The MBN channel had a trot audition in Japan . MBN's trot division is headed by the person who produced the initial Miss and Mr trot shows.
I am not aware of a Japanese enka audition. There might be something like that but I do not follow enka closely enough to know about it.
In any case, it found several Japanese singers willing to sing Korean style trot, which is a bit different from enka although it came from enka; Korean trot incorporated various music genres while Japanese enka is a bit more traditional.
The most popular member selected from this seems to be a Sumida Aiko, born in Sep 2007, which makes her technically at the age of 16.
She was born in Yamaguchi, where Shitao Miu was also born (and created a big mess - surprisingly no one says anything about Sumida's birthplace), and trained in Hiroshima, the nearest major city, and worked as a local idol, an idol which only operates in the location.
Although she applied to a trot show, since it was the best of the lot, she initially trained as an idol and did sing BoA's Valenti
Her entrance to Korea might have been ominous until she decided to sing the song of the person who harmed KPop more than everyone else combined.
She chose to sing the song which became the most harmful for the future of KPop in Japanese,
but it showed that she is not up to speed to the Singer who Harmed KPop the most, who sang it when she was 17.
Wellington is ranked at #3 of the greatest generals of all time, since the list put Napoleon at #1 (#2 is Julius Caesar), for the sole reason that he defeated Napoleon in the latter's final battle; prior to that Wellington never commanded more than 60,000 troops, some of them being Spanish contingent not directly under his control.
IU is considered as only second to BTS, and above all KPop acts who were more famous than her outside of Korea, solely because of her digital performances in Korea, and for the virtue of having the only full concerts at the Chamshil olympic stadium after BTS (exo had a 3/4 capacity concert, and the NCTs and Psy had half capacity concerts ; only BTS, and, I have to say, Lee JIeun had full concerts there)
However fortunately for KPop (although the harm she caused to KPop is too great to summarize in one single post), after her there was no one who was capable of undermining Kpop as much as her.
Japan has good vocalists, but competition is fierce in there. It seems Sumida Aiko, or whoever is training her, saw that there was no alternative to the Singer who Spent her Entire Career undermining KPop (TSWSHECUK), and decided to attack the Kingpin of KPop.
Although she failed, her example will lead to many would-be Japanese vocalists to try to attack KPop, and I think one of them will eventually succeed if enough of them try there luck there.
