Roland Kelts's Blog, page 50

Hip-hop Japan--First Japanamerica Guest Post

Writer Evelyn Anderson won the jackpot by becoming the first guest contributor to the Japanamerica blog. Herewith, her take on Japanese hip-hop.  Move over, PSY.











Hip-hop in Japan: Carbon Copy of America
or Japanese take on an American Movement?


Hip-hop is arguably one of
the most influential subcultures in the world. It has caused teenagers all over
the globe to don baggy clothing, wear their caps back to front and slip pieces
of urban American slang into their conversations. It is therefore no surprise
that the youth of Japan has been heavily influenced by this movement, with
young people emulating the fashion, vernacular and musical tastes of the US
ghetto. There are now over three hundred shops selling hip-hop clothes in
central Tokyo alone and it is commonplace to see young men dressed in the
‘b-boy’ style that was popular amongst American rappers during the ‘80s.
However whereas in the past, Japanese hip-hop fans imitated their American
counterparts without adding any elements from their own culture into the mix,
over the course of the last few years, hip-hop culture in Japan has transformed
into its own unique movement.





From
Gangster Rap to Reality Rap

In late 2003, the owner of
Tokyo hip-hop record shop Hideaki Tamura noted that a major change was
occurring within the Japanese hip-hop scene. When interviewed by a BBC News reporter, he commented that Japanese rappers had
started doing their own thing as opposed to emulating American rappers. Instead
of rapping about things like guns, violence and drug culture in New York, which there is
little of in Japan compared to the United States, they were beginning to rap
about everyday life in Japan, focusing upon peaceful topics and structuring
their lyrics in a poetic manner. 



One of the factors that had originally held
Japanese rappers back and caused most Japanese youngsters to listen to American
hip-hop instead was the perception that the Japanese language is not suited to
this form of music. Sentences must end with one of a few simple verb endings
and the language does not contain stress accents. However after the success of
several pop-rap artists during the mid 90s, Japanese language rap gradually
grew in popularity. Now that the lyrics are also becoming more reflective of
Japanese life, it could be argued that the Japanese have taken an American
style and made it Japanese.


Exploring
Discrimination

When hip-hop first became
popular in Japan, the majority of its fans were detached from the fact that it
was originally the soundtrack to an underprivileged minority. Themes of
oppression and rebellion went over the audience’s heads, partly due to the
language barrier. Enthusiasts were mainly drawn to the fashion, with female
fans even darkening their skin and braiding their hair in order to pay homage
to black Americans. As Japan’s hip-hop fans became more and more in touch with
the roots of the music that they listened to, some minority rappers began to
use the genre to explore their cultural identities.





In 2007, Reuters reported that
an indigenous Japanese ethnic group known as the Ainu were turning to hip-hop
in order to spread awareness of their customs and traditions. Reuters gave the
example of a group called the ‘Ainu Rebels’, who had made a rap song in the
language of the Ainu about ancestral heroes and totemic gods. A reporter
for The Guardian suggested
that the emergence of Ainu rappers was playing a part in Ainu culture becoming
popular as opposed to being stigmatised and an article in USA Today stated
that it was helping the Ainu to ‘rise up from the margins of Japanese society’. 



Japanese rappers have also been responsible for creating songs speaking out
against discrimination against Koreans, as well as a number of other issues
affecting minorities in the country. This is further evidence of Japanese
hip-hop artists tailoring their music towards the unique set of problems that
exist within Japanese society as opposed to merely copying the messages of
American rappers.





Japanese
the New Jamaican

Japanese rappers are even
beginning to take pride in how different their rap scene is to that of America.
Japanese hip-hop artist Kojoe explores the differences between the Japanese and
African Americans within his songs. He has a collaboration with a black
American rapper on one of his albums, which features a joke about Americans not
being able to tell the Japanese from the Chinese. Kojoe has previously
emphasized the importance of rapping in a Japanese accent when performing to
English speakers, pointing out that citizens of non-Jamaican countries have
come to enjoy hearing a Jamaican accent in reggae songs and expressing a desire
to create a similar situation with regards to the Japanese accent and hip-hop.
He is one of a growing number of Japanese hip-hop artists who wish to emphasize
their Japanese nationality as opposed to adopting an American way of speaking
in an effort to fit in with what is popular in the States.





The
Future of Hip-Hop in Japan

The question is, ‘will
hip-hop continue to be popular in Japan throughout the years to come?’ It has managed
to break away from America’s shadow and become something original but that does
not necessarily mean that it will still exist ten years from now. Cultural
commentator Carlo Niederberger believes that Japanese hip-hop is a fad and that
it will soon fade out. He has commented that the Japanese have a habit of
getting passionate about things and then quickly forgetting about them. 



