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Music
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Japan produces sugary sweet bubblegum pop par excellence. But the thriving roots scene is more nourishing - fuelled by the dynamic music of the islands of Okinawa. It is these sounds of Japan's "deep south" which have recently been making waves at home and abroad. Otherwise, Japan's bewildering variety of popular and traditional music is little known in the West.
With a value of well over six billion dollars, Japan has the second-largest music market in the world, after the USA. The advent of satellite TV, with its many music channels, has fuelled music mania among young Asians, and karaoke in particular is wildly popular. Unfortunately, the overriding image of Japanese contemporary music is one of instantly forgettable pop. Teenagers are trained, manufactured and recorded as idoru kashu , or idol singers. Boy bands like Smap or Hikaru Genji and cutsie female singers like duo Wink offer watered-down Western pop with Japanese lyrics, their hooklines often sung in meaningless English. Such surface noise aside, nowhere in Asia can you find such a wide range of music : from ancient Buddhist chanting and court music to folk and old urban styles, from localized popular forms such as kayokyoku and enka to Western classical and jazz - plus every kind of pop you'd find in the West.
John Clewley Other useful information
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