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Look to pop culture if you want to blame someone for A-Chan’s gay gaffe - by Ian Martin

Special To The Japan Times - Nov 26, 2013

"All art is political. All pop culture is political.

This idea provokes fierce opposition from many. Politics is dirty and discredited, they say, and art should be above politics; pop culture is entertainment and shouldn’t have to mean anything. These arguments are wrong.

All art and pop culture is political because it all serves someone’s politics. By challenging, reinforcing or even outright ignoring dominant ideologies and social norms, art and pop culture form an important part of the framework within which society is constructed. Anyone who has felt comforted by a song that recognizes their life and struggles, or who has felt alienated by one that seems to be speaking to them from a different world, has experienced music in its most basic political essence.

So when Ayaka “A-Chan” Nishiwaki of cheerfully apolitical electropopsters Perfume told the web site Blouin ArtInfo, “Overseas, there were more men than women, and also people who were neither!” before launching into an anecdote about a gay fan and his “girlfriend,” her comments and the reaction were just a more direct expression of a discourse that is constantly occurring in pop.

Obviously many of the group’s fans overseas were extremely offended by this, while others blamed gay fans for confronting Nishiwaki with their sexuality in the first place. The debate in Perfume’s overseas fan community basically divided along familiar lines, with the universalists, who believe in certain immutable cultural values, on one side and the exceptionalists, who celebrate and defend Japan’s right to be different, on the other.

Nishiwaki herself clearly didn’t mean anything bad by her comment — on that at least the exceptionalists are surely right. The journalist who carried out the interview, Blouin ArtInfo’s Robert Michael Poole, stands by the translation and puts the remarks down more to naiveté and cultural awkwardness [The Japan Times has not heard the original Japanese recording of the interview]. What the piece shows is someone with no real frame of reference for dealing with openly expressed homosexuality struggling clumsily to find appropriate words. The cause of the problem is a culture that fails to provide people with that very frame of reference.

Pop culture and a lot of mainstream art in Japan is complicit in reinforcing norms that exclude discussion of anything that doesn’t fit a certain narrow set of mainstream values. Most contemporary J-pop has the same basic message of “friendship is good, peace is good, follow your dreams, I want a boy,” etc. which while inoffensive in its own right, limits the the range of experiences discussed in the broader cultural sphere.

Singer/model Kyary Pamyu Pamyu is often compared to Lady Gaga, but while Gaga frequently challenges mainstream cultural norms, Kyary’s songs are all essentially advertising jingles and the more challenging or fringe aspects of her music are mostly abstract, aesthetic ones (the flipside of that of course is that based on those abstract, aesthetic criteria, Kyary is far more musically interesting than Gaga).

Whether through social conservatism on the part of Japan’s culture industries or a simple race to the middle driven by market forces, all of this serves a particularly narrow vision of what Japanese culture and values are. Pop music is essentially the megaphone through which the big lie that Japan is a single homogeneous entity is propagated to its population.

It also contributes to a cultural ignorance about how things are perceived by different people. It pushes pop culture and mainstream art into the abstract and aesthetic realms in order to satisfy its need to push boundaries, with experimentation in form sometimes creating genuinely striking music, art and fashion — but also leading to a situation where popular boy bands such as Kishidan, can appear on TV in full Nazi SS uniforms and not understand how that’s problematic.

A lot of this comes down to political correctness, which at its worst can be a form of Orwellian newspeak, but at heart really just means thinking about the effect your language and imagery will have on other people. Language that appears to deny gay people their right to a gender is a horrible thing for many to hear, however well-intentioned. Artists should have the freedom to say whatever they want, but they should at least know why they are saying it.

Opening pop culture up to more voices would give people the tools to make those judgments and lead to a greater cultural consciousness that would enrich rather than stifle Japanese culture."

I have to think about this~ for a first read, I would agree. Also when I remember conversations I had with my friends in Tokyo or Japanese friends here~ also, thinking about the comments translated at Maji De (I know 2ch-users and commenters are by majority conservative right-wingers, there's even a poll about this...)

especially about the "homogeneous entity" thing - but I am not sure, if it's firstly transported via pop-music but more via TV in general... the "non"-regular-japanese artists/entertainer a often treated/or treat themselves as a joke as well

what do you think?

I have to think about this

I dunno, why the LE arrived before the RE... but who cares?!!!!!

 

finally I can flail XD

 

Until now I heard Daft Punk, Beatles, Leiji Matsumoto 70/80th  anime soundtrack, HillBilly... but I'm onlx halfway thru

 

bf said he heard Mario music (nintendo :P guess what, that was his comment for Neens solo...) & 80th highschool-film-music - and he liked it! oh and he likes Sho's solo

 

Aiba's solo! ahhhh... so many feels!!!!

 

goes to enjoy it more

ahhh! *is happy*
thank you again kajalmonsta & also for translating the interview <3

 

I am dead tired... good night~

listening to Beautiful Days Secret talk 2008 while communting to work~
so many precious things
Aiba fighting against the hot meat and fails
Sho's laugher
Neens Shomura Ken mononane (and endless Oh-chan teasing)
J trying to be all earnest but still starting to giggle all cute
Ohno! in all his cuteness and trying to play out authority and fails

 

ahhh~ natsukashii & lovely

this is kind of disturbing... worshipping arashis poster.html at Maji De~

even if it may be a joke or weird bet to do this...

and in the comments-section (which was full of gay-bashing which is even more disturbing) this:
Arashi were victims of sexual harassment by men on a train before.
you heard of it before?

