generasia:Featured article for 2021 week 14
NiziU
NiziU is a Japanese-Korean pop girl group under JYP Entertainment and the Sony Music Japan label that was formed via the survival show Nizi Project. Their group name means and sounds like "Need You", combining the Japanese word "Niji" (虹; Rainbow) and the English word "You".
NiziU was formed under JYP's vision of "K-pop 3.0", "Globalization by Localization", through the survival reality show Nizi Project. On June 26, 2020, the final episode of the show revealed the debut lineup and group name. The group consists solely of Japanese members, but their formation was carried out in a K-Pop manner, helping to localize the Korean wave in Japan.
Their pre-debut digital mini-album, Make you happy, was released on June 30, 2020 in Japan and South Korea, and July 1st internationally. The mini-album charted at #1 on several Japanese streaming services on the day of it's release, and it debuted at the top of both the Oricon weekly digital albums chart with 82,000 copies sold and the Oricon weekly albums chart with 97,000 copies sold in its first week, becoming the first digital album in history to do so. The mini-album remained in the top 10 on the Oricon weekly digital albums chart for sixteen consecutive weeks, and it eventually breached 100,000 copies sold.
On December 2, 2020, NiziU released their debut single, "Step and a step", which took #1 on the Oricon weekly singles chart in it's first week with 311,774 copies sold. With this, the group achieved the second-highest sales for a girl group debut on the Oricon chart. Tokyo Skytree conducted a three-day illumination with rainbow colors, the group's iconic color, while the inside of Shinjuku Station was covered with posters of NiziU, celebrating their debut. NHK's Kohaku Uta Gassen, the annual New Year's Eve television special, has also decided to feature the group.
In a column on Korea-Japan relations, former deputy foreign minister Tanaka Hitoshi described NiziU as a symbol of improving bilateral relations.
Their second single, "Take a picture / Poppin' Shakin'", is released this week on April 7th.