However
his words bring about a sense of déjà vu to anybody who is familiar with the
history of hip-hop in America because this is was exactly what journalists said
when the genre first became popular in New York. Whether he is correct or not
remains to be seen but one thing is for certain: the blending of black American
and Japanese cultures within the Japanese hip-hop scene has certainly created
an interesting hybrid.



----------



Evelyn Anderson is a music
aficionado and perpetual nomad, having lived in Japan and Korea during a lot of
her early twenties. Now more rooted back home, she is a freelance writer and
covers everything from personal finance to celebrity trends.

Hip-hop Japan--First Japanamerica Guest Post

Writer Evelyn Anderson won the jackpot by becoming the first guest contributor to the Japanamerica blog. Herewith, her take on Japanese hip-hop.  Move over, PSY.









Hip-hop in Japan: Carbon Copy of America or Japanese take on an American Movement?




Hip-hop is arguably one of the most influential subcultures in the world. It has caused teenagers all over the globe to don baggy clothing, wear their caps back to front and slip pieces of urban American slang into their conversations. It is therefore no surprise that the youth of Japan has been heavily influenced by this movement, with young people emulating the fashion, vernacular and musical tastes of the US ghetto. There are now over three hundred shops selling hip-hop clothes in central Tokyo alone and it is commonplace to see young men dressed in the ‘b-boy’ style that was popular amongst American rappers during the ‘80s. However whereas in the past, Japanese hip-hop fans imitated their American counterparts without adding any elements from their own culture into the mix, over the course of the last few years, hip-hop culture in Japan has transformed into its own unique movement.




From Gangster Rap to Reality Rap




In late 2003, the owner of Tokyo hip-hop record shop Hideaki Tamura noted that a major change was occurring within the Japanese hip-hop scene. When interviewed by a BBC News reporter, he commented that Japanese rappers had started doing their own thing as opposed to emulating American rappers. Instead of rapping about things like guns, violence and drug culture in New York, which there is little of in Japan compared to the United States, they were beginning to rap about everyday life in Japan, focusing upon peaceful topics and structuring their lyrics in a poetic manner. One of the factors that had originally held Japanese rappers back and caused most Japanese youngsters to listen to American hip-hop instead was the perception that the Japanese language is not suited to this form of music. Sentences must end with one of a few simple verb endings and the language does not contain stress accents. However after the success of several pop-rap artists during the mid 90s, Japanese language rap gradually grew in popularity. Now that the lyrics are also becoming more reflective of Japanese life, it could be argued that the Japanese have taken an American style and made it Japanese.




Exploring Discrimination




When hip-hop first became popular in Japan, the majority of its fans were detached from the fact that it was originally the soundtrack to an underprivileged minority.

Themes of oppression and rebellion went over the audience’s heads, partly due to the language barrier. Enthusiasts were mainly drawn to the fashion, with female fans even darkening their skin and braiding their hair in order to pay homage to black Americans. As Japan’s hip-hop fans became more and more in touch with the roots of the music that they listened to, some minority rappers began to use the genre to explore their cultural identities.

In 2007, Reuters reported that an indigenous Japanese ethnic group known as the Ainu were turning to hip-hop in order to spread awareness of their customs and traditions. Reuters gave the example of a group called the ‘Ainu Rebels’, who had made a rap song in the language of the Ainu about ancestral heroes and totemic gods. A reporter for The Guardian suggested that the emergence of Ainu rappers was playing a part in Ainu culture becoming popular as opposed to being stigmatised and an article in USA Today stated that it was helping the Ainu to ‘rise up from the margins of Japanese society’.

Japanese rappers have also been responsible for creating songs speaking out against discrimination against Koreans, as well as a number of other issues affecting minorities in the country. This is further evidence of Japanese hip-hop artists tailoring their music towards the unique set of problems that exist within Japanese society as opposed to merely copying the messages of American rappers.




Japanese the New Jamaican?




Japanese rappers are even beginning to take pride in how different their rap scene is to that of America. Japanese hip-hop artist Kojoe explores the differences between the Japanese and African Americans within his songs. He has a collaboration with a black American rapper on one of his albums, which features a joke about Americans not being able to tell the Japanese from the Chinese. Kojoe has previously emphasized the importance of rapping in a Japanese accent when performing to English speakers, pointing out that citizens of non-Jamaican countries have come to enjoy hearing a Jamaican accent in reggae songs and expressing a desire to create a similar situation with regards to the Japanese accent and hip-hop. He is one of a growing number of Japanese hip-hop artists who wish to emphasize their Japanese nationality as opposed to adopting an American way of speaking in an effort to fit in with what is popular in the States.




