Japanese street dance culture in manga and anime: Hip hop transcription in Samurai Champloo and Tokyo Tribe-2

Abstract

Street dance, one of the four most important elements of hip hop culture, was developed mainly by African American youths in the 1970s and imported to Japan in the 1980s. Since then, street dance has been diversified by local media such as manga/anime in Japan. This article therefore analyses how Japanese storytelling, exemplified by Shin’ichirō Watanabe’s anime Samurai Champloo (2004–05), Santa Inoue’s manga Tokyo Tribe-2 (1997–2005) and Tatsuo Satō’s anime adaptation Tokyo Tribes (2006–07), has transcribed the hip hop elements into the Tokugawa-Edo period’s art scenes and fictitious ‘Tōkyō’, and provides a basis for understanding hip hop culture in Japan by drawing on Charles Taylor’s ‘language of perspicuous contrast’ (1985). Although manga and anime quickly reflected popular cultural trends in Japan, hip hop elements did not manifest as main material until Tokyo Tribe-2 was released. Thus, there was apparently a prolonged interval between the arrival of hip hop culture in Japan and its representation by manga/anime after Japanese youths’ first fancied street dance. Therefore, street dance culture could have been transformed within the Japanese cultural context. This article also analyses the representation/transcription of street dance and hip hop in manga/amine by contextualizing the Japanese sociopolitical background to explain this prolonged interval.