* At an event in Chiba, Kenji Darvish asked the organizers if they could reimburse the \8.5 million which he used to pay for the Benz that he bought on Tunnels' program. (Related post HERE)
* "This is of course a joke. Darvish was on the Tunnel's program in June, and was made to buy a Benz last August due to him losing to AKB in the 'Kuwazu Girai' corner of the show. He probably really didn't like the idea of spending that much, but everyone was surprised that he paid for it in cash." - (music writer)
* The topic shifted to money, and the host then started to ask the vocalist Shō Kiryūin about the amount of royalties he's earning.
* Host: "Kiryūin-san's royalties must be massive."
Kiryūin: "We're not just talking about a Benz here. Seriously, why is the tax amount that insane?"
Darvish: "6.5 billion."
* The music writer comments: "He denied it immediately as that's an insane amount. Their 7th single 'Memeshikute', which was released in 2009, became a hit 2 years ago and was at the top of Oricon's 'weekly karaoke rankings chart' for 50 consecutive weeks, breaking AKB48's record of 48 consecutive weeks with their song 'Heavy Rotation'".
* "There are about 130,000 karaoke rooms within the country, and that doesn't even count all those small establishments with karaoke machines in them. Kiryūin who wrote and composed the song probably earns \4-5 each time the song is played on karaoke. Even if you compute the song being sung once a day per room, then that's roughly \1 million a day. With that computation, he earns about \300 million in a year just from royalties. Whatever the true amount is, there's no doubt that he's paid in the region of over 100 million in taxes.
Source:
http://www.fsmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ゴールデンボンバー2.jpg