The Future of Hip-Hop in Japan




The question is, ‘will hip-hop continue to be popular in Japan throughout the years to come?’ It has managed to break away from America’s shadow and become something original but that does not necessarily mean that it will still exist ten years from now. Cultural commentator Carlo Niederberger believes that Japanese hip-hop is a fad and that it will soon fade out. He has commented that the Japanese have a habit of getting passionate about things and then quickly forgetting about them. However his words bring about a sense of déjà vu to anybody who is familiar with the history of hip-hop in America because this is was exactly what journalists said when the genre first became popular in New York. Whether he is correct or not remains to be seen but one thing is for certain: the blending of black American and Japanese cultures within the Japanese hip-hop scene has certainly created an interesting hybrid.



----------



Evelyn Anderson is a music aficionado and perpetual nomad, having lived in Japan and Korea during a lot of her early twenties. Now more rooted back home, she is a freelance writer and covers everything from personal finance to celebrity trends.

'Cool Japan' gone cold?

By Dan Grunebaum, from The Christian Science Monitor :


It’s been 50 years since Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki Song” became a worldwide smash. The only other Asian artist to replicate the feat? Psy, from rival South Korea, with his viral hit “Gangnam Style.”



Even as Korean tech giant Samsung turns Sony into a has-been, Japan’s erstwhile colony is also beating it in the pop culture sphere: A decade after journalist Douglas McGray famously calculated “Japan’s Gross National Cool” and awoke the country to the potential of capitalizing on the global infatuation with its anime, games, J-pop, and manga, the concept of “Cool Japan” is under assault.



Artists whose work drove the trend are distancing themselves from the commercialized moniker. “Dear ad agencies and bureaucrats,” tweeted renowned artist Takashi Murakami earlier this year. “Please stop inviting me to ‘Cool Japan’ events.... I have absolutely no link to ‘Cool Japan.’ ”



But others say a more nuanced drive to deploy Japan’s national cool as “soft power” could help heal the wounds of its devastating 2011 tsunami, smooth the creation of a postindustrial economy, and even boost Japan’s manufacturers at a time when the country is competing with neighboring South Korea and China over everything from electronics to islands in the seas separating them.



Without such a change of strategy, some say, Japan's dream of cashing in on its global cachet will remain unrealized. “Japan was caught completely by surprise by the success of its popular culture overseas,” warns Patrick Galbraith, an expert on Japanese pop culture. “The government has been content to bask in that success at a time of declining political and economic significance. It is high time to engage.”



At the turn of the millennium, Japan was on a roll. In 2001, Los Angeles’s Getty Center showcased Mr. Murakami’s manga-inspired "Super Flat" movement. (Read about the artist's featured Google doodle, here) In 2002, Hayao Miyazaki's “Spirited Away” became the first animation feature to win top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. By 2006, Harvard and MIT had a joint Cool Japan research program.



Elated by the international attention, Japan’s bureaucrats and CEOs reformulated the concept of "national cool" into a Cool Japan marketing campaign that could reach new consumers and add soft power to Japan’s manufacturing achievements. And it seemed to work ... for a while.




How things backfired



But the hoped-for revenue streams didn’t pan out.



North American manga sales peaked in 2007 and then declined, resulting in a wave of layoffs at international manga distributors. (Read more Monitor reporting on the rise of manga here)



According to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry’s 2012 “Cool Japan Strategy” white paper, Japan exports only 5 percent of its Cool Japan contents – not quite one-third of US creative industries’ 17.8 percent.



The industry created a bubble that has now burst, says Mr. Galbraith, author of “The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan.” “Some say anime is dead,” he observes in Tokyo, “while others who still like it say it’s overpriced, and end up illegally streaming it.”



Even Japan’s mighty video games are losing their worldwide cachet. Legendary game designer Keiji Inafune was recently accused of having a “Charlie Sheen moment” in his calls for Japanese studios to wake up to their growing irrelevance.



The marketing of the phrase Cool Japan itself creates an awkward problem: “To call yourself cool is by definition uncool – and it defies Japanese modesty,” says Manabu Kitawaki, director of Meiji University’s Cool Japan program.



“Creativity doesn’t spring from marketing,” he continues. “The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry hired Dentsu for its Cool Japan campaign. It’s become a way to funnel money to a big ad firm.”



The otaku culture (a term used to describe people with intensive interests in anime or manga) celebrated by Cool Japan can also be problematic overseas. Critics complain of the use of the popular girl band group AKB48 as cultural ambassadors. “AKB48 may represent Japanese culture,” says Yukio Kobayashi, president of Tokyo music agency 3rd Stone From The Sun, “but underage girls in sexy clothing … to me it’s basically legal child porn.”



Experts also say the country focused for too long on producing highly developed but unexportable products. They say the sheer size of the domestic market made foreign fans of Japanese culture an afterthought – and that when Japanese contents industries did look abroad, the rush of interest in Cool Japan created unrealistic expectations.



“It’s the boiling frog scenario,” says the Ryotaro Mihara of the new Creative Industries Division at the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). “With Cool Japan the market shrank bit by bit," he says referring to Japan's domestic manga, anime, and music markets, "so there wasn’t a sense of urgency” to reach international consumers.



