Sexy Zone’s “RUN” sprints its way to the top spot on this week’s Billboard Japan Hot 100, dated Aug. 3 to 9, with 254,983 copies sold in its first week. This single is the first release from Top J Records, a new collaborative label by Johnny’s and Universal Music that will expand the boy band’s reach outside of Japan. Sales-wise, “RUN” celebrated the label’s brand-new start by performing much better than the group’s previous single, “Kirin no ko,” which sold 161,590 copies in its first week last October.
Kenshi Yonezu made his entire back catalog available on streaming platforms last week, on the day he dropped his highly anticipated new album STRAY SHEEP. The J-pop hitmaker currently has 21 songs charting on the Japan Hot 100, just one track short of Arashi’s record 22 songs charting simultaneously.
Yonezu’s highest-ranking song this week, “Kanden,” rises again to No. 3, bowing at No. 2 for streaming with 8,446,086 streams. As YOASOBI’s “Yoru ni kakeru” continues to rule this metric, breaking the duo’s personal record again with 10,171,337 streams, whether or not the “Lemon” singer-songwriter can overturn the difference of about 1.7 million weekly streams with his latest single remains to be seen.
The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, radio airplay, Twitter mentions, YouTube and GYAO! video views, Gracenote look-ups, audio streams from Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, AWA, Google Play Music, KKBOX, LINE MUSIC, Rakuten Music, RecMusic provided by Gfk Japan, dHits, Uta Pass and Spotify, plus karaoke data from Daiichikosho and XING.
Billboard Japan Hot 100 Top 10 (dated Aug. 3 to 9)
1. [97] RUN / Sexy Zone (254,983 copies / none / none)
2. [2] Yoru ni kakeru / YOASOBI (none / 19,191 downloads / 10,171,337 streams)
3. [9] Kanden / Kenshi Yonezu (none / 17,360 downloads / 8,446,086 streams)
4. [14] HELLO / Official HIGE DANdism (50,302 copies / 16,144 downloads / 3,007,995 streams)
5. [3] Kousui / Eito (none / 12,176 downloads / 8,084,355 streams)
6. [6] Make you happy / NiziU (none / 10,071 downloads / 7,052,809 streams)
7. [1] Kite / Arashi (44,436 copies / none / none)
8. [51] Lemon / Kenshi Yonezu (none / none / 6,802,435 streams)
9. [8] Hadaka no kokoro / Aimyon (1,199 copies / 15,558 downloads / 5,635,735 streams)
10. [10] Gurenge / LiSA (2,228 copies / 14,042 downloads / 3,828,334 streams)
[]: Position last week
(): Physical sales / downloads / streams (Top 50 only)