Tomo Nakamura had already decided before walking through the door that this audition would be his last. He'd already been in a half dozen bands that had never taken off. He was prepared to give up on dreams of being a musician, but fortunately for him he had found a group of young men who felt precisely the same way.

"It's the age thing that worries us the most," vocalist Justin Christy says. "If we were five years younger, it'd be a different story."

This is the danger of success in an industry that focuses on youth. Not the music industry — the fashion industry. Christy, who uses the surname Hayato professionally, and Nakamura are joined by bandmates Iriya Kurosawa and Shino Tanaka at Cafe 9 in Tokyo's Akasaka neighborhood. They've named their pop group Shunkashuto 4seasons (shunkashūtō means spring, summer, fall and winter in Japanese) and they're all working models.