Minzoku madness

Abstract

Japan is currently undergoing a subtle but pervasive social upheaval, a period of broad structural reform and soul-searching triggered by the rigors of the collapse of the hyperinflated “Bubble Economy” of the late 1980s. As the nation confronts the irretrievable loss of that economic mass delusion, it is turning instead to the reclamation of a quality of life sacrificed for much of the 20 century to national ambition for first military, and then economic pre-eminence. Historian Jeff Kingston has claimed that the ongoing changes, ranging from the reduction of working hours to the institution of freedom of information laws, have been equal in magnitude to those following the Meiji Restoration and Japan’s defeat in World War II. Arguably, they represent the long-delayed fruition of postwar democratizing reforms. This dissertation examines the use to which Japanese have put American forms of popular music, particularly hip hop, in grappling with these changes. The influence of African-American music in Japan has been strong since the 1920s and 1930s, and came to full flower during and after Japan’s surrender and subsequent occupation. African-American music – not just jazz, but rock, funk, and soul – eventually became a ‘music of resistance,’ connected to events such as the student protests that marked Japan in the 1960’s, indicating the symbolic power of what black America represented for Japanese youth, over and above the political or military might of America as a nation. Hip hop, which reached Japan in the early 1980s and entered the mainstream by the mid-1990s, has shown the continued power of African-American sound and imagery in Japan. The uses and meanings of that power, though, are ambiguous. Hip hop in Japan today often means Japanese artists who imitate African-American styles and sounds. This imitation has been criticized by international commentators, condemned as contextless