By contrast, says “Japanamerica” author Roland Kelts, “The Korean government invested a lot of money in its domestic pop industry and went after overseas markets. “Places where J-pop was formerly popular, like Southeast Asia, have switched to K-pop.”



The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster then came along to deal a cruel blow to Japan’s image. “You can call Japan ‘cool’ all you want,” says Japanese film critic Mark Schilling, “but images of the tsunami and reactor meltdowns are stronger now in many foreign minds than any miniskirted pop idol.”



Goodbye Cool Japan



As the challenges facing Japanese soft power sink in, some say the first step to addressing them may mean ditching the Cool Japan slogan altogether.



METI’s Mr. Mihara admits there has been criticism. “A debate is needed within Japan,” he says, “to come up with a better phrase to explain Japanese culture.”



Rather than Cool Japan slogans, Japan may be better off promoting specific aspects of Japanese culture. “What you want is Cool X, Y, or Z,” says Steve McClure, former Billboard Asia bureau chief and publisher of McClureMusic.com. “Branding a cultural movement in terms of national origin is dangerous.”



This is an area where Japan should have an advantage. “Gangnam Style” may have 800 million YouTube views, but Japan produces a broader range of success stories.



Last year in North America, vintage singer Saori Yuki had a No. 1 song on the iTunes jazz chart while dance music star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu topped iTunes’s electronic music chart. “It’s almost irrelevant whether Japan is cool or not, because there is enough cool stuff here anyway that will sink or swim on its own,” says Mr. McClure.



Instead of throwing money at marketing campaigns, experts say Japan should support its struggling domestic contents industries. Japan spent just 0.12 percent of its national budget on the arts in 2008, the latest year for which comparable figures are available, whereas South Korea spent 0.79 percent, and China 0.51 percent.



Public funds would be effective in industries like manga and anime, where young “kamikaze” animators burn out from long days and salaries that average only just over 1 million yen (about $12,185) per year.



Indeed, though Japan once dominated the industry, work is increasingly done by its low-cost Asian neighbors. “There is a culture of manga and anime that is currently in critical condition,” says Galbraith. “The manga market cannot be allowed to fail. It is the base of the contents industry in Japan.”



Public money would also be useful in helping Japanese artists make expensive trips abroad. “We get many requests from overseas fans,” says King Record’s Sayaka Yamada, who manages the international catalog of girl groups like Momoiro Clover Z. “Financial support would be very helpful,” she continues. “Japan should study Korea, which invested a lot to promote K-pop artists.”



Observers say Japan production houses should empower the “scanlators” who post pirated manga. “They need to join with other companies to make a Web presence that’s attractively priced and branded,” Mr. Kelts counsels, pointing again to South Korea, which has been much more proactive about utilizing the Internet and branding its culture.



“When a Pixar film comes to Japan, it’s branded as a Pixar film,” Kelts says. “Nobody knows Japanese anime studios like Production I.G. Cool Japan was fine in the early phases, but at a certain point distinguishing brands have to emerge.”





An initiative by METI’s Creative Industries section, which was formed just last year, may speak to new efforts in this direction. METI funded a “Harajuku Street Style” market in Singapore. “Kawaii styles are very popular there, but Japanese fashion businesses have difficulty operating overseas,” METI’s Mihara says. “We provided a budget to help them get established. Pooling their efforts, we had 13 brands available in Singapore for the first time.”



Conveying the depth of Japanese culture



Experts also say Japan needs to get away from stereotypes. “We need to convey the depth of Japanese culture beyond manga and anime,” says Meiji’s Mr. Kitawaki. “Behind manga and anime there is a rich culture, for example the animism of Shinto. Or take modern Japanese design’s ability to manage extremely small spaces – this is also Cool Japan.”



The massive worldwide outpouring by the likes of Lady Gaga after the Fukushima disaster hinted at the reach of Japanese soft power. And a recent global poll by research firm StrategyOne ranked Japan the world’s most creative country.



Mr. McGray, in his famous article, foresaw two possible futures for Japan. It could either employ its vast potential soft power to reinvent itself, or, he warned, lurch toward further uncertainty.



He leaned toward optimism, saying, "Japan's history of remarkable revivals suggests that the outcome … is more likely to be rebirth.”

'Cool Japan' gone cold?

By Dan Grunebaum, from The Christian Science Monitor :


It’s been 50 years since Kyu Sakamoto’s “Sukiyaki Song” became a worldwide smash. The only other Asian artist to replicate the feat? Psy, from rival South Korea, with his viral hit “Gangnam Style.”



Even as Korean tech giant Samsung turns Sony into a has-been, Japan’s erstwhile colony is also beating it in the pop culture sphere: A decade after journalist Douglas McGray famously calculated “Japan’s Gross National Cool” and awoke the country to the potential of capitalizing on the global infatuation with its anime, games, J-pop, and manga, the concept of “Cool Japan” is under assault.



