential of this amazing festival!

In August 2017, the first International Red-White Singing Festival Abroad was held in Cebu in the Philippines! This was known as [International Red-White Singing Festival In Cebu]

This festival was a great success and was also picked up by a collection of local media as well as media in Japan!

The same year in October, the Japanese version of the International Red-White Singing Festival was held, and as a show of appreciation and connection, a representative from Cebu was invited to come and join in with the festivities!


The Japan Tourism Agency, Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as the Philippine Government helped support the festival. As well as this a collection of different events happening at the Festival such as Kimono fashion show, a collective of Gospel singers, and Idol groups, a joint team of Chinese and Japanese dancers, and many teams from Asia and South America joined in, leading to a total of about 200 members coming on stage to participate!

One of the highlights was when Kenichi Unag, the representative from Cebu, took to the stage and performed his own arrangement. Other highlights were a Filipino lady and Indian gentleman's duet, singers from Brazil, Myanmar, Taiwan and Japanese, whose skill was so high it was hard for the judges to compare!
After this, the head of the Japan Tourism Agency gave out a prize to both the winner of the Cebu Festival and the Tokyo Festival!

Top Left：Scene from the 7th International Red White Singing Festival ・Bottom Left: A prize is given to Kenichi Unag from the head of the Japan Tourism Agency・
Top Right：KENICHI　UNAG Performing on Stage・ Bottom Left：Appearance in the Manila Times Oct 2017

The world has already taken note of Japan's rich cultural heritage, as well as the anime culture that has been a prominent point for foreign interest.

With this, we have seen a large acceleration of the growth of Japanese fans.

After the launch of the International Red-White Singing Festival abroad in 2017, there has been 2 events in Cebu and 1 in Bali, all three being wonderfully successful, leading to even more people gaining an interest In Japan.

But the amount of the people that can actually come is quite low, especially in these regions due to financial difficulties.

We have come to see that many have this dream to come.

We want this International Red-White Singing Festival in Tokyo to be more connected with the world at launch and we wish for more people to be able to come!
We want this festival to be an event where those that love Japan and Japanese songs can gather and perform! We want more events all over the world to be held and then a final to consist of the winners of the preliminaries to be held in Tokyo!
At current, we plan to hold auditions in Cebu, Bali, and Taiwan and ask three people to come and participate in the International Red-White Singing Festival in Tokyo. The preliminaries will be held in August in these locations. We will then invite those that pass to come to the International Red-White Singing Festival 2019 in Tokyo in October!
We hope that everyone that reads about this project can feel the same as us and help us on our journey to linking the world with song. We need your help to do so, so please help us to create an amazing lasting festival that we hope will be an amazing tool for inter-connectivity for years to come!

The International Red-White Singing Festival Pre-Party

This will be held on the eve of the International Red-White Singing Festival at the same venue as the festival!
It will be a chance for Japanese that want to make friends with foreigners to do so and the other way around! There will be Karaoke, performances, games that will have prizes, even a time for those that want to meet someone special and generally a time to find new friends!

We want everyone to get involved, the volunteers, the singers, and those involved with the running of the festival!
Some of the games that will be played will have some prizes attached!

As this is before the festival, it will be ok to sing in your native languages!
A variety of performances are also being thought up for the party, such as dances, pantomime, stand-up comedy, magic and so on! In regards to the games that are being prepared we will be looking at games that don't need words!
Those that win these games, will be presented with original International Red-White Singing Festival goods!

The content of the party may be subject to change

Kazumi Miyazaki after presenting an award to a participant

About the International Red-White Singing Festival 2011- 2019 Digital Photobook

The International Red-White Singing Festival 2011- 2019 Digital Photobook is a PDF book that collates the past 9 festivals, that will also contain the names of those that have helped back the project! It will be easy to use on your phone, tablet and PC so wherever you are you can look back on the Festivals!

International Red-White Singing Festival 2011- 2019 Digital Photobook (provisional design)

About the International Red-White Singing Festival Sticker, T-shirt, and Ballpoint Pen

The following are designs for some of the returns we are preparing for backers:

T-shirt (provisional design) Sticker (provisional design) Ballpoint Pen (provisional design)

Concerning the items above and postage

The International Red-White Singing Festival Sticker, T-shirt, and Ballpoint Pen will only be available to be picked up at the Festival, so please take this into consideration when choosing a return. No returns will be posted.

Each year from 2011, the event has been shown on news programs such as NHK, NHKBS, NHK WORLD.


The event has also been introduced in several newspapers such as Mainichi Shinbun, The Japan Times, Jiji Press, Korea Economic Daily and so on.
As well as Japanese focused media, the festival was also featured in various foreigner-focused media located in Japan.

Taiwan (Taiwan Times)/ Sri Lanka (Jaya Sri) / India (Maitreyi India)
Nepal (Hamro Nepal) Indonesia (Media Nuansa Indoniesia) Myanmar (Jyuebama)
Vietnam (Giao Lu'u) Malaysia (Malaysia Times) Thai (Sumai Times)

In regards to web-based media, Xinhua News Agency among others introduced the festival!
As the Japanese Brazilian community is quite large, a large amount of videos were taken and spread around the community.
Cebu Daily, A newspaper in Manila also featured the festival.
As you can see it is a large event that many people from all over the world get involved in!