"Kohaku Utagassen," NHK's New Year's Eve music extravaganza, which celebrates its 52nd anniversary on Monday night, has traditionally been seen as the year's most significant event for Japanese singers, with selection to appear on the show truly "legitimizing" a performer's career. As well, certainly in the past, it also allowed artists to afterward double or triple their appearance fees.
"Kohaku" is structured as a contest between two teams of singers -- 25 females (the red team) and 25 males (the white team). A panel of celebrity judges -- sumo wrestlers, politicians, novelists, etc. -- evaluate each performance and in the end declare one team the winner.
However, the competition is actually meaningless, since the songs being "judged" have already been approved in the marketplace. The singers and groups who appear are chosen because they've either sold lots of records during the previous 12 months, or are living pop music legends (living fossils, some would say). The roster, however, represents a rather narrow range of musical taste: it's either enka or J-pop. And almost all the J-pop artists can also be seen a few hours earlier on TBS's "Nihon Record Taisho (Japan Record Awards)," which is only 10 years junior to "Kohaku."