The very popular Sentence Spring, or Weekly Bunshun, which goes on sale every Thursday, will feature a photo of all the members and performers on stage before the performance at the first concert the other day. I just received the magazine.

I happened to meet Katsuya Nakamoto, an employee of Bungeishunju who now works in the editorial department of Shukan Bunshun, through the late illustrator Mizumaru Anzai, and when I asked him about the concert, he said,

They said to me, "This is a great initiative and the guests are all impressive, so we'll consider having it in the gravure page," but I thought it would be difficult, but to my surprise, all the performers gave the OK and it became a reality.

This evening, I arrived late to a gathering to commemorate the third anniversary of Mizumaru-san's death, and his family was also invited.

"I'm sorry, Tanaka-san! It was supposed to be at the beginning of the page, but there was so much news and scoops this week that it ended up at the end," said Nakamoto.

When I asked "What is a scoop?", I was told that the pants were brightly taken off. We were saying "the first page", but how can we explain it to the members who are 4th grade elementary school students? We ask parents to give a good explanation with educational considerations.

On the day of the shoot, the atmosphere was tense, as the rehearsal had already been completed, but everyone was smiling. "I'm sorry that some of the children had their eyes closed," they said, but it would have been unnatural for all 110 people to have their eyes wide open, so I'm grateful to the cameraman for taking all the photos in such a short time.

Nakamoto-kun told me that "the Tohoku Youth Orchestra's blog articles are passionate and interesting," but I always write impulsively after all my work and other commitments are finished, and so after today's performance I made two trips to Naha on business, and I got up at 5am this morning, so although it's now 11:30pm it feels like 3am. However, I thought I'd just upload this article as an announcement, so I went ahead and published it without even proofreading it properly.

Not only the orchestra members, but also their children and grandchildren have been featured in the magazine's gravure, and the group photo with director Ryuichi Sakamoto, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Yosuke Yamashita, conductor Toshio Yanagisawa, and presenter Mari Watanabe will surely become a lifelong memorial photo for all of them. It's exciting to think that over 600,000 photos of the Tohoku Youth Orchestra are being delivered to bookstores, train kiosks, and convenience stores all over the country right now. Thank you so much to Bungeishunju's Katsuya Nakamoto!

Everyone, as the cherry blossoms bloom in Tokyo tomorrow, please pick up a copy of Sentence Spring when it hits the shelves and take a look at the photos of the Tohoku Youth Orchestra on their big day.

By the way, this is a newspaper advertisement from Shukan Bunshun this morning.

With this content, you would never think that there would be a group photo of all the members of the Tohoku Youth Orchestra and all the performers in the concert (lol)