ATARASHII GAKKO! Members' Ages, and the Rice Cooker on Their Tour Bus
This article is also available in Japanese: Read the Japanese version
Four performers in sailor-style school uniforms sing and dance, their heads swinging round and round. That “head-swinging dance” is what suddenly made ATARASHII GAKKO! (新しい学校のリーダーズ in Japanese) widely known. The self-proclaimed “Youth Representatives of Japan” have now taken their work as far as festivals abroad and a solo show in London.
In this article we look at the ages of the four members, their breakthrough in their eighth year together, their most-watched YouTube video and what goes on behind the scenes of their world touring, all drawn from the group's own words in interviews and announcements on the official site. The channel figures are our own measurements, taken on November 1, 2026.
How Old Are the Four Members of ATARASHII GAKKO!?
These are the four members listed on the official site's profile (in Japanese):
MIZYU (ミヂュ): born December 22, 1998. Favorite food: bean sprouts.
RIN (リン): born September 11, 2001. Favorite food: eggplant.
SUZUKA (スズカ): born November 29, 2001. Favorite food: mountain yam.
KANON (カノン): born January 18, 2002. Favorite food: mango.
The official profile gives the reading of MIZYU's name in Japanese as ミヂュ, not the ミズユ the spelling might suggest.
As of November 1, 2026, MIZYU is 27, RIN is 25, and SUZUKA and KANON are 24. SUZUKA's birthday falls on November 29 and MIZYU's on December 22, so both will turn a year older before the year is out.
MIZYU, the oldest, is two to three years older than the other three, but a Forbes JAPAN feature (in Japanese) says the four have spent much of their time together since their junior high and high school years. When they are unsure, the feature says, there is an unspoken rule that the answer comes from all four of them, not from one person alone.
As for real names, the official profile lists only stage names, birthdays and favorite foods.
Formed in 2015, Broke Through in Year Eight with “OTONABLUE”
The official YouTube channel was created on July 13, 2015. Its first video went up the same day: a 360-degree music video for “噛むとフニャン tofubeats Remix.” The Forbes JAPAN feature likewise gives 2015 as the year the group formed.
According to the introduction to a 2018 UtaTen interview (in Japanese), they made their major-label debut in June 2017 with “Dokubana” (毒花), the theme song of the TV drama 女囚セブン (Joshu Seven). Back then, it says, they were known as “Dancing, sailor uniforms and eccentric habits” (「踊る、セーラー服と奇行癖。」, translated from the Japanese).
The big turning point came in 2023. “OTONABLUE” (オトナブルー), released in 2020, spread on TikTok in 2023, and at the end of that year the group made their first appearance on NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen, NHK's New Year's Eve music show. Speaking to Forbes JAPAN, the four looked back on 2023 as “the year the seeds we had sown finally bore fruit” (translated from the Japanese). According to KANON, at the start of the year they were saying, “It'd be great if we could get on Music Station” (a TV music program). Within that one year they appeared on the show three times and made it onto Kohaku as well.
In a Real Sound interview (in Japanese), SUZUKA said that after the breakthrough, “at times it even felt like our first year as a group” (translated from the Japanese). It was like introducing themselves all over again, she said: “We've been doing things like this for about eight years. To everyone meeting us for the first time, it's very nice to meet you!” It also came up that not long before, people would say, “Oh, TikTokers!” So it was probably a year when the view suddenly changed for the four of them, too.
What's Their Most-Watched Video on YouTube?
As of November 1, 2026, the official YouTube channel had 1.76 million subscribers, 479 videos and a little over 626.01 million total views. The most-watched is the music video for “OTONABLUE,” released in March 2023, at about 87.5 million views as of the same date.
What's interesting is that the top five videos by views are all connected to “OTONABLUE.” There's the choreography video, a 21-second Short shot in the snow, footage of a 2020 live show and a dance practice video: one song, watched in many different forms. Plenty of viewers probably found their way to the choreography video because they wanted to try that head swing themselves.
The pace of uploads picked up sharply in 2026. All of 2025 brought 44 videos, while 156 went up in the ten months from January through October 2026. Of those, 101 are short videos of 60 seconds or less, and many have a festival's name in the title or are collaborations with other artists.
In March 2026 they also released a 26-second “Tokyo Calling” video with BABYMETAL, which had a little over 5.9 million views as of November 1. For more on BABYMETAL, see our BABYMETAL article (in Japanese).
They Decide the Choreography and Staging Themselves
The Japanese text of the channel description and the official profile both say the members choreograph every song, and the channel's English description says their dance moves are “choreographed by the four members themselves.” The Forbes JAPAN feature likewise says all the members work out everything from the dance choreography and live staging to the videos they post on TikTok.
According to a GRAMMY.com article, the four perform “energetic dance moves inspired by Kumitaisou, Japanese gymnastics symbolized by pyramids.” Knowing that, you can sense something of kumitaisou, the group gymnastics of Japanese school sports days, in how tightly the four move together.
