ShuenrokuAn archive of musicians' final live performances

Not the end after allFestival Hall

Miyuki Nakajima's "Last Tour" cut short: the final show actually played, Festival Hall, Osaka, February 26, 2020

On February 26, 2020, at Festival Hall on Osaka's Nakanoshima island, Miyuki Nakajima played what turned out to be the last show of her *Miyuki Nakajima 2020 Last Tour "Kekka Ōrai"* (roughly, "it all worked out in the end"). The tour had opened in Tokyo on January 12 and was due to run to June 5 across 24 dates. This was the eighth. Every one of the remaining 16 was cancelled as COVID-19 spread through Japan. On opening night she explained that the "Last Tour" was not a "last concert": she was ending only the practice of touring the whole country. The song that closed the main set in Osaka, "Tanjō," survives in the documentary included with the tour's live album, released two years later. In 2024 Nakajima returned to the stage with *Utakai Vol. 1*, a run of 16 concerts at Tokyo International Forum and at this same Festival Hall. The last show of the Last Tour was not her last concert.

By Shuenroku Editorial TeamPublished

Illustration of a dark hall stage under one beam of light from above: a stack of envelopes on a small round wooden table and an acoustic guitar on a stand beside it, with rows of seats in shadow in the foreground
IllustrationA stack of envelopes on a small table and an acoustic guitar on a stand at the center of a hall stage.
Date [18][11][6]
VenueFestival Hall (Osaka)
EventMiyuki Nakajima 2020 Last Tour "Kekka Ōrai" (中島みゆき 2020 ラスト・ツアー「結果オーライ」) [11][4]
CategoryNot the end after all
Why it endedRetirement [9][8][4]
LineupMiyuki Nakajima [18][6]
Attendance UnverifiedAttendance for this night has not been verified. The opening show on January 12 at Shinjuku Bunka Center drew about 1,800 (Daily Sports).
Last song performedはじめまして “Hajimemashite” (nice to meet you) Unverified"Hajimemashite" is the final track of the live album, which holds all 21 songs sung on the tour (OTOTOY), and the fan-edited setlist site LiveFans also lists it as this night's last song. Not confirmed by official material or press reports, so marked unverified. That "Tanjō" closed the main set is confirmed by Billboard JAPAN.[19][30]
Songs performed21 songsSee the setlist ↓
Video releaseYes [18][6]

About the artist

Miyuki Nakajima was born in Hokkaido on February 23, 1952[1]. She debuted in 1975 with the single "Azami-jō no Lullaby," and that autumn her song "Jidai" won the grand prix first at the Popular Song Contest finals and then, in November, at the 6th World Popular Song Festival[2]. She gave her first concert at Ginza Yamaha Hall on May 4, 1976, and in 1978 set out on her first national tour, 35 shows starting at Shibuya Public Hall[2][3].

"Wakareuta" (1977) made her a star[1], and from 1979 she spent eight years hosting the Monday edition of the late-night radio show All Night Nippon[3]. She has topped the Oricon singles chart in four different decades, with "Wakareuta," "Akujo," "Sora to Kimi no Aida ni" and "Tabibito no Uta," and "Chijō no Hoshi"[1]; her official profile says no other female artist has done so[2].

In 1989 she launched Yakai, a stage series she writes, scores, directs and stars in[4][3]; the twentieth production ran in 2019[5]. In the 1990s her songs became the themes of TV dramas, from "Asai Nemuri" (1992), her first million-seller[6], to "Ito" (1998)[7], and in April 1995 she gave her first concerts abroad, three nights in Hong Kong[7]. "Chijō no Hoshi," the theme of NHK's documentary series Project X from 2000, reached No. 1 in its 130th week on the chart and stayed on it for a record 174 straight weeks[2][5]. She was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2009[2].

