ARASHI
Arashi (嵐; lit. "Storm") was a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates in 1999, consisting of five members: Satoshi Ohno, Sho Sakurai, Masaki Aiba, Kazunari Ninomiya, and Jun Matsumoto. The group was announced on September 15, 1999, aboard a cruise ship off the coast of Honolulu, Hawaii, and officially debuted on November 3, 1999. It remained with Johnny & Associates until 2023, when they became part of Starto Entertainment under an agent contract. They were initially signed to Pony Canyon, where they released one studio album and six singles, beginning with their 1999 eponymous debut single. In 2001 they were moved to the Johnny's subsidiary label J Storm, which was set up for their succeeding releases.
Their eighteenth single "Love So Sweet", theme song for Matsumoto's drama Hana Yori Dango 2, was one of the top five best-selling singles of 2007 in Japan, and their first single to exceed 400,000 copies sold overall in nearly seven years. In the following two years, Arashi became the first artist to place the top two rankings on the Oricon singles yearly chart with their singles "Truth / Kaze no Mukō e" and "One Love" in 2008, and "Believe / Kumorinochi, Kaisei" and "Ashita no Kioku / Crazy Moon (Kimi wa Muteki)" in 2009. They simultaneously topped the 2009 Oricon singles, album and music DVD yearly charts, becoming the third artist in Oricon history to monopolize the top three best-selling singles of the year. In 2010, all six of Arashi's singles ranked within the top ten of the Oricon singles yearly chart, and their million-selling studio album Boku no Miteiru Fūkei was named the best-selling album of the year in Japan. As of October 2020, the group had sold over 58.8 million copies of albums, singles and videos, becoming the best selling boy band in Asia. Since then, Arashi continued to release chart-topping singles and albums, performed in sold-out concert tours, host a number of variety shows, and remained an influential figure in Japanese media.
On January 27, 2019, Arashi announced that group activities would be suspended as of December 31, 2020. On May 6, 2025 the group announced their end of activities following a final tour in the spring of 2026, which came to a close on May 31 at Tokyo Dome.
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