Artists whose work drove the trend are distancing themselves from the commercialized moniker. “Dear ad agencies and bureaucrats,” tweeted renowned artist Takashi Murakami earlier this year. “Please stop inviting me to ‘Cool Japan’ events.... I have absolutely no link to ‘Cool Japan.’ ”



But others say a more nuanced drive to deploy Japan’s national cool as “soft power” could help heal the wounds of its devastating 2011 tsunami, smooth the creation of a postindustrial economy, and even boost Japan’s manufacturers at a time when the country is competing with neighboring South Korea and China over everything from electronics to islands in the seas separating them.



Without such a change of strategy, some say, Japan's dream of cashing in on its global cachet will remain unrealized. “Japan was caught completely by surprise by the success of its popular culture overseas,” warns Patrick Galbraith, an expert on Japanese pop culture. “The government has been content to bask in that success at a time of declining political and economic significance. It is high time to engage.”



At the turn of the millennium, Japan was on a roll. In 2001, Los Angeles’s Getty Center showcased Mr. Murakami’s manga-inspired "Super Flat" movement. (Read about the artist's featured Google doodle, here) In 2002, Hayao Miyazaki's “Spirited Away” became the first animation feature to win top honors at the Berlin Film Festival. By 2006, Harvard and MIT had a joint Cool Japan research program.



Elated by the international attention, Japan’s bureaucrats and CEOs reformulated the concept of "national cool" into a Cool Japan marketing campaign that could reach new consumers and add soft power to Japan’s manufacturing achievements. And it seemed to work ... for a while.




How things backfired



But the hoped-for revenue streams didn’t pan out.



North American manga sales peaked in 2007 and then declined, resulting in a wave of layoffs at international manga distributors. (Read more Monitor reporting on the rise of manga here)



According to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry’s 2012 “Cool Japan Strategy” white paper, Japan exports only 5 percent of its Cool Japan contents – not quite one-third of US creative industries’ 17.8 percent.



The industry created a bubble that has now burst, says Mr. Galbraith, author of “The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider's Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan.” “Some say anime is dead,” he observes in Tokyo, “while others who still like it say it’s overpriced, and end up illegally streaming it.”



Even Japan’s mighty video games are losing their worldwide cachet. Legendary game designer Keiji Inafune was recently accused of having a “Charlie Sheen moment” in his calls for Japanese studios to wake up to their growing irrelevance.



The marketing of the phrase Cool Japan itself creates an awkward problem: “To call yourself cool is by definition uncool – and it defies Japanese modesty,” says Manabu Kitawaki, director of Meiji University’s Cool Japan program.



“Creativity doesn’t spring from marketing,” he continues. “The Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry hired Dentsu for its Cool Japan campaign. It’s become a way to funnel money to a big ad firm.”



The otaku culture (a term used to describe people with intensive interests in anime or manga) celebrated by Cool Japan can also be problematic overseas. Critics complain of the use of the popular girl band group AKB48 as cultural ambassadors. “AKB48 may represent Japanese culture,” says Yukio Kobayashi, president of Tokyo music agency 3rd Stone From The Sun, “but underage girls in sexy clothing … to me it’s basically legal child porn.”



Experts also say the country focused for too long on producing highly developed but unexportable products. They say the sheer size of the domestic market made foreign fans of Japanese culture an afterthought – and that when Japanese contents industries did look abroad, the rush of interest in Cool Japan created unrealistic expectations.



“It’s the boiling frog scenario,” says the Ryotaro Mihara of the new Creative Industries Division at the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI). “With Cool Japan the market shrank bit by bit," he says referring to Japan's domestic manga, anime, and music markets, "so there wasn’t a sense of urgency” to reach international consumers.



By contrast, says “Japanamerica” author Roland Kelts, “The Korean government invested a lot of money in its domestic pop industry and went after overseas markets. “Places where J-pop was formerly popular, like Southeast Asia, have switched to K-pop.”



The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster then came along to deal a cruel blow to Japan’s image. “You can call Japan ‘cool’ all you want,” says Japanese film critic Mark Schilling, “but images of the tsunami and reactor meltdowns are stronger now in many foreign minds than any miniskirted pop idol.”



Goodbye Cool Japan



As the challenges facing Japanese soft power sink in, some say the first step to addressing them may mean ditching the Cool Japan slogan altogether.



METI’s Mr. Mihara admits there has been criticism. “A debate is needed within Japan,” he says, “to come up with a better phrase to explain Japanese culture.”



Rather than Cool Japan slogans, Japan may be better off promoting specific aspects of Japanese culture. “What you want is Cool X, Y, or Z,” says Steve McClure, former Billboard Asia bureau chief and publisher of McClureMusic.com. “Branding a cultural movement in terms of national origin is dangerous.”