Why this was thought to be the end

Fans first heard of the tour in late September 2019, through the newsletter of her fan club, and the announcement stated plainly that this would be her last national tour[8]. The public details followed in November: 24 shows at 11 venues over roughly six months, opening at Shinjuku Bunka Center in Tokyo on January 12, 2020, all seats reserved at 11,000 yen. Real Sound noted that it was her first national tour in about eight years, since Enkai in 2012-13, and that it would be her last[4]. The official timeline shows how the scale of her tours had changed: 35 shows on the first tour in 1978, 40 in 1998, 32 in 2007, 28 on Enkai and 15 on Ichie in 2015-16[3][7][5].

The word "last" alarmed people. According to Daily Sports, her management office and record label were flooded with questions about whether she was going to stop singing[9]. A staff member at the label told a J-CAST columnist that it was the last tour only in the sense of a national tour, and that Yakai and concerts held in a single venue would continue as before[8].

Four days before the opening, on January 8, 2020, she released CONTRALTO, her 43rd original album. She said the title simply referred to her vocal range. It included "Rikyō no Uta" ("song of leaving home"), a theme for a TV drama written by Sō Kuramoto, and "Yowai Kotobuki Sora Makase"[10][8].

About 1,800 people filled Shinjuku Bunka Center on January 12. Daily Sports reported that Nakajima took pains that night to say the title was "Last Tour," not "Last Concert." She compared herself to a shop that runs a "closing-down sale" for three years and said she still had plenty left to do. Her reasoning, as the paper summarized it, was practical: pack a national tour too tightly and the quality of each concert suffers; spread it out too thinly and it no longer feels like a tour. She would rather settle in one place for longer and polish each performance. Future concerts, the paper said, were expected to be one-off shows or runs concentrated in a single location[9].

The tour moved on to Ishikawa (January 20-21), Fukuoka (January 29 and 31, February 1) and NHK Hall in Tokyo (February 13), and on February 26 reached Festival Hall in Osaka for the first of three nights[11].

That same afternoon, Prime Minister Shinzō Abe told the government's coronavirus task force that for the next two weeks organizers of large national sporting and cultural events would be asked to cancel, postpone or scale them down[12]. The Osaka shows on February 28 and 29 did not go ahead[11][13], and the two Aichi dates on March 9-10 were cancelled[14][11]. On March 18 new dates were announced: August 17-18 for Osaka and August 4-5 for the two Sapporo shows originally set for late March[13].

On April 22 the promoter, Yamaha Music Entertainment Holdings, cancelled everything that remained, including those four rescheduled dates. With a state of emergency declared and no end to the outbreak in sight, it said, the safety and health of the audience had to come first. The notice apologized and said a return to the stage would be considered once conditions allowed[15]. Of the 24 planned shows, eight had been played[16][17]. The final date, June 5, was to have been back at Shinjuku Bunka Center, where it all began[4].

The only explanation of the "Last Tour" name from Nakajima herself that this site could verify is the one she gave on opening night: she was ending national touring, not singing[9]. Like the Elton John and KISS entries, this page treats it as a retirement from touring. Because she performed concerts under her own name again in 2024, the show is classed as "not the end after all."

What is known about the day

February 26, 2020, was a Wednesday. Three Osaka shows had been scheduled, on the 26th, 28th and 29th, and this was the first[4][11]. The government's request had come that afternoon[12], but the evening's concert went ahead and became, in UtaTen's words, the tour's de facto final show[18]. No source found gives the attendance.

The tour set ran to 21 songs including the encore[6]. The live album that collects them opens with "Ichigo Ichie" ("once in a lifetime"), then moves through her 1975 debut "Azami-jō no Lullaby," "Akujo," a No. 1 in the 1980s, the million-seller "Asai Nemuri" and "Ito"[19][6]. The J-CAST columnist notes that Nakajima has often said that every concert is ichigo ichie, a one-time encounter[8].

The second half of the album includes "Rikyō no Uta" from the new album[10], "Sorafune," for which she won the Japan Record Award for lyrics in 2006[5], "Mugi no Uta," which she sang on NHK's New Year's Eve show Kōhaku Uta Gassen in 2014[6], and "Bojō," the theme of the TV drama Yasuragi no Sato[9][19].

