Popular Music in Japan: Transformation Inspired by the West

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Popular music in Japan has been under the overwhelming influence of American, Latin American and European popular music remarkably since 1945, when Japan was defeated in World War II. Beginning with gunka and enka at the turn of the century, tracing the birth of hit songs in the record industry in the years preceding the War, and ranging to the adoption of Western genres after the War--the rise of Japanese folk and rock, domestic exoticism as a new trend and J-Pop--Popular Music in Japan is a comprehensive discussion of the evolution of popular music in Japan. In eight revised and updated essays written in English by renowned Japanese scholar Toru Mitsui, this book tells the story of popular music in Japan since the late 19th century when Japan began positively embracing the West.

Reviews

In this magisterial march through the history of Japanese popular music, Toru Mitsui shares with us the fine, fun, and surprising details of the happy marriage between Japanese makers of music and the music they loved, mastered, and elaborated. He tells the story of one of the 20th century's great and joyous achievements of profligate cultural synthesis. This is a Japanese story, an American story, and a global story. * Alan Tansmen, Professor of Japanese, University of California Berkeley, USA *
Here is the first in-depth account of Japans popular songs and music spanning the whole century and a half of its modern and postmodern eras. Woven together with mini lectures providing historical contexts, Toru Mitsuis thoroughly researched chapters reveal untold and often hilarious facts about how West met East in a nations singing. * Yoshiaki Sato, Professor Emeritus of American Studies and Pop Culture, University of Tokyo, Japan, and author of The Evolution of J-POP (1999) *
An exhilarating map of the development of an entire nations songs, singers and fans, providing ample signposts of further ideas for your listening pleasure. * All the Anime *

Author Bio

Toru Mitsui is Professor Emeritus of English and Music at Kanazawa University, Japan, where he taught the first postgraduate course in popular music studies in the country. He has been a corresponding editor for Popular Music since 1983, is on the Editorial Board of Popular Music History, and is an International Advisory Editor for Bloomsburys Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. His publications in English include Karaoke Around the World: Global Technology, Local Singing (co-edited with S. Hosokawa, 1998) and Made in Japan: Studies in Popular Music (edited, 2014).