This is an area where Japan should have an advantage. “Gangnam Style” may have 800 million YouTube views, but Japan produces a broader range of success stories.



Last year in North America, vintage singer Saori Yuki had a No. 1 song on the iTunes jazz chart while dance music star Kyary Pamyu Pamyu topped iTunes’s electronic music chart. “It’s almost irrelevant whether Japan is cool or not, because there is enough cool stuff here anyway that will sink or swim on its own,” says Mr. McClure.



Instead of throwing money at marketing campaigns, experts say Japan should support its struggling domestic contents industries. Japan spent just 0.12 percent of its national budget on the arts in 2008, the latest year for which comparable figures are available, whereas South Korea spent 0.79 percent, and China 0.51 percent.



Public funds would be effective in industries like manga and anime, where young “kamikaze” animators burn out from long days and salaries that average only just over 1 million yen (about $12,185) per year.



Indeed, though Japan once dominated the industry, work is increasingly done by its low-cost Asian neighbors. “There is a culture of manga and anime that is currently in critical condition,” says Galbraith. “The manga market cannot be allowed to fail. It is the base of the contents industry in Japan.”



Public money would also be useful in helping Japanese artists make expensive trips abroad. “We get many requests from overseas fans,” says King Record’s Sayaka Yamada, who manages the international catalog of girl groups like Momoiro Clover Z. “Financial support would be very helpful,” she continues. “Japan should study Korea, which invested a lot to promote K-pop artists.”



Observers say Japan production houses should empower the “scanlators” who post pirated manga. “They need to join with other companies to make a Web presence that’s attractively priced and branded,” Mr. Kelts counsels, pointing again to South Korea, which has been much more proactive about utilizing the Internet and branding its culture.



“When a Pixar film comes to Japan, it’s branded as a Pixar film,” Kelts says. “Nobody knows Japanese anime studios like Production I.G. Cool Japan was fine in the early phases, but at a certain point distinguishing brands have to emerge.”





An initiative by METI’s Creative Industries section, which was formed just last year, may speak to new efforts in this direction. METI funded a “Harajuku Street Style” market in Singapore. “Kawaii styles are very popular there, but Japanese fashion businesses have difficulty operating overseas,” METI’s Mihara says. “We provided a budget to help them get established. Pooling their efforts, we had 13 brands available in Singapore for the first time.”



Conveying the depth of Japanese culture



Experts also say Japan needs to get away from stereotypes. “We need to convey the depth of Japanese culture beyond manga and anime,” says Meiji’s Mr. Kitawaki. “Behind manga and anime there is a rich culture, for example the animism of Shinto. Or take modern Japanese design’s ability to manage extremely small spaces – this is also Cool Japan.”



The massive worldwide outpouring by the likes of Lady Gaga after the Fukushima disaster hinted at the reach of Japanese soft power. And a recent global poll by research firm StrategyOne ranked Japan the world’s most creative country.



Mr. McGray, in his famous article, foresaw two possible futures for Japan. It could either employ its vast potential soft power to reinvent itself, or, he warned, lurch toward further uncertainty.



He leaned toward optimism, saying, "Japan's history of remarkable revivals suggests that the outcome … is more likely to be rebirth.”

My latest interview w/Pete Townshend on Japan/UK postwar parallels

Townshend: Japan, U.K. took same postwar path





By ROLAND KELTS

Special to The Japan Times



Who guitarist and composer Pete Townshend originally wanted to call his memoir, "Pete Townshend: Who He?" His publisher, HarperCollins, settled on the less cheeky, more digestible, "Who I Am" — though a better title might be: "Who I Was."



Townshend has long been rock music's most articulate interviewee, a multi-syllabic spokesman for a style of music that thrives on immediacy and rhythmic simplicity. As a writer friend a few months ago in New York said, "Sometimes I enjoyed his interviews more than his music."



In interviews, Townshend could be both bombastic and eloquent, veering from the personal to the political to the literary in one or two comments.



The narrative of his digressions was driven by his confusion — the thoughts of an individual earnestly trying to trace the convergences in his mind while sustaining a world-famous rock band.



His first hit single was called "I Can't Explain," and it was written to capture the ineffable sensation of listening to Charlie Parker while on marijuana. As we learn in "Who I Am," he quickly turned it into a more conventional love song at the behest of his managers when a legendary producer offered to record it.



Yet "I Can't Explain" is what a band called The Who was trying to say, even in its name. Like most serious writers of music and literature (as opposed to journalists and academics), what Townshend wants to convey sometimes can't really be said.



Whatever you thought of Townshend's songs, or his band, his analyses were usually dramatic and

energizing.



So the biggest surprise in his memoir is how quiet and plaintive is the voice behind it. "Offstage, truth be told, I am a mouse," he writes, "albeit a mouse with mood-swings."


