Japan in the Worldvision Q4-2022
Japan participated in the Worldvision Song Contest Q1-2023 in Barcelona, Spain with the song "Lighthouse" performed by Japanese singer Nao Aihara. The Japanese broadcaster NHK organised the national final Open Nippon Q1-2023 in order to select the Japanese entry for the Q1-2023 contest. Six entries competed in the national final, and the winner was announced on 10 June 2022 following the combination of votes from a seven-member international jury panel and international public vote.
| Worldvision Q1-2023 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country | Japan | |||
| National selection | ||||
| Selection process | Open Nippon | |||
| Selection date(s) | Final: 10 June 2022 | |||
| Selected entrant | Nao Aihara | |||
| Selected song | "Lighthouse" | |||
| Finals performance | ||||
| Final result | 10th pl., 105 p. | |||
| Japan in the Worldvision Song Contest | ||||
| ||||
Open Nippon Q1-2023 was the 1st edition of the Japanese music competition and took place between 6 June 2022 and 10 June 2022 in Tokyo (Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium). The winner of the contest will be eligible to represent Japan at Worldvision Song Contest Q4-2022.
Format
Open Nippon Q1-2023, organised by Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK World), was held in the format of one final with the participation of six invited compositions released no earlier than 1 January 2021.
Voting
Six members of the jury and the public took part in the voting. Each of the six members of the jury had a set of points: 10, 7, 5, 3, 2 and 1 point. This year curators from Hungary, Kazakhstan, North Macedonia, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States were invited to take the place of the jury, but on the last day of voting, the United States jury was replaced by a jury from Thailand due to the impossibility of voting. The audience could leave their ratings for each of the selection songs on a specially created poll on the app.webask.io platform. The results of the public vote were translated into a system of points: 20, 14, 10, 3, 2 and 1 point.
Announcement of performers
The introduction of participating performers took place from May 20 to June 4, 2022 in order of performance. Initially, it was assumed that the announcement of the selection participants would be one performer every two days and would end on May 30, 2022. However, due to the situation with the five-day suspension of the Japanese curator from the contest chat, on May 25, 2022, the announcement of the performers for May 26, 28 and 30 was postponed to May 30, June 2 and 4, 2022.
Final
Voting took place from 6 to 8 June 2022. Nao Aihara with song "Lighthouse" won the national contest.
| Draw | Artist | Song | Language(s) | Jury | Public | Total | Place | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HUN |
 KAZ |
 NLD |
 MKD |
 ESP |
 THA | |||||||||
| 01 | Queen Bee | King Bitch | Japanese a | 1 | 10 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 10 | 3 | 27 votes / 185 | 30 | 5 | |
| 02 | NiziU | Chopstick | Japanese, English | 2 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 27 votes / 185 | 17 | 6 | |
| 03 | Milet | Fly High | Japanese, English | 7 | 3 | 1 | 10 | 3 | 7 | 12 | 33 votes / 185 | 43 | 3 | |
| 04 | AleXa | Xtra | English, Korean | 3 | 5 | 7 | 1 | 7 | 3 | 20 | 35 votes / 185 | 46 | 2 | |
| 05 | Pabllo Vittar feat. Rina Sawayama | Follow Me | English | 5 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 30 votes / 185 | 32 | 4 | |
| 06 | Nao Aihara | Lighthouse | Japanese, English | 10 | 2 | 10 | 7 | 10 | 5 | 12 | 33 votes / 185 | 56 | 1 | |
a - line in English.
After selection
On 9 June 2022, a couple of hours before the announcement of the results of the competition, it was announced that 185 votes were accepted from 9 voting participants in the audience voting on the poll platform. Based on the voting results, the average score for compositions was 3.426 out of 5.000 maximum points, which is 68.52%. On 10 June 2022, an album of contest compositions was released on the Spotify platform called "Open Nippon Summer 2022".
At Worldvision
Japanese representative Nao Aihara performed under number 02 in the final. In the general voting of the jury and the audience, Nao scored 105 points, which allowed her to finish in 10th place out of 13 participants in the competition.