Music genre
Japanese hip hop is hip hop music from Japan. It is said to have begun when Hiroshi Fujiwara returned to Japan and started playing hip hop records in the early 1980s. Japanese hip hop tends to be most directly influenced by old school hip hop, taking from the era's catchy beats, dance culture and overall fun and carefree nature and incorporating it into their music. As a result, hip hop stands as one of the most commercially viable mainstream music genres in Japan and the line between it and pop music is frequently blurred.
History of hip hop in Japan.
Although rather informal and small scale, the early days of Japanese hip hop provide the history for the emergence of the cultural movement. Early hip hop was not led by corporate interests, but rather was largely ignored by large record companies and performance venues. In this respect, Japanese hip-hop offers a representation of cultural globalization, as it expanded despite criticism on the part of record companies and major media outlets. The history shows that certain kinds of cultural exchange are not initiated through cultural understanding, but instead from some interaction that can incite a desire to learn, to participate, and to contribute individuality. In Japan, this motivation to represent individuality was breakdancing, which was one of the leading edges of hip-hop at the time.
The first known Japanese group to experiment with hip hop was Yellow Magic Orchestra, which created an early electro hip hop track, "Rap Phenomena", for their 1981 album "BGM". In turn, the synthpop and electro music of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and their use of the Roland TR-808 drum machine, had a significant influence on early key American hip hop figures such as Afrika Bambaataa and Mantronix.
An important spark for Japanese hip-hop occurred in 1983 when breakdancing appeared in Tokyo through film and live performances even though American hip hop records could previously be heard in Tokyo discos. According to Takagi Kan, a first generation Japanese MC, "I couldn't tell what was with the rap and the DJing...but with the breakdancing and graffiti art, you could understand it visually. Or rather, it wasn't understanding so much as, 'Whoa, that's cool' "[kakkoii]". With rap and DJing, I couldn't imagine what could be cool about it." Dancing has a visual impact that everyone can understand, when it comes to dance there is not a language barrier. Break dancing represented the foundation for the spread of Japanese hip-hop and served as a medium for globalization.
As in Germany, much of Japan was introduced to hip hop in the fall of 1983 with the movie "Wild Style". The film is "the classic hip-hop flick, full of great subway shots, breakdancing, freestyle MCing and rare footage of one of the godfathers of hip-hop, Grandmaster Flash, pulling off an awesome scratch-mix set on a pair of ancient turntables." The popularity of the film led to many of the artists involved in it to make a trip to Japan to promote the film and they even performed in some of the department stores while they were there.
Shortly after, Japanese took up breakdancing in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park, where street musicians gather every Sunday to perform. Crazy-A, now the leader of Rock Steady Crew Japan," was one of the pioneers of break dancing in Yoyogi back in the early 1984". Crazy-A organizes the annual "B-Boy Park," which happens every August, and draws a large number of fans and dozens of break dancing groups. This was all considered the Old School Era of rap in Tokyo. There was much of what they called Soul Dancing, which helped the Japanese culture accept the street dance culture.
The rise of DJs was really the next step for the Japanese hip hop scene. Before 1985, there weren't very many DJs on the radio, but with the increase in the number that year, it led to the opening of the first all hip hop club in 1986. But despite the fact that DJing caught on rather quickly, it was initially thought that rapping wasn't going to have the same cache as it would be hard to rap in Japanese.
Street musicians began to breakdance in Yoyogi Park, including DJ Krush who has become a world-renowned DJ after arising from the Yoyogi Park scene. In 1986 an all hip hop club opened in Shibuya. While interest in hip-hop in Japan grew some during the 1980s and early 1990s, the rap scene remained fairly small and rather marginalized. One reason for the rap scene to remain so small and a little bit less popular compared to hip hop is because the Japanese language does "not contain stress accents and sentences must end with one of a few simple verb endings." Ito Seiko, Chikado Haruo, Tinnie Punx and Takagi Kan were rappers that emerged from Japan at this time, and they proved to be rather successful.
1990s.
By the early 1990s, major American artists began to tour Japan, and their music would receive Japanese releases.
The years 1994 and 1995 marked the beginning of hip-hop's commercial success in Japan. The first hit was Schadaraparr's "Kon'ya wa būgi bakku" (Boogie Back Tonight) by Scha Dara Parr and Ozawa Kenji, followed by East End X Yuri's "Da. Yo. Ne." and "Maicca," which each sold a million copies. This sudden popularity of J-rap, which was largely characterized as party rap, sparked a debate over 'realness' and authenticity between commercial and underground hip-hop artists.
Popular brands in Japan during this period also collaborated with multiple hip hop artists. A Bathing Ape (or BAPE) A Japanese clothing company founded by Nigo in 1993. . Artist such as Pharrell Williams, Kanye West, Kid Cudi, and KAWS have collaborated with BAPE.
An example of an underground attack on mainstream J-Rap is Lamp Eye's "Shogen," in which rapper You the Rock disses the more pop oriented group Dassen Trio. Writer Ian Condry argues that the rappers on this track are closely emulating the traditional macho posturing of rap, citing influences such as Public Enemy and Rakim. Dassen Trio, and other pop rappers, respond to such attacks with the argument that their subject matter is more culturally appropriate and accessible for Japanese fans, and question the standards of "realness" put forth by underground rappers.