According to the report on opening night, the show included a segment in which she read out letters from fans, and on that first night one of them said how sad the writer was that this would be the last tour[9]. No source found describes the letters read in Osaka.

The main set closed with "Tanjō" ("birth")[6]. In the documentary later included with the live album, the footage of this song comes from the Osaka show of February 26, and UtaTen, introducing the clip, wrote that many in the audience were in tears[18].

On the album, "Tanjō" is followed by three more songs, "Jinsei no Shirōto," "Doyō Nami" and finally "Hajimemashite" ("nice to meet you")[19]. No official material or press report found confirms the encore songs or their order on this particular night, so this site lists the last song as unverified.

The 52-minute documentary runs from rehearsals through the shows in Tokyo, Ishikawa, Fukuoka and Tokyo again to Osaka on February 26, with backstage scenes and performances[18][6]. Billboard JAPAN and UtaTen both describe the Osaka show as the one at which the postponement, later the cancellation, was announced[6][18]. Two days later, the show at the same hall did not take place[11][13].

What the show left behind

On August 21, 2020, the film Ito opened with her song "Ito," also part of the tour set, as its theme[16][19]. On December 2 came Koko ni Iru yo ("I'm here"), a two-disc selection of 26 songs split into a disc of encouragement and a disc of comfort, its title taken from a line of her 1994 hit "Sora to Kimi no Aida ni"[20]. Billboard JAPAN described it as a best-of put together in a hurry after the Last Tour was called off; by its 62nd week it had sold 126,335 copies[21].

The tour itself reached record shops two years later. Announced in December 2021, the live album Miyuki Nakajima 2020 Last Tour "Kekka Ōrai" was released on February 2, 2022[19][6]: two CDs containing every one of the 21 songs sung on the tour, encore included[6], billed in the coverage as her "phantom last tour"[19][18]. Part of the documentary was shown on NHK's music program SONGS on January 27[18]. Exhibitions of her stage costumes, the acoustic guitar she had used on the tour and tour photographs accompanied the release, and fan-club members could watch footage of four songs left off the first edition[6]. The album entered Billboard JAPAN's album sales chart at No. 2, selling 40,614 copies in its first week[21].

The concert film Live History 2, released in cinemas on December 30, 2022, set one song from the tour alongside footage from 2004 to 2016[22].

The next concerts came in 2024. Miyuki Nakajima Concert "Utakai Vol. 1" ran from January 19 to May 31, with ten shows at Tokyo International Forum Hall A and six at Festival Hall in Osaka[23]. The film site Eiga.com introduced it as her first concert series in four years, since the Last Tour[17]. The Osaka hall where the tour had stopped became one of its two venues.

Utakai Vol. 1 had a 19-song set[17], and the film of it, shot at Tokyo International Forum Hall A in May 2024, opens with "Hajimemashite"[24], the song that closes the Kekka Ōrai live album[19]. It was released in cinemas on December 27, 2024[17], followed on March 12, 2025, by Blu-ray and DVD editions and a live CD of 11 songs she chose herself[25].

New work kept coming. In March 2025 her new song "Ichiju" was chosen as the theme of the NHK drama Magudara-ya no Maria, an exhibition on her career was announced for Hokkaido in April, and on November 30 "Ichiju" became her first download single[26]. From January 2, 2026, her concert films, including Utakai Vol. 1, returned to cinemas as Live Selection 2[27], and a selection of filmed Yakai productions opened at Marunouchi Piccadilly in Tokyo in March 2026, with a nationwide release set for December 25[26]. As of November 8, 2026, the concert page of her official site lists Utakai Vol. 1 and no new concerts have been announced[23][26].

Her last national tour ended after eight of its 24 shows. Four years later, she came back to the hall in Osaka where it had stopped.