For their first Nippon Budokan show, SEISHUN SHURAI (Youth Invasion), on January 9, 2024, the four kept answering the stage director's ideas with opinions of their own, they said in the Real Sound interview. That show, they said, put the stage in the center, with the audience on all 360 degrees. RIN recalled that at the moment the four hugged onstage, “everything, like the road we'd traveled since forming, came flooding back.”
From 88rising to Coachella, with a Rice Cooker on the Tour Bus
The big milestone for their work abroad was their global debut in 2021 on 88rising, a label that brings Asian culture to the world. According to the official profile, in April 2024 they closed the Gobi stage as the final act at Coachella, the American music festival, then drew a cumulative 65,000 people on a world tour of 26 cities across Europe, Asia and North America.
Speaking to GRAMMY.com about the Coachella show, SUZUKA said, “The live performance was the answer of the meaning of being together as Atarashii Gakko!” As the interviewer pointed out, she had said in another interview earlier in 2024 that playing Coachella would bring her one step closer to Beyoncé. Asked the same thing after the show, she jumped up, flashed a thumbs up and answered, “Yes! I took one step towards Beyoncé!”
In the same GRAMMY.com interview, RIN said, “My father is a hip-hop fan, so when I was a child, I had already started listening to hip-hop music and Lauryn Hill.” At Coachella she happened to see Hill herself: “But then I accidentally saw her — she had finished the stage and she came out – and I was like Ahhh; I was shaking!”
The next video is the music video for “Change,” released in August 2024, the summer of their Coachella year.
The most human story from the road is the one about rice, told in a Time Out Tokyo interview. SUZUKA recalled: “One time in Europe, we didn’t eat any Japanese food at all for 11 days, and all four of us eventually started shaking because we wanted to have white rice so bad.” RIN picked up the story: “We’ve had a rice cooker on our tour bus ever since and use it twice daily [laughs]. We keep stuff like natto in the fridge, and buy sashimi along the way to make our own kaisendon bowls.”
Asked what dish they would be if ATARASHII GAKKO! were a food, they chose oden, ingredients simmered in one pot of broth, with daikon radish among them. Their reason: “We’re all different, but swim around in the same pot.” That ties in with a line in the YouTube channel's Japanese description about live shows “hotter than the daikon in oden” (translated from the Japanese), which makes it a neat bit of self-introduction for the group.
2026, Their 11th Year: From London to Chile and Mexico
2026 has been the year they held their 11th-year anniversary show overseas. According to a March announcement on the official site (in Japanese), the solo show “LONDON 降臨” AG! 11th Anniversary Show was set for July 19 at Roundhouse, London. The official YouTube channel also posted a video of the show on July 21, and a behind-the-scenes video from their stay in Europe on October 9. In September, live footage of “Tokyo Calling” and “One Heart” at Lollapalooza 2026 came out as well.
Over the summer, though, KANON missed some shows for health reasons. According to a September 4 report on the official site (in Japanese), she resumed activity with the September 4 broadcast of Music Station and will continue treatment while her appearances are adjusted for now.
There's a movie connection, too: the film 星の教室 (Hoshi no Kyoshitsu) opens nationwide in Japan on November 6, 2026, and the official site announced on September 30 that the four's cover of “見上げてごらん夜の星を” (Miagete Goran Yoru no Hoshi o) had been chosen as its theme song.
And for December, headline shows billed as the ATARASHII GAKKO! FIRST LATIN AMERICA TOUR 2026 had been announced as of May, planned for the 3rd in Santiago, Chile, and the 8th in Mexico City.
RIN told Real Sound that the fun lies in the cycle of sending what they make in Japan out to the world, setting it off there, and bringing that explosion back home to Japan. Their 11th year may well be turning into exactly that kind of round trip.
Which Management Agency Are They With?
The copyright line on the official site lists three companies: ASOBISYSTEM, TV ASAHI MUSIC and TWIN PLANET. The official homepage in the YouTube channel's links section also leads to the official site by way of an ASOBISYSTEM domain. We could not find anywhere that says “management agency” outright, but it seems safe to take ASOBISYSTEM as the center of the group's operations.
Their gateway abroad was the 2021 global debut on 88rising mentioned earlier. The GRAMMY.com article introduces “NAINAINAI” as “their first release under 88Rising.”
Summary
ATARASHII GAKKO! is a quartet formed in 2015: MIZYU, RIN, SUZUKA and KANON. They broke through with “OTONABLUE” in 2023, their eighth year as a group, and as of November 1, 2026, that song still fills the top of their YouTube view rankings.
They work out their own choreography and staging, and even as they take the stage at Coachella and in London, they're making rice in a cooker on the tour bus. That kind of stepping outside the lines, in the best sense, may be the most appealing thing about this group.