Actual Japanese rap lyrics have a tendency to refer to mundane subjects such as food, cell phones, and shopping.
2000s, 2010s and 2020s.
Since 2000, the hip hop scene in Japan has grown and diversified. Hip-hop style and Japanese rap has been an enormous commercial success in Japan. In a 2003 interview with the BBC, Tokyo record-store owner, Hideaki Tamura noted "Japanese hip-hop really exploded in the last two, three years. I never thought there would be a time when Japanese records could outsell American ones but it's happening." Additionally, a huge number of new scenes have developed. These include “rock rap to hard core gangsta, spoken word/poetry, to conscious, old school, techno rap, antigovernment, pro-marijuana, heavymetal-sampled rap, and so on.”
Tamura points to a shift in Japanese hip hop, when artists began to focus on issues pertinent to Japanese society, versus previous styles and subjects that were copied from US hip hop culture. For Japan, the style of hip hop was much more appealing than topics popular in American hip hop, such as violence. Ian Condry, on the other hand, focuses on an interplay between local and global hip hop within the genba of Japan. For Condry, Japanese hip hop was born out of simultaneous localization and globalization of hip hop culture, rather than a shift between the two binary factors.
Political aspects.
King Giddra's "911" reflects on Ground Zero and its aftermath in two eras: August 1945 and September 11, 2001. It also called for world peace. Groups such as Rhymester tackle issues that are not openly addressed in society. Rhymester member Utamaru talked about the motives for Japanese government support of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Influence of African American Culture on Japanese hip hop.
Previous to the inception of hip hop, soul dancing became popularized in Japan in the 1970s. Shows like 'Soul Train' spread the African-American style of on-going dance that would soon be picked up by varying cultures all over the world. It is this style of dance that laid the foundation for the globalization of African-American culture due to its universal criteria. Anyone can dance to soul music, which is not the case in terms of rapping, b-boying, etc. As movies like 'Flashdance' (1983) reached the islands, more and more young people began dancing on the street and other public arenas, which added to its cultural integration. Soon, Japanese culture was ready to alter the very structure of their language in order to partake in hip hop.
Hip hop was thought to have originally become popular in Japan because the Japanese people wanted to imitate African-Americans. The Japanese would hear these rapper's music spinning in clubs, exposing to them a small, narrow view of American West Coast hip hop. It was not only the music they latched onto, however. They came to love the entire hip hop culture, including the loose-fitting clothes, graffiti writing, and break dancing. Some Japanese hip-hop fans would even go to tanning salons to darken their skin, and style their hair in afros or dreadlocks to imitate the "cool" looks of Africans, although they are ridiculed by others, including other hip-hoppers.
Racial themes.
This style is called "burapan" - "the name given to the fashion sensibilities of all black wannabes." and is similar to the English term wigger. The term "burapan", though, has a derogatory history stemming from the WW2 occupation of Japan. Japanese law at the beginning of the American occupation legalised prostitution and created specific brothels to service allied occupation forces such as the Recreation and Amusement Association, in order to stop the rape and sexual assault of local women.
These prostitutes became known as "panpan", a euphemism used by the American soldiers when hunting for a prostitute. Pan derives from the American company Pan American World Airways and combines with the Japanese word "pan" meaning bread (thus these girls were also euphemistically known as bread girls) The more attractive girls often had to service "white bread" or white soldiers and were known as "yagipan" with "yagi" being the Japanese word for goat, a white hairy animal. Less attractive girls serviced "black bread" or black soldiers and were known as "burapan" with "bura" deriving from the Japanese word burakumin relating to social stigma. Therefore, a "burapan" is literally "a woman who prostitutes herself for black men."
Although the word has come to describe a trend of dress and culture modeled after Africans, it is inherently problematic because of its origins. The soundtrack of Wild Style was marketed in Japan as a cassette with a book of photos-scenes from the film, neighborhoods, breakers, graffiti, etc. Japan's hip hop contributions have been perceived by many to be based more on appearances than anything else.
A subculture of hip-hoppers who subscribe to the "burapan" style are referred to as blackfacers, a reference to the blackface style of makeup used in minstrel acting that began as an imitation or caricaturation of Africans. One Japanese pop group, the Gosperats, has been known to wear blackface makeup during performances, who were influenced by the 80's doo wop group Chanels. The appearance of these "Jiggers" has shown a growing popularity with the hip-hop subculture in Japan despite what can be viewed as racial ideological tendencies of the country towards Black people, and all non-Japanese in general. There are roughly 50,000 Africans in Japan; which is approximately .04% of the Japanese population. Although such an insignificant percent of the Japanese population is African, Japanese subculture is very much accepting of African culture. For many rebellious Japanese youth it provides an outlet for "coolness" and a chance to express themselves outside the box. However, some Japanese fans of hip-hop find it embarrassing and ridiculous that these blackface fans do this because they feel like they shouldn't change their appearance to embrace the culture. In some instances it can be seen as a racist act, but for many of the young Japanese fans it is a way of immersing in the hip hop culture the way they see fit.
Even as Japanese hung Sambo signs throughout the city, they were undeniably attracted to black music and style. Before hip hop, the Japanese had embraced jazz, rock