Music

By Jer Renn Lam

The world of Japanese music is not easily understandable by the outsider. To many people, it is either a reproduction of a Western culture’s music with the pop music, pop rock, hard rock and other genres which the West have created. Or it can be seen as the local, Japanese branch of the current Asian music sensation, from the pop groups in Taiwan to Korea and Japan.

This section takes you through the world of the Japanese music industry by tracing the evolution of Japanese music which led to its current incarnation, J-Pop, and then moving on to case studies of Japanese artists who have found enormous success, in many different approaches. To a normal foreigner, some of the aspects of it seemed ‘bizarre’, even. Finally, it ends with a look on the state of music piracy in Japan and what is being done to curb this problem.

Anybody can make use of this information; whether you are relocating to Japan, going for a holiday, or even simply to attend a concert by a Japanese artiste, what you read here will provide you with a better understanding of the mysterious world of Japanese pop music.

Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and cannot remain silent. – Victor Hugo