J-pop Music Download

[Louella Kammann]

Theorigin of modern J-pop is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by the likes of The Beatles.[3] Unlike the Japanese music genre called kayōkyoku, J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to that of English.[12] One notable singer to do so is Keisuke Kuwata, who pronounced the Japanese word karada ("body") as kyerada.[12] Additionally, unlike Western music, the major second (sol and la) was usually not used in Japanese music, except art music, before rock music became popular in Japan.[13] When the Group Sounds genre, which was inspired by Western rock, became popular, Japanese pop music adopted the major second, which was used in the final sounds of The Beatles' song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and The Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction".[13] Although Japanese pop music changed from music based on Japanese pentatonic scale and distortional tetrachord to the more occidental music over time, music that drew from the traditional Japanese singing style remained popular (such as that of Ringo Shiina).[13]

Whereas rock musicians in Japan usually hate the term "pop", Taro Kato, a member of pop punk band Beat Crusaders, pointed out that the encoded pop music, like pop art, was catchier than "J-pop" and he also said that J-pop was the pops (ポップス, poppusu) music, memorable for its frequency of airplay, in an interview when the band completed their first full-length studio album under a major label, P.O.A.: Pop on Arrival, in 2005.[16] Because the band did not want to perform J-pop music, their album featured the 1980s Pop of MTV.[16] According to his fellow band member Toru Hidaka, the 1990s music that influenced him (such as Nirvana, Hi-Standard, and Flipper's Guitar) was not listened to by fans of other music in Japan at that time.[16]

Hide of Greeeen openly described their music genre as J-pop. He said, "I also love rock, hip hop and breakbeats, but my field is consistently J-pop. For example, hip hop musicians learn 'the culture of hip hop' when they begin their career. We are not like those musicians and we love the music as sounds very much. Those professional people may say 'What are you doing?' but I think that our musical style is cool after all. The good thing is good."[17]

One term recently coined in relation to "J-pop" is gacha pop (ガチャポップ, gachapoppu) coming from the industry's association with other popular cultures within Japan that has gained international attention like city pop, anisong, Vocaloids and VTubing.[18]

Modern J-pop is also sometimes believed to have had its roots with Chinese immigrant jazz musicians who had fled Shanghai during the communist takeover, and were collaborating with American soldiers to help introduce a variety of new genres to the Japanese public. In 1949, when the communists took over and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, one of the first actions taken by the government was to denounce popular music (specifically both Chinese pop music, known as Mandopop, and Western pop music) as decadent music, and for decades afterwards the Communist Party would promote Chinese revolutionary songs while suppressing Chinese folk songs, Chinese pop songs and Western pop songs.[30] Dissatisfied with Chairman Mao Zedong's new music policies, a number of Shanghainese jazz musicians fled to the British colony of Hong Kong and established Cantopop, which is pop music sung in the Cantonese dialect of Chinese.[31] However, a few musicians instead settled in Japan, where they became members of the Far East Network and collaborated with the American soldiers to help expose the Japanese public to a wide variety of western genres. This eventually lead to the establishment of modern Japanese pop music, known as kayōkyoku.

During the 1950s and 60s, many Kayōkyoku groups and singers gained experience performing on US military bases in Japan. Around the same time, yakuza manager Kazuo Taoka reorganized the concert touring industry by treating the performers as professionals. Many of these performers later became key participants in the J-pop genre.[32]

In 1956, Japan's rock and roll craze began, due to the country music group known as Kosaka Kazuya and the Wagon Masters; their rendition of Elvis Presley's song "Heartbreak Hotel" helped to fuel the trend. The music was called "rockabilly" (or rokabirī) by the Japanese media.[33] Performers learned to play the music and translate the lyrics of popular American songs, resulting in the birth of Cover Pops (カヴァーポップス, Kavā poppusu).[34] The rockabilly movement would reach its peak when 45,000 people saw the performances by Japanese singers at the first Nichigeki Western Carnival in one week of February 1958.[35]

Kyu Sakamoto, a fan of Elvis, made his stage dbut as a member of the band The Drifters at the Nichigeki Western Carnival in 1958.[36] His 1961 song "Ue wo Muite Arukō" ("Let's Look Up and Walk"), known in other parts of the world as "Sukiyaki", was released to the United States in 1963. It was the first Japanese song to reach the Number One position in the United States, spending four weeks in Cash Box and three weeks in Billboard. It also received a gold record for selling one million copies.[37] During this period, female duo The Peanuts also became popular, singing a song in the movie Mothra.[38] Their songs, such as "Furimukanaide" ("Don't Turn Around") were later covered by Candies on their album Candy Label.[39] Artists like Kyu Sakamoto and The Peanuts were called Wasei Pops (和製ポップス, Wasei poppusu, "Japan-made pop").[34][40]

