Japan produces sugary sweet bubblegum pop par excellence. But the thriving roots scene is more nourishing - fuelled by the dynamic music of the islands of Okinawa. It is these sounds of Japan's "deep south" which have recently been making waves at home and abroad. Otherwise, Japan's bewildering variety of popular and traditional music is little known in the West.
With a value of well over six billion dollars, Japan has the second-largest music market in the world, after the USA. The advent of satellite TV, with its many music channels, has fuelled music mania among young Asians, and karaoke in particular is wildly popular.
Unfortunately, the overriding image of Japanese contemporary music is one of instantly forgettable pop. Teenagers are trained, manufactured and recorded as
idoru kashu
, or idol singers. Boy bands like Smap or Hikaru Genji and cutsie female singers like duo Wink offer watered-down Western pop with Japanese lyrics, their hooklines often sung in meaningless English.
Such surface noise aside, nowhere in Asia can you find such a wide
range of music
: from ancient Buddhist chanting and court music to folk and old urban styles, from localized popular forms such as
kayokyoku
and
enka
to Western classical and jazz - plus every kind of pop you'd find in the West.
John Clewley
Classical and theatrical music
Classical music can be divided into
gagaku
(court orchestral music) and
shomyo
(Buddhist chanting).
Gagaku
came from China 1500 years ago as Confucian ceremonial music of the Chinese court. Similar to a chamber...
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Ancient Roots
The many musical styles found in Japan have their roots in Japan's particular historical circumstances - China, Korea, Central and Southeast Asia all exerted considerable influence on the early development of music. The history of music in Japan dates...
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Traditional instruments
Shakuhachi
A bamboo flute with five finger-holes - four on the front and one on the back - the
shakuhachi
has a full range of chromatic notes, obtained by adjusting the position of the flute and partially covering the holes. The...
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Min'yo - folk music
Japan's
min'yo
(folk) tradition is long and rich. Each region has its own style, perhaps the most famous of all being the instrumental
shamisen
style from Tsugaru in Tohoku. The continued popularity of
min'yo
is partly...
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Developing modern styles
As Japan began the process of
modernization
under the Meiji Reformation of 1868, there was already a large pool of traditional music - classical, folk and urban - available for development or incorporation into newer styles. Another influence...
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Postwar pop
After the famine and devastation that followed the end of World War II, people turned for solace to songs like the influential 1945 hit
Ringo No Uta
(The Apple Song), sung by Namiki Michiko and Kirishima Noburo. Despite the arrival of more...
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Enka - Japan's soul music
Enka
has been described as the "nihonjin no kokoro", the soul of the Japanese. It's about lost love, homesickness or simply drowning the sorrows of a broken heart with sake. The songs feature fog or rain, a smouldering cigarette that means...
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Japanese rock
By the late 1960s, musicians were starting to create
Japanese-language rock
. Many pop bands at the time sang in English but some underground groups tried splicing Japanese into the rock mix. Seminal band Happy End were pioneers. Led by...
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The Roots Boom
The Japanese genius for assimilating foreign sounds into a new form is well known, and the invasion of
World Music
has had a significant effect. Reggae, for example, was considered "underground" for years, but the rise of Japanese...
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The sound of the deep, deep south
Be it at a
min'yo
performance in a small club or among the massed troupes of the annual
Eisa
festival, you'll find graceful dancing, haunting vocals, all kinds of drumming and stunning playing on the three-stringed
sanshin
...
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