Japanese pop singer Maki Otsuki was in the middle of a concert in Shanghai on Friday when her performance was abruptly cut short, her sound system was turned off, and the organizers ordered her to leave the stage.
Otsuki was never given a reason for the rude treatment, but it appears to be part of China’s escalating feud with Japan over Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae’s comments on Taiwan.
Otsuki was performing at the Bandai Namco Festival 2025 in Shanghai, an event dedicated to animation and video games produced by a massive Japanese entertainment company. One of her songs is the theme for the worldwide anime phenomenon One Piece, which was adapted into a live-action series by Netflix in 2023.
Otsuki was scheduled to perform on Friday and Saturday at the festival, but in the middle of her set on Friday, the stage lights and music were abruptly cut off. Two crew members hustled the singer off the stage. Her management company delicately attributed her mid-song cancellation to “unavoidable circumstances.”
“Apart from the cancellation itself, there were no particular issues, and we were kindly assisted by the local staff,” Otsuki’s managers said.
The following day, another Japanese pop star named Ayumi Hamasaki found herself performing to an empty stadium with 14,000 seats. The event was then canceled in its entirety after “comprehensively taking into consideration various factors,” according to the organizers.
“Video footage of Otsuki being silenced on stage and ordered to leave has circulated widely on Chinese social media, sparking criticism of local authorities for going overboard with restrictions on performers from Japan,” the South China Morning Post reported on Monday.
The incredibly brusque shutdown of Otsuki’s performance has greatly angered her Chinese fans, who have complained on social media that she was given the “Hu Jintao treatment.” Hu Jintao is an elderly Chinese Communist Party leader and former president who was grabbed by security officers and dragged out of a Chinese Communist Party Congress meeting in October 2022 for no obvious reason, with cameras rolling the whole time.
“Don’t you care about the audience? They are after all Chinese, right?” asked one user on China’s tightly controlled Weibo social media platform.
“What a shame that not everybody gets to feel the power of music,” observed U.S. Ambassador to Japan George Glass. “Don’t stop believing Maki!”
Chinese nationalists also weighed in on social media, supporting the censorship inflicted by their authoritarian regime and wondering why all Japanese performances were not canceled sooner, since all of China is ostensibly “angry with Japan.”
“Other artists and shows that have been forced to call off performances in China include pop singer Ayumi Hamasaki, jazz pianist Hiromi Uehara, as well as the musical ‘Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon,’” noted Japan’s Kyodo News.
Jazz musician Yoshio Suzuki was running through a sound check in Beijing two weeks ago when he was shut down by a squad of Chinese plainclothes police. The owner of the venue said “the police told him all concerts with Japanese people are canceled, and there is no discussion.”
Another Japanese singer named Akiko Yoshida, who performs under the stage name “Kokia,” was about to go live at a performance in Beijing on November 19 when Chinese authorities locked the doors and refused to allow the audience inside. Social media videos showed a crowd of angry fans thronging outside the venue and demanding refunds for their tickets.
Music venues across China have reportedly been told not to schedule any performances by Japanese artists in 2026 and have even been banned from sending promotional messages to Chinese fans about upcoming Japanese shows.
China’s cultural and economic warfare against Japan began after Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae told her parliament on November 7 that Japan would consider a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to be a “survival-threatening situation.” Japanese leaders commonly express support for Taiwan, but not using those exact words, which imply Japanese military intervention would be justified.
The Chinese Communist regime was enraged by Takaichi’s remarks, with some of the more hotheaded Chinese politicians demanding her immediate resignation, or even threatening violence against her. China has steadily escalated diplomatic and economic pressure against Japan over the past month, with the stated goal of forcing Takaichi to retract her comments, but she has refused to do so.
The pro-Maoist New York Times (NYT) reported last week that Takaichi’s popularity in Japan has grown throughout her showdown with China, even as China’s retaliatory measures have damaged Japan’s tourist and entertainment income.
“Young citizens in particular have praised her stance, in a sign that she has struck a chord with a Japanese electorate that has been increasingly willing to question the nation’s longstanding pacifism. And she has been backed by Japanese, American, and Taiwanese officials,” the NYT noted.
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