A look back at Nogizaka46’s projection-led 2024 Midsummer Tour, powered by Disguise

For over 20 years, Disguise has been bringing live events to life with groundbreaking visual experience technology. In that same period, Disguise has also made a name for itself as a world-leading solution behind a number of ambitious projection mapping projects, lighting up activations across the planet - from the Burj Khalifa to Battersea Power Station. For Nogizaka46’s 2024 Midsummer Tour across Japan, the J-pop icons combined these two branches of Disguise expertise, delivering an unforgettable concert experience for hundreds of thousands of fans.

The annual Midsummer National Tour sees Nogizaka46 perform across seven Japanese cities, including prestigious venues in Osaka, Aichi, and Tokyo. The group, who have been performing since 2011, currently consists of about 40 different members - so live shows are a guaranteed spectacle. 2024’s production, visually directed by office Y'z Inc. with a video system handled by Hibino Corporation, went beyond expectations, featuring a sprawling, turreted castle that spanned the length of the stage and was lit throughout with complex, custom-mapped lighting and imagery. 

Naoto Tajima, one of the Hibino Corporation’s digital artists responsible for designing the visual system for the 2024 tour, admits the timeline for the event was challenging. “At the start of the project, there were already less than two months until the live show,” Tajima says. “Given other factors, including the changing layouts of each new venue, we had only about a week to finalise the projection plan.”

Disguise’s flexible and practical solution was key to delivering within this tight timeframe. After mapping the castle’s surfaces, the team could build the production virtually within Disguise’s workflow, previsualising every aspect to ensure minimal time would be spent fixing errors in the little time they had with the real sets.

“Disguise’s simulation capabilities perfectly adapted to the entirely different projection positions and environments at each venue the tour was set to stop at,” says Tajima. The Disguise team, too, provided valuable assistance to help keep the team on track. “In the planning stage, we were able to divide the tasks with the Disguise Japan team, which accelerated the verification process even further,” Tajima says. “Thanks to their experience-based and appropriate advice, we were able to proceed with the work with peace of mind.”

Before long, the team were ready to transition to the real world stages they had spent so many hours planning for. Two Disguise VX 4+ media servers powered six Panasonic PT-RQ50K and four PT-RQ25K projectors, covering every inch of the grand white castle to create a dynamic display that could bring the stage to life.

Alan Lam, VP of Sales APAC at Disguise has been thrilled to play a role in bringing Nogizaka46’s show to life. “It can be a huge amount of pressure to put together an ambitious and innovative production in as short a period of time as we had on this project. But the intuitive design of the Disguise workflow makes it easy for us to bring it into these situations and deliver stunning results every time. Our team is always on hand, happy to collaborate with productions to ensure everybody is supported. Knowing that you’re working with reliable tech that is flexible enough to meet your needs is one thing. But we make sure that you’ve also got the support necessary to achieve everything you want once that tech is in hand.”

Nogizaka46’s 2024 Midsummer National Tour was seen by 265,000 fans across Japan last summer. We can’t wait to share what 2025’s tour has in store.