Japan Most Popular Songs

[Marquez Feliciano]

Ive 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.

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.

1945 marked the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War, an eight-year military conflict between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan that claimed an estimated 20 million casualties. During the '30s, Chen was arrested and jailed for months in Shanghai for writing anti-Japanese songs. Later, he joined the Nanjing-based Japanese government working in its music and film arm for a number of years.

Upon Japan's surrender, Chen was freed but as Yvon Wang, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto's Department of History, notes: "Chen and many others would have felt incredible relief but also a lot of sadness and complexity.... They'd lost so much and I'm sure many felt survivor's guilt and the guilt of having had to follow the occupiers' rules to live."

All of these emotions were eventually channeled into "Gong xi gong xi," which in English translates to "Congratulations, congratulations." Its minor key is probably a reflection of the sombre environment Chen found himself in, or potentially influenced by the lilting minor key of early 20th century Japanese pop music.

The song's lyrics are pretty straightforward: "On every street and in every lane/ on everybody's lips/ whenever people meet/ the first thing they say is 'congratulations.'" Elsewhere Chen writes about the upcoming spring and seeing plum flowers sprouting, expressing optimism, but not revelling in actual good news just yet.

"Shanghai and the rest of the country, after these interminable years of war and occupation, was really devastated," Wang points out. "And soon after, runaway inflation made things worse for everybody who had lived through the war, so hope was there but it was a reserved joy, a cautious hope."

That part is unclear, and people have various guesses as to when it came to prominence during New Year celebrations. (One theory suggests that the song could've picked up popularity around the beginning of the televised CCTV New Year's Gala specials, which began in the '80s and have become the world's most-watched television special.) But it's obvious that part of the reason why people gravitated toward the song is its optimistic lyrics, which directly line up with the positive, hopeful greetings used during Lunar New Year. Certain English translations of the song even tweak "congratulations" to "good wishes."

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in the popularity of city pop, thanks to YouTube and TikTok making songs go viral and introducing them to a new generation. This subgenre of music is hard to define, stemming from a mix of genres including funk, disco, soft rock and more.

With its laid-back and partly sultry aura, this song has a certain ambiance, making you feel as though you are drinking luxury cocktails at a rooftop bar somewhere in Tokyo. It is also a great track to listen to when you are getting a date night, given its romantic lyrics.

It's hard to define what's "mainstream" and what's "otaku culture" these days. Aqours, from Live Live!! Sunshine actually had a song top the Oricon charts (the Japanese equivalent of the Billboard charts) a few months ago. That's definitely otaku culture. AKB48 and other large idol groups also regularly top the charts, but while there's a lot of cross-over with otaku culture, those groups don't really have THAT much to do with anime.

And in fact, sales charts aren't even a good barometer of how mainstream a musical act really is. Nobody buys more CDs than hardcore fans, tilting the scales away from bands with wider appeal and towards bands with a small-but-rabid fanbase. A song can easily make the charts and not even show up on the radar of people outside of their fandom, just by the fandom being large and extreme enough to buy a ton of copies.

The majority of anime songs (or "anisong" as the kids like to say) are not mainstream anywhere but nerd circles. Theme songs performed by voice actors or composed just for the show tend to stay pretty low-profile in the rest of the music world. Almost nobody outside of otaku circles know who Mamoru Miyano or Aya Hirano are, despite their long careers. They simply don't show up in places where people who aren't into anime would notice them.

There are lots of shades of gray here. For example, GRANRODEO isn't a huge name in Japan, but regularly climbs the charts just on the success of their songs for anime like Bungo Stray Dogs and Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. Some of these songs will get airplay and end up echoing through shopping malls. Slowly, as subculture becomes culture and otaku culture becomes a bit more mainstream, the two once-very-separate worlds are starting to fuse a little bit.

For decades anime has been pulling music from already-popular, mainstream musicians anyway, effectively turning mainstream pop/rock into anime music. Shonen series like Boruto and My Hero Academia have done this for years, particularly when a record label is part of the show's production committee. Anime has dipped into songs from American and British acts, classical music, J-pop oldies, and more cutting-edge mainstream pop music. Occasionally, they even get a song from a real, bonafide celebrity, the sort "normal" Japanese people listen to.

And what do "normal" Japanese people listen to? Well, allowing for the fact that Japan is one of the world's most voracious and eclectic music consumers, the perennial chart-toppers tend to be extremely predictable. First are the boy bands (and sometimes individuals) from Johnny's Entertainment -- from decades-running favorites like SMAP (who broke up last year), TOKIO, V6, Arashi and NEWS, to more recent acts like Johnny's West, Sexy Zone and A.B.C-Z. K-pop acts like BTS and Western stars like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift and Shawn Mendes also regularly pop into the charts. There are also "art house" pop/rock acts like Ringo Sheena and UA, rock acts like BabyMetal... That's usually what you find on the Oricon charts on any given week.

We are no longer taking question submissions. However, over the years we've answered THOUSANDS of your questions, and probably already answered yours! Check our our complete archives! Below are a few of the most popular ones...

Anime News Network founder Justin Sevakis wrote Answerman between July 2013 and August 2019, and had over 20 years of experience in the anime business at the time. These days, he's the owner of the video production company MediaOCD, where he produces many anime Blu-rays. You can follow him on Twitter at @worldofcrap.

Karaoke isn't something new and has been a favorite pastime in Japan for as long as I can remember. I grew up in Japan and my classmates and I would go as often as 2-3 times a week. When I moved to the United States, I was surprised at how different the karaoke experience was in the Western culture. It was nothing like Japan's karaoke.

The main difference to me was the privacy. The karaoke I've experienced in the United States is open mic, typically at a bar, where you sing in front of complete strangers. In Japan, it's the complete opposite. You get your own private room and you sing among friends, co-workers, family, etc. Not complete strangers.

You may be wondering if there are even any English songs at a Japanese karaoke. Yes, there is! In fact, they probably have waaay more of a selection than the karaoke bars in the States. Karaoke in Japan is a huge business and they have every song you can think of. They have every thing from Beyonce to Janis Joplin.

Most establishments charge by the half hour per person and the receptionist will ask how long you plan on staying. You don't have to commit to the number of hours, you just give them an approximate time and then pay after you're done. We planned on staying only an hour, but ended up staying for 2 hours because we were really enjoying ourselves. Also, some places require a one drink minimum per person.

3a8082e126