Most Popular Japan Song

[Fisseha Aranda]

Thelighting is low. Behind the bar a barman is waiting to serve drinks. A cabinet stands nearby containing Beatle memorabilia: albums, press clippings and an authenticated brick from the original Cavern Club in Liverpool.

A sound mixer is preparing the mixing desk. Toward the front of the room, where several people are sitting at tables - smoking, chatting - is a stage reminiscent of the Beatles: a set up of microphones, guitars and the unique Ludwig drum kit with its simple yet iconic black and white lettering. Behind the stage, crossed by those strange English Tudor style cross beams, are four late career photos of the Beatles.

I chat to Koutaro Goto, the John Lennon of the band. He is older and a very seasoned player, having played in cover bands for a number of years, covering songs for artists such as Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Toto and Sting.

There is no doubt a small yet solid core of Beatle fans enjoy an atmosphere in which they can savor the sound, and share like-minded interests. We tend to forget that there have been small yet enthusiastic interest groups in Japan who have savored music such as jazz, and the Beatles, for many years.

What becomes apparent, as this night progresses, is how much integrity there is in the performance. This is something echoed by the international Beatle community - Japan is well known for its excellent Beatle Cover bands.

With other Cavern Club style venues in Tokyo, and bands with names such as The Mendips, the Parrots, the Bricks and the Silver Beats, it is clear that the Beatles will not go away. For a country that had a short direct contact with the Beatles there is a deep and long lasting interest.

What I do know, as I walk out of the Cavern Club, is the joy in the experience. Do a dance at the Cavern Club, or do a little jig when shopping next at the Yodobashi store. You will be in good company.

The philosophy of "Imagine" was largely a result of Ono's influence and expressed in her book, "Grapefruit." In turn, the "no border(s)," people living together in peace, and above all the power of imagination to bring about desirable outcomes, are perhaps Japanese memes.

That's an easy one. When the US came to Japan, the Beatles appeared a short time later. People who had grown up with the US occupation adopted everything the US had brought with them. Music, food, slapstick humor etc.

Why the heck is it stated as Japan as a whole? No Beatles stuff over here and it sounds like it is mainly in Osaka. Why not title it "Beatles remain popular in Osaka" or does that make too much sense?

Beatles songs were some of the first english songs for karaoke in Japan.Some older karoke places still only have Beatles songs on the enlish menu,kind of a default setting.The karaoke influence and the fact the songs are so easy to sing has given them a free ride here for 45 years.

Yodabashi camera doesn't play the Beatles. The Comme ca attached is the place that has had it on loop for the last few years. Horrible stuff really. That and a few other run-ins with Beatlemaniacs has caused me to really detest the band. I used to love them, but Japan's inability to grow and change has forced them out of the pantheon of rock for me. I blame you Nihon!

The name Bambies is not a tribute to the orphaned deer in the movie, but could be a mis-spelled version of the first club played by the Beatles in Hamburg, Germany, called the Bambi-Kino club. They were also called the Silver Beatles, and I assume the Bricks may be a reference to the Cavern cellar. BTW, it WAS an awful trip through Japan, but not as bad as their brief stay in the Phillipines. I STILL listen to them, but then again, I'm almost 60 years young. Peace

Oh Yeah,and Mendips was the name of the house in which John Lennon was raised by his Aunt Mimi. Don't know WHERE the Parrots came from, unless it's a reference to the fact that Lennon's father was a seafarer most of his life.

Yodobashi is not a store. Yodobashi Camera is a store. Yodobashi Camera doesn't play the Beatles, it plays its own theme song, a pumped-up version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, written by William Steffe in 1855. As MeanPingo pointed out, Comme ca is the store with the endless Beatles track. Comme ca store is located in the Yodobashi building in Osaka, as well as many other locations.

The Beatles are and were hugely popular in Japan, just go to a karaoke and you will likely be asked to sing something from them! I find it ironic though that in a culture so pure and against any type of drugs, they love Lennon who was one of the biggest deadbeat heroin junkies ever in the pop scene!

The Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has published a report that reveals that SEGA's own Tomoya Ohtani, sound director for the Sonic the Hedgehog series, has been ranked the tenth most popular Japanese artist in the US. The Sonic Frontiers track, 'Undefeatable', was ranked 15th most popular Japanese song in the US too!

