The Eclectic Case of Japanese Video Game Music

Abstract

Japanese video game music often features a degree of eclecticism that is not common in Western soundtracks. Such compositions blend elements originally belonging to different styles in a peculiar way, capable of giving life to a new musical language in which the diversity of its components does not seem to necessarily symbolize a specific alterity or an idea of otherness. Instead, in this language eclecticism becomes the new norm, a “natural and neutral” way of expressing whatever the soundtrack needs to express, regardless of the national and musical origins of the single stylistic features that are being used. This article compares the foundation of this new eclectic neutrality with the idea of mukokuseki (statelessness) and with other kinds of music (especially anime music), in search for the cultural factors that motivate the widespread persistence of a uniquely eclectic musical language. Four factors are analyzed: the hybridity of Japanese postmodern culture, the eclecticism of popular (and anime) music in Japan, the influence of specific Western artists and genres, and the role of technological affordances. The multifactorial solution to the problem highlights the necessity of searching the reasons behind eclectic Japanese video game music not only (and maybe not primarily) in contingent factors motivated by single games, but also in structural factors motivated by the peculiarities of contemporary Japanese culture.