Context for readers

"Last Tour," not "last concert." In Japan a zenkoku tour, or national tour, means taking a show to concert halls across the country over several months. Nakajima's 2020 title retired that format, not her singing; her label said Yakai and concerts in a single venue would continue[8]. The 2024 Utakai series was held at just two venues, one in Tokyo and one in Osaka[23].

Yakai. Nakajima's "evening party" stage series, begun in 1989 at Bunkamura Theatre Cocoon in Tokyo[3], combines original songs with a story she writes, directs and performs herself[4]. It runs alongside, and separately from, her concerts.

Concerts and COVID-19 in Japan. On February 26, 2020, the government asked organizers of large sporting and cultural events to cancel, postpone or scale them down for two weeks[12], and over the following weeks most of the country's concert tours stopped[14]. Nakajima's tour was cancelled in full in April, after the state of emergency was declared[15].

Festival Hall. A large concert hall in central Osaka, on the Nakanoshima island in the Kita ward[28]. Nakajima was booked there for three nights in February 2020 and three more in May[4], and returned for six Utakai shows in 2024[23].

Setlist

21 songs Unverified[19][29][6][18][30]
1. 一期一会2. アザミ嬢のララバイ3. 悪女4. 浅い眠り5. 糸6. ローリング7. 流星8. 最後の女神9. 齢寿天任せ10. 離郷の歌11. この世に二人だけ12. ナイトキャップ・スペシャル13. 宙船14. あたいの夏休み15. 麦の唄16. 永遠の嘘をついてくれ17. 慕情18. 誕生19. 人生の素人20. 土用波21. はじめまして

Main set Encore Last song

  1. 一期一会 “Ichigo Ichie” (once in a lifetime) · Order follows the track list of the live album of the tour (OTOTOY; National Diet Library). The album holds all 21 songs sung on the tour, but no source states that this was the running order on this night.
  2. アザミ嬢のララバイ “Azami-jō no Lullaby” (lullaby for Miss Thistle)
  3. 悪女 “Akujo” (bad woman)
  4. 浅い眠り “Asai Nemuri” (shallow sleep)
  5. 糸 “Ito” (thread)
  6. ローリング “Rōringu” (rolling)
  7. 流星 “Ryūsei” (shooting star)
  8. 最後の女神 “Saigo no Megami” (the last goddess)
  9. 齢寿天任せ “Yowai Kotobuki Sora Makase” (age and long life, left to the heavens)
  10. 離郷の歌 “Rikyō no Uta” (song of leaving home)
  11. この世に二人だけ “Kono Yo ni Futari Dake” (just the two of us in this world)
  12. ナイトキャップ・スペシャル “Naitokyappu Supesharu” (nightcap special)
  13. 宙船 “Sorafune” (sky ship)
  14. あたいの夏休み “Atai no Natsuyasumi” (my summer vacation)
  15. 麦の唄 “Mugi no Uta” (song of barley)
  16. 永遠の嘘をついてくれ “Eien no Uso o Tsuite Kure” (tell me an everlasting lie)
  17. 慕情 “Bojō” (longing)
  18. 誕生 “Tanjō” (birth) · Closed the main set (Billboard JAPAN). The footage of this song in the first-edition documentary was filmed at this Osaka show on February 26 (UtaTen).
  19. Encore人生の素人 “Jinsei no Shirōto” (an amateur at life) · The three tracks after "Tanjō" on the album, presumably the encore; neither official material nor press reports confirm the encore songs or their order (the fan-edited LiveFans lists these three, in this order, as this night's encore).
  20. 土用波 “Doyō Nami” (late-summer swell)
  21. はじめまして “Hajimemashite” (nice to meet you)

Another final curtain

More “last” shows that turned out not to be the last.

