I've been trying lately, as I move toward the end of my time in Japan (for now) to do a little summing up - to think about what I've learned, how I can structure it meaningfully, and what holes I want to plug before I leave. Much of what I've learned revolves around the daily lives of musicians, but I want to place that within the broader context of the general conditions within which they're working. So what can I say about Japan as a context for the production of music? As an initial stab, the Japanese situation is one of:
1.
Intense stratification and hierarchical control. For musicians who want to reach a mass audience, there are no strong alternatives to the major labels and management companies. For a variety of reasons (including strong-arm tactics by
dominant management companies and, just maybe,
high-level ties to organized crime), it is almost impossible to access television except through these channels. Where in the U.S. we've become used to seeing independent musicians on late-night talk shows, hearing their music on commercials, etc, there's no real equivalent to this in Japan. Meanwhile, for musicians who bow to the structure, management companies tightly control their talent (even those with genuine musical talent), approving and limiting their releases as well as non-music projects.
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| Do you really even need to listen to this? |
2. Partly as a result, there is
Palpable Contempt for Mass Audiences. This is not a cultural constant - Japanese pop music from the sixties and seventies was of high quality and often aesthetically or culturally progressive. But music of the recent past is simply insulting, pandering to an (admittedly often true) image of mouth-breathing otaku and blandly disinterested housewives. Of course, AKB is the apex of this (the recent CGI affair is only a rather patent manifestation of the plasticine idiocy they represent), but it's everywhere - teenage girls singing meaningless lyrics over cookie-cutter tracks. Even artists who use visuals promising something interesting usually . . . aren't.
3.
Thorough Domestication, at least at the top. The very biggest Western artists still get some traction (for instance, currently, Lady Gaga), and there is a genuine 'Korean Wave' of bands like Girls Generation. And if you look at the culture more broadly, of course, there's a huge engagement with, in particular, Western (mostly American) pop, rock, jazz, soul, and hip hop from the fifties through nineties. But charts are dominated by domestic artists. This might not be a problem, maybe not even notable, except that this insularity is self-fulfilling in the export market - the failure of the Japanese pop machinery to engage with global aesthetic developments over the last ten years has left Japanese pop relevant abroad only to a marginal, if not exactly small, group of international otaku. Again, this doesn't apply nearly as much to indie and underground acts, for example bands like Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, and Melt Banana who are active, relevant contributors to global music.
