Cloud Nine’s Takuya Chigira Talks Ado’s WME Deal, J-Pop Event Zipangu & Paving the Way to the World for Japan’s Artists

In 2025, more than 500,000 fans flocked to see Ado’s second-ever world tour, Ado WORLD TOUR 2025 “Hibana” Powered by Crunchyroll.

In May this year, Cloud Nine staged Zipangu in Los Angeles — the largest festival exclusively featuring Japanese artists to be held outside Japan.

Why did company president Takuya Chigira commit to a festival that disregarded profit? He spoke candidly about the structural challenges facing Japan’s music industry and about his sense of crisis over the outflow of talent overseas in this interview with Billboard Japan.

The Zipangu festival took place in Los Angeles in May.

How did it go? Our reason for holding Zipangu had nothing to do with festival ambitions or profit — it was about giving Japanese artists a push to challenge themselves abroad.

So if the artists who performed came away thinking, “Let’s try a North American tour next” or “Let’s play a show in the U.S.,” then I’d call Zipangu a success.

From a business standpoint, we could have put on a show with Ado as headliner for about a fifth of the cost and in an even bigger venue.

But last year, even with three of Japan’s top-tier artists on the bill, CEIPA’s matsuri ’25 was kept to a scale of just 7,000 — that’s how cautious people still are about putting on shows outside the country.

Unless someone proves, “This is how far we can go,” Japanese artists won’t move, and local promoters will lose faith in Japan’s potential.

With Ado on our roster, I felt this was the moment to hit the gas, and that’s why we decided to do it.

Our staff really moved for us on this one.

We’d never even organized a domestic festival before, and our first one was in Los Angeles.

On top of that, we had a team of fewer than ten people, all handling it alongside their regular jobs.

On top of their daily primary responsibilities, I’d say five or six people actually ran Zipangu.