Producer Park Jin-young held a press conference on February 7 at Sony Music headquarters in Tokyo to mark the start of the “Nizi Project”.
On the same day, Park CEO introduced the “Nizi Project” in Japanese for more than 10 minutes.
The attendees included Sunsuke Muramatsu (left), CEO of Sony Music, and JYP CEO Jung Wook.
“If the first stage of K-pop was to export Korean content overseas, and the second stage was to find overseas talent and mix it with Korean singers (2PM), then the third stage is to nurture and produce talent directly overseas,” explained Park Jin-young.
“I will visit eight regions in Japan and two in the U.S. for an audition for a month from mid-July this year.”
“We will select candidates from Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Okinawa, L.A and Hawaii, and select 20 contestants among them,” he said. “We plan to air a reality show from October that will cover the process from now.
They will also practice for their debut for six months at the JYP Training Center in Korea and select the final members after the end of the training period and make their debut in November 2020. From April 2020, we are also planning on broadcasting a program featuring trainees working hard on their training to make their final debut.”
The project name ‘Nizi’ means ‘rainbow’ in Japanese. It means finding talented people of various colors like a rainbow and bringing them together as a team to create a beautiful light.
Park Jin-young said, “The team aims to become a global group that can play not only in Japan but also in the world. I’m sure our strengths will combine to produce the best results.“
On the other hand, the Niji Project audition targets female who can speak Japanese fluently from the age of 15 to 22 (from May this year) and have no nationality restrictions.
Sources: Dispatch