After frequently changing members, Chosuke Ikariya re-formed The Drifters in 1964 under the same name. At a Beatles concert in 1966, they acted as curtain raisers, but the audience generally objected.[41] Eventually, The Drifters became popular in Japan, releasing "Zundoko-Bushi" ("Echoic word tune") in 1969.[41] Along with enka singer Keiko Fuji, they won "the award for mass popularity" at the 12th Japan Record Awards in 1970.[42] Keiko Fuji's 1970 album Shinjuku no Onna/'Enka no Hoshi' Fuji Keiko no Subete ("Woman in Shinjuku/'Star of Enka' All of Keiko Fuji") established an all-time record in the history of the Japanese Oricon chart by staying in the Number One spot for 20 consecutive weeks.[43] The Drifters later came to be known as television personalities and invited idols such as Momoe Yamaguchi and Candies to their television program.[41]

The Ventures visited Japan in 1962, causing the widespread embrace of the electric guitar called the "Ereki boom".[44] Yūzō Kayama and Takeshi Terauchi became famous players of electric guitar.[45] In 1966, the Beatles came to Japan and sang their songs at the Nippon Budokan, becoming the first rock music band to perform a concert there.[46] The public believed that the Beatles would cause juvenile delinquency.[3] The Japanese government deployed riot police against young rock fans at the Nippon Budokan.[47] John Lennon felt that they were not well regarded in Japan, but Beatlemania has never really died there.[48] The Beatles inspired Japanese bands, creating the group sounds genre in Japan.[3]

In the early 1960s, some Japanese music became influenced by the American folk music revival; this was called fōku (フォーク, "folk"), although the genre of music was mostly covers of original songs.[55] In the late 1960s, the Folk Crusaders became famous and the underground music around that time became called fōku.[56] As with enka, Japanese fōku singers Wataru Takada performed social satires.[57]

In the early 1970s, the emphasis shifted from fōku's simple songs with a single guitar accompaniment to more complex musical arrangements known as new music (ニューミュージック, nyū myūjikku).[58] Instead of social messages, the songs focused on more personal messages, such as love. In 1972, singer-songwriter Takuro Yoshida produced a hit song "Kekkon Shiyouyo" ("Let's marry") without decent television promotion, though fans of fōku music became very angry because his music seemed to be a low effort or low quality form of music.[59] The highest-selling single of the year was the enka song by Shiro Miya and the Pinkara Trio, "Onna no Michi".[59] The song eventually sold over 3.25 million copies.[60] On December 1, 1973, Yōsui Inoue released the album Kōri no Sekai, which topped the Oricon charts and remained in Top 10 for 113 weeks.[61] It spent 13 consecutive weeks in the number-one spot, and eventually established a still-standing record of a total 35 weeks at the number-one position on the Oricon charts.[43][62] Yumi Matsutoya, formerly known by her maiden name Yumi Arai, also became a notable singer-songwriter during this period In October 1975, she released a single "Ano Hi ni Kaeritai" ("I want to return to that day"), making it her first number-one single on the Oricon charts.[63] Miyuki Nakajima, Amii Ozaki, and Junko Yagami were also popular singer-songwriters during this period. At first, only Yumi Matsutoya was commonly called a new music artist, but the concept of Japanese fōku music changed around that time.[64] In 1979, Chage and Aska made their debut, and folk band Off Course (with singer Kazumasa Oda) released a hit song "Sayonara" ("Good-bye").

Rock music remained a relatively underground music genre in the early 1970s in Japan,[58] though Happy End managed to gain mainstream success fusing rock with traditional Japanese music.[3] Several Japanese musicians began experimenting with electronic music, including electronic rock. The most notable was the internationally renowned Isao Tomita, whose 1972 album Electric Samurai: Switched on Rock featured electronic synthesizer renditions of contemporary rock and pop songs.[65] Other early examples of electronic rock records include Inoue Yousui's folk rock and pop rock album Ice World (1973) and Osamu Kitajima's progressive psychedelic rock album Benzaiten (1974), both of which involved contributions from Haruomi Hosono,[66][67] who later started the electronic music group "Yellow Magic Band" (later known as Yellow Magic Orchestra) in 1977.[68]

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