Featuring Sleeping With Sirens singer Kellin Quinn, 'Undefeatable' has been a rather unstoppable force on streaming music platforms, having helped push the Sonic Frontiers OST past the 100 million streams mark in February and quickly topping the list of favourite songs in the entire soundtrack since its release.

What's even more surprising is Ohtani's appearance in the Top 10 Japanese artists list, which we imagine has a lot of competition. That a Sonic the Hedgehog composer could rank this high with the US audience is a testament to both Ohtani-san's talents and Sonic's brand power.

Frontiers has an incredible soundtrack. Between cyberspace, the island themes, guardians fights and of course the absolutely ludicrous vocal tracks for the Titan bosses, Frontiers may just have the best music attached to it in the entire series. Can't say that it's always the most fitting soundtrack, but it does a lot of the heavily lifting to improve an otherwise mediocre game. Ohtani and his crew created something more special and thought-provoking than the rest of the actual game development team. Undefeatable has kind of been the poster child for the soundtrack ever since it was revealed. It took me a little while to get used to the "screamo" at the start and just how intensely metal it was, but it's absolutely fantastic. Seeing it continue to make waves so long after release is nice.

I've been listening to Japanese music a bit lately and, while I do not understand any of it and even have trouble even making out what syllables are being used, I sometimes get the impression, that it doesn't really rhyme all that much.

Lyrics in most Japanese songs do not rhyme at the end of each line. Only some J-pop songs influenced by the western culture actively use rhymes. Japanese hip hop songs tend to use rhymes often. For example, lyrics written by Rhymester usually contain a lot of rhymes, as the name suggests :) Listen to this song, and I believe you can easily feel the rhymes even if you don't understand Japanese.

Some Japanese songs use other methods to make the lyrics sound nice. One example is 七五調 ("7-5 rhythm"), which is the rhythm heard in haiku poems. See: Is the layout of this text supposed to resemble a style of poem?

EDIT: Classical Chinese poems typically used line-end rhymes, and Japanese people have understood them. But according to Wikipedia, Western-style rhymes have never been popular among Japanese poets/lyricists.

No. There are only five, six, seven or so vowels in Japanese and most syllables are open. There's little point in rhyming. Imagine a person every sentence with あ. That sounds a bit funny, actually. Therefore, most popular music in Japanese (be it enka, kayokyoku or J-Pop) don't rhyme.

I should mention that many languages do have very few vowels, but Japanese has much more open syllables, i.e. syllables end in vowels. Also, Japanese syllables are rather scarce. A combination of these factors - not just having few vowels - contribute to the lack of rhyming.

Ian Condry, who teaches Japanese culture at MIT, says "Sukiyaki" transcended language because it hit an emotional nerve. The song spent three weeks at the top of the Billboard charts in June 1963 and was already a huge hit in Japan before its American debut. But what most listeners in the U.S. probably didn't realize was how it symbolized Japan's return to the world stage.

"1963 was when Japan was returning to the world scene after the destruction of WWII," Condry says. "1964 was the Tokyo Olympics. And Japan's economy was expanding globally and so, in some ways, the song is kind of an interesting metaphor for that global expansion of Japan on the world scene."

"'Walking along, looking up, so that the teardrops won't flow out of my eyes / I look back on a spring day on this lonely night,'" Condry says, translating the lyrics. "Later he goes on to say, 'A good fortune is beyond the clouds / A good fortune is beyond the sky / So I'm looking up and I'm looking forward, imagining that good fortune in the future.'

"It really is a song about the sadness of looking back, but also being on the cusp of something being better in the future," Condry says. "In some ways, that also helps explain the timelessness of that kind of sentiment."

Some songs have become the musical signifier of a brand new year. In Times Square, "Auld Lang Syne" is the first thing New Yorkers hear when the countdown hits zero. For those who celebrate Lunar New Year, especially in East Asia, the ubiquity of a song like "Gong xi gong xi" acts as a similar cue.

But this Mandarin staple doesn't sound like many other songs played around this time of year. Written by songwriter Chen Gexin sometime between 1945 and 1946, "Gong xi gong xi" has been updated over the decades, nowadays fleshed out with more instrumentation and sometimes taught to young children in school. But one thing that can't be changed is its minor key, an uncommon feature that decidedly makes this song less celebratory-sounding. There's a reason behind that, though: it wasn't written for Lunar New Year. In fact, its origin story is much darker than some may realize.

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