The Countdown, Tokyo Edition

Countdown TV—the TBS chart show that has been running weekly in Japan since 1993—is one of those windows into Japanese pop that works precisely because it makes no attempt to explain itself to outsiders. The charts in spring 2011 tell their own particular story: AKB48 dominance still operating at full force, the Johnny’s Entertainment groups stacking the top ten with practiced efficiency, occasional anomalies that make you look twice. Three weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, the pop machine was still running, which felt strange and also felt like exactly what it was supposed to do.