That mouse has written a book that is more about his past wars, personal and political, than his current calm. The principal character in its pages is most often an insecure egomaniac, constantly checking his pulse to see if he is alive or relevant. He brands himself a hooligan, amid other less savory epithets, yet he admits to yearning for genius. He downplays his achievements even as he acknowledges their impact on his peers.



The strongest parts of the book come in its early pages, wherein Townshend writes about the global tsunami of World War II and its brutal effects on artists struggling to swim in its wake.

In a recent interview, I asked him about the bridge between Japan and England, the horrors both island nations endured and the creative foment in the aftermath.



"There is indeed a connection," he tells me. "One thing the British and the Japanese share is a firsthand experience of the real threat of nuclear devastation. Japan, because it actually happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Britain, because we were so close to Russia and were allies of the U.S. In Lifehouse Chronicles (a box set compendium of his aborted concept album), I open the program of music with a short spoken piece about the bombs in Japan at the end of World War II, and how they changed the face of human existence on our planet."



The best of Townshend's book makes history feel intimate through the miasma of rock-star indulgence. He writes like a grandfather telling his offspring how awful were his beginnings, inspired were his youthful ideas, and failed is his legacy.



Townshend's first young adult engagement with the threat of war occurred amid the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. "Why does this matter?" he writes of a Who rehearsal. "We'll all be dead soon."

The best rock music personalizes politics, and The Who mastered this alchemy, which is why punk followed in their footsteps in the 70s.



Still, to hear the 67-year-old Townshend as a calm, quiet spokesman for the form and its demands and origins can be jarring.



"I struggled to reconcile my family and my work," he says about The Who's absence from Japan for decades. "I always felt we were under huge pressure to meet the demand from the audiences we had already reached in the USA, Canada, Germany, France, Scandinavia and the U.K. I had been told by friends, especially by Deep Purple, that once you visited Japan, you had to maintain contact in order to sustain loyalty. It seemed too much to add to my existing burden. I always wanted to visit Japan, and to perform there, but I refused. It was my decision entirely.



"I wanted my book to make it clear that after World War II music had to change. We had no choice. Music changed before fashion, art, style and the rest. Instead of songs about love, romance and fantasy, we needed songs about reality and how we could cope with the stress of the ghost of the bomb, and the fact that as young men we could never have the dignity of going to war in the old-fashioned way. We were useless, in a sense, unless we flew bombers or operated computers."



Townshend is now on tour, reviving his song-cycle called "Quadrophenia," which offers a stark portrait of has-beens in its hero's life.



"I was actually 27 in 1972 when I wrote most of 'Quadrophenia,' " Townshend reminds me. "I was writing about a 16 or 17-year-old called Jimmy who felt The Who were already washed up in 1963-64. The Who are not lionized, they are criticized by Jimmy. The Who as a band understood what was going on. Jimmy laid out the four extremes of his personality disorder, then abandoned us."



Townshend is ruthlessly honest, which makes his book equal parts depressing and inspiring. But in its closing pages, one senses a stillness achieved.



"There was only one real epiphany," he says of the writing process, "and that was that however conflicted I felt in my life and career, I have ended up in a good place."



"Who I Am" will be published in Japan by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in 2013.

My latest interview w/Pete Townshend on Japan/UK postwar parallels

Townshend: Japan, U.K. took same postwar path
By ROLAND KELTS

Special to The Japan Times



Who guitarist and composer Pete Townshend originally wanted to call his memoir, "Pete Townshend: Who He?" His publisher, HarperCollins, settled on the less cheeky, more digestible, "Who I Am" — though a better title might be: "Who I Was."



Townshend has long been rock music's most articulate interviewee, a multi-syllabic spokesman for a style of music that thrives on immediacy and rhythmic simplicity. As a writer friend a few months ago in New York said, "Sometimes I enjoyed his interviews more than his music."



In interviews, Townshend could be both bombastic and eloquent, veering from the personal to the political to the literary in one or two comments.



The narrative of his digressions was driven by his confusion — the thoughts of an individual earnestly trying to trace the convergences in his mind while sustaining a world-famous rock band.



His first hit single was called "I Can't Explain," and it was written to capture the ineffable sensation of listening to Charlie Parker while on marijuana. As we learn in "Who I Am," he quickly turned it into a more conventional love song at the behest of his managers when a legendary producer offered to record it.



Yet "I Can't Explain" is what a band called The Who was trying to say, even in its name. Like most serious writers of music and literature (as opposed to journalists and academics), what Townshend wants to convey sometimes can't really be said.



Whatever you thought of Townshend's songs, or his band, his analyses were usually dramatic and

energizing.



So the biggest surprise in his memoir is how quiet and plaintive is the voice behind it. "Offstage, truth be told, I am a mouse," he writes, "albeit a mouse with mood-swings."


