generasia:Featured article for 2010 week 50

Hey! Say! JUMP

Hey! Say! JUMP is a 10 member Johnny's Entertainment group formed on September 24th, 2007 during the Johnny's Jr Hey Say 07 in Yokohama concert, which was broadcasted live by Fuji TV. The boys were introduced with reference to other debuted group such as NEWS and V6. This new unit will function in the same sense as V6's Coming Century and 20th Century with the two subunits, Hey! Say! BEST and Hey! Say! 7, where BEST stands for Boys Excellent Selection Team.

The word JUMP not only stands for Johnny's Ultra Music Power, but also jumping high in the heisei era. Immediately after the junior concert, the boys appeared on the filming of popular program Hey! Hey! Hey!, where they announced the unit officially. The new group draws most of its members from popular junior units Ya-Ya-yah and J.J. Express. Their debut single was released on November 14th, 2007, titled "Ultra Music Power", coming in #1 on the Oricon charts for that week. It was the theme song for the year's Volleyball World Cup Relay. Also the unit had held their debut concert on the 22nd of December 2007 at Tokyo Dome, where very few debuted units have had the chance for a concert, KAT-TUN being one of them. The date for the concert is to match the record set by Tackey & Tsubasa, who had their debut concert on the 38th day of their debut.

It was stated that the idea for the unit came from the overwhelming sales of Hey! Say! 7's single "Hey! Say!". The members of the unit only found out about their debut three days before the official announcement. The average age of the unit at the moment of the debut was 17 with the youngest member being 15 and the oldest 20. Also with the unit having Okamoto Keito as a member, who is the son of Otokogumi's Okamoto Kenichi, marks the first parent-child pair in Johnnys.

Their latest single, "Arigato" ~Sekai no Doko ni Itemo~, was released on December 15, 2010.