TimelineCareer span, final show and later events, limited to what sources confirm.
19801990200020102020March 18, 2020 Osaka (Feb 28-29) and Sapporo (Mar 26-27) shows rescheduled for August.April 22, 2020 All remaining shows and the four rescheduled dates cancelled; 8 of 24 shows had been played.August 21, 2020 The film Ito opens, with "Ito" as its theme song.December 2, 2020 Selection album Koko ni Iru yo released.February 2, 2022 Live album of all 21 songs from the tour released.December 30, 2022 Concert film Live History 2 opens in cinemas, with one song from this tour.January 19, 2024 Utakai Vol. 1, her first concerts in four years, begins (16 shows to May 31 at Tokyo International Forum and Festival Hall).December 27, 2024 Theatrical film of Utakai Vol. 1 opens.March 12, 2025 Utakai Vol. 1 released on Blu-ray, DVD and live CD.January 2, 2026 Live Selection 2 screenings of her concert films begin.February 26, 2020198020002020March 18, 2020 Osaka (Feb 28-29) and Sapporo (Mar 26-27) shows rescheduled for August.April 22, 2020 All remaining shows and the four rescheduled dates cancelled; 8 of 24 shows had been played.August 21, 2020 The film Ito opens, with "Ito" as its theme song.December 2, 2020 Selection album Koko ni Iru yo released.February 2, 2022 Live album of all 21 songs from the tour released.December 30, 2022 Concert film Live History 2 opens in cinemas, with one song from this tour.January 19, 2024 Utakai Vol. 1, her first concerts in four years, begins (16 shows to May 31 at Tokyo International Forum and Festival Hall).December 27, 2024 Theatrical film of Utakai Vol. 1 opens.March 12, 2025 Utakai Vol. 1 released on Blu-ray, DVD and live CD.January 2, 2026 Live Selection 2 screenings of her concert films begin.February 26, 2020
  1. Active years (1975 – February 26, 2020)
  2. Final show
  3. Osaka (Feb 28-29) and Sapporo (Mar 26-27) shows rescheduled for August.
  4. All remaining shows and the four rescheduled dates cancelled; 8 of 24 shows had been played.
  5. The film Ito opens, with "Ito" as its theme song.
  6. Selection album Koko ni Iru yo released.
  7. Live album of all 21 songs from the tour released.2 years later
  8. Concert film Live History 2 opens in cinemas, with one song from this tour.2 years later
  9. Utakai Vol. 1, her first concerts in four years, begins (16 shows to May 31 at Tokyo International Forum and Festival Hall).4 years later
  10. Theatrical film of Utakai Vol. 1 opens.4 years later
  11. Utakai Vol. 1 released on Blu-ray, DVD and live CD.5 years later
  12. Live Selection 2 screenings of her concert films begin.6 years later

Watch / buyPR

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  • 中島みゆき 2020 ラスト・ツアー「結果オーライ」【通常盤】

    Coverage unverifiedCD · Released February 2, 2022 · Cat. no. YCCW-10400～1

    Two-CD live album with all 21 songs sung on the tour, encore included (Billboard JAPAN). The shows used for the recording are not stated, so how much comes from this night is unknown. The first editions (2CD+Blu-ray YCCW-10396-7/B; 2CD+DVD YCCW-10398-9/B) add a roughly 52-minute documentary that includes "Tanjō" from the Osaka show of February 26 (UtaTen).

    Amazon.co.jp楽天市場

These are not recordings of this show, but releases mentioned in the article and key works by the artist.

  • 中島みゆき コンサート「歌会 VOL.1」【初回盤】（Blu-ray 2枚組）

    Blu-ray · Released March 12, 2025 · Cat. no. YCXW-10030～1

    Film of Utakai Vol. 1, the 2024 concert series discussed in the article, held four years after the Last Tour (filmed at Tokyo International Forum Hall A in May 2024).

    Amazon.co.jp楽天市場

  • ここにいるよ【通常盤】

    CD · Released December 2, 2020 · Cat. no. YCCW-10380～1

    The two-disc, 26-song selection album discussed in the article, released in December 2020 after the tour was cancelled.

    Amazon.co.jp楽天市場

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