That mouse has written a book that is more about his past wars, personal and political, than his current calm. The principal character in its pages is most often an insecure egomaniac, constantly checking his pulse to see if he is alive or relevant. He brands himself a hooligan, amid other less savory epithets, yet he admits to yearning for genius. He downplays his achievements even as he acknowledges their impact on his peers.



The strongest parts of the book come in its early pages, wherein Townshend writes about the global tsunami of World War II and its brutal effects on artists struggling to swim in its wake.

In a recent interview, I asked him about the bridge between Japan and England, the horrors both island nations endured and the creative foment in the aftermath.



"There is indeed a connection," he tells me. "One thing the British and the Japanese share is a firsthand experience of the real threat of nuclear devastation. Japan, because it actually happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Britain, because we were so close to Russia and were allies of the U.S. In Lifehouse Chronicles (a box set compendium of his aborted concept album), I open the program of music with a short spoken piece about the bombs in Japan at the end of World War II, and how they changed the face of human existence on our planet."



The best of Townshend's book makes history feel intimate through the miasma of rock-star indulgence. He writes like a grandfather telling his offspring how awful were his beginnings, inspired were his youthful ideas, and failed is his legacy.



Townshend's first young adult engagement with the threat of war occurred amid the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. "Why does this matter?" he writes of a Who rehearsal. "We'll all be dead soon."

The best rock music personalizes politics, and The Who mastered this alchemy, which is why punk followed in their footsteps in the 70s.



Still, to hear the 67-year-old Townshend as a calm, quiet spokesman for the form and its demands and origins can be jarring.



"I struggled to reconcile my family and my work," he says about The Who's absence from Japan for decades. "I always felt we were under huge pressure to meet the demand from the audiences we had already reached in the USA, Canada, Germany, France, Scandinavia and the U.K. I had been told by friends, especially by Deep Purple, that once you visited Japan, you had to maintain contact in order to sustain loyalty. It seemed too much to add to my existing burden. I always wanted to visit Japan, and to perform there, but I refused. It was my decision entirely.



"I wanted my book to make it clear that after World War II music had to change. We had no choice. Music changed before fashion, art, style and the rest. Instead of songs about love, romance and fantasy, we needed songs about reality and how we could cope with the stress of the ghost of the bomb, and the fact that as young men we could never have the dignity of going to war in the old-fashioned way. We were useless, in a sense, unless we flew bombers or operated computers."



Townshend is now on tour, reviving his song-cycle called "Quadrophenia," which offers a stark portrait of has-beens in its hero's life.



"I was actually 27 in 1972 when I wrote most of 'Quadrophenia,' " Townshend reminds me. "I was writing about a 16 or 17-year-old called Jimmy who felt The Who were already washed up in 1963-64. The Who are not lionized, they are criticized by Jimmy. The Who as a band understood what was going on. Jimmy laid out the four extremes of his personality disorder, then abandoned us."



Townshend is ruthlessly honest, which makes his book equal parts depressing and inspiring. But in its closing pages, one senses a stillness achieved.



"There was only one real epiphany," he says of the writing process, "and that was that however conflicted I felt in my life and career, I have ended up in a good place.



"Who I Am" will be published in Japan by Kawade Shobo Shinsha in 2013.

On China and The World Economic Forum

Latest travel column on returning to China to speak at The World Economic Forum and meeting a new friend en route. For Paper Sky magazine.

On China and The World Economic Forum

Latest travel column on returning to China to speak at The World Economic Forum and meeting a new friend en route. For Paper Sky magazine.

Band Bonenkai Friday night 11/30 in Tokyo

Vast thanks to all of you who joined us.




****





Friday, Nov. 30: Join us for the 


annual ALi-MO Bo-Nenkai Bash this year 

@ Crawfish, Akasaka. 

Dance, Drink and Rock Out the final days of 2012 w/'Tokyo's Coolest Band.'
No cover. Just party.




Date: November 30, FRIDAY
Venue: CRAWFISH Akasaka
http://crawfish.jp/ (03-3584-2496)
Social Akasaka BF 3-11-7 Akasaka
Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPAN　107-0052
Price: FREE!!
Doors Open -- 7:00 p.m.
Music Starts 8:30-ish p.m.

Band Bonenkai Friday night 11/30 in Tokyo

Friday, Nov. 30: Join us for the 
annual ALi-MO Bo-Nenkai Bash this year 

@ Crawfish, Akasaka. 

Dance, Drink and Rock Out the final days of 2012 w/'Tokyo's Coolest Band.'
No cover. Just party.




Date: November 30, FRIDAY
Venue: CRAWFISH Akasaka
http://crawfish.jp/ (03-3584-2496)
Social Akasaka BF 3-11-7 Akasaka
Minato-ku, Tokyo JAPAN　107-0052
Price: FREE!!
Doors Open -- 7:00 p.m.
Music Starts 8:30-ish p.m.