Linguistic choices can be an artistic or cultural statement for Japanese musicians
by Ian Martin

Special To The Japan Times
May 30, 2013

On May 14, singer-songwriter Satoru Ono released a vinyl single titled “All My Colours.” Anyone who knows Ono’s work would have found themselves on familiar ground with the two tracks, in their mix of 1980s U.K. indie and ’90s Japanese neo-acoustic pop, delivered with a classic pop craftsman’s hand.

The difference is that Ono’s back catalog has been predominantly sung in English, while these new tracks feature him singing in his native Japanese for the first time.

The English lyrics often found in Japanese music can sometimes seem baffling to native English speakers. When sung imperfectly (which is often the case), I find listeners tend to think of them as either charming or annoying. However, for Japanese musicians, this linguistic choice can be a serious one, with both cultural and artistic implications.

the rest at:
Linguistic choices can be an artistic or cultural statement for Japanese musicians | The Japan Times

abyss of 2ch translation and then this came up:
SMAPの聖闘士星矢は完全に黒歴史か
On the other hand, it seems that SMAP's St. Seiya is totally a dark past for them


buwahahaha*

*cries buckets*

source: mou_ippo on Tumblr (thank you barbossa for sharing her side ♥)

article:
Tedious love: Prof decries modern music's lack of passion

April 26, 2013

Yasuhiko Mori / The Yomiuri ShimbunOSAKA--Most of J-pop, or Japanese popular music since the 1990s, seems to have consisted of love songs. One survey even puts the love song proportion as high as 97 percent. In contrast, songs of love accounted for only 7 percent of popular tunes in the Meiji era (1868-1912).

Are young people of the current Heisei era, which began in 1989, really that much into love?

According to Kazuhide Nabae, a professor of British and U.S. literature and culture at Kobe College who wrote the book Koisuru J-pop (J-pop in love) in 2004, one driving force behind the increase in love-themed songs was "Ai ga Tomaranai" (Turn It Into Love), a big hit by female duo Wink in 1989.

"As the title shows, the song urged young people toward love. Subsequent popular hits in Japan also rushed headlong into love-themed songs," Nabae said.

The love-soaked J-pop lyrics deeply influence the worldview of young people, who adopted it as their own reality--or at least their ideal view of reality. In essence, they have tried to live out the stories prepared for them by songwriters.

"Ai ga Tomaranai" is a cover of the original "Turn It Into Love" by Australian singer Kylie Minogue. The original is a Eurobeat dance music piece with electronic instruments.

Since the success of "Ai ga Tomaranai," J-pop's evolution to higher levels of sophistication has continued to include the absorption of elements from Western music.

However, Nabae complained that the lyrics accompanying the J-pop numbers have an unfortunate tendency to repeat mediocre and poorly considered patterns.

In addition, "Love as presented in J-pop lyrics has an air of fatigue or confusion regarding relations with the opposite sex, rather than expressing sexual intoxication or the torrent of passion," Nabae said.

Take for example "Calling/Breathless," the 40th single of idol group Arashi, which ranked first in the weekly hit chart in March.

Arashi's fans tend to be attracted by the group's energetic dance moves, but the lyrics include a line meaning, "I'll never let you go." Love is clearly the basic theme of the song, but it includes lyrics that undermine the hope of romance, such as "as if it were an endless maze" and "infinitely deep blackness."

Enka songs, many with themes of tragic love, were most popular in the Showa era (1926-1989). The basic ethos of enka songs was "strong men and weak women."

However, for better or worse, the sex roles of men and women as presented in J-pop songs are vague, and relationships with the opposite sex tend to be unstable.

"In addition, Heisei-era material culture, which makes love just another commodity, casts a shadow over J-pop songs," Nabae said.

In Japanese pop group ZARD's 1995 single "Ai ga Mienai," the female vocalist Izumi Sakai sang, "Ai ga Mienai Imano Jidai" (Love is unseen in this day and age).

But since then, an ideal image of love has yet to emerge. Nor have lyrics that stick in one's mind been written. Young men and women are constantly singing love songs as if being in love is a burdensome task about which they have no choice but to forge ahead.

Nabae says his own female students often seem to be weighed down by the drab view of modern-day "love" they have absorbed through J-pop numbers.

"They probably think love is too much of a bother. They surely have opportunities for intimate encounters, but they feel they don't need to become romantically involved. Even when some of them are in love, they never seem to be in a buoyant mood. What love means is totally changing from what it meant before," Nabae said.

source: yomiuri

First, the citing of Arashi-songs makes me weirdly proud.

Second:
I found this article on Twitter - and it reminded me of Mark D. Wests thesis of how japanese love works - based on how it is ruled by law and/or judges. Having West in Mind I doubt it's something which has such a strong connection to the lyrics of love songs as suggested above. Rather I think the song expressing something already layered in the society. But I agree that putting it upfront that way could be one reason why this negative view of relationships or love persists. But it won't be the sole or even main reason for it. It's just some easy way to shift the blame away from deeper social aspects to Pop-culture (b/w this instisting on WESTERN influence is somewhat disturbing, since it implies the western way to love is this kind of negativ strained) - instead of the emotional and passionate "traditonal" (as much as Enka is tradition) japanese way of Love ~ which is, in my eyes, illusional (delusional?)... Hen? Egg?
Thoughts?

Moreover, there was another announcement that AKB48 would hold their first 5 major dome tour starting in July and ending in August. The announcement was made during the encore through a video message by Inose Naoki, the Governor of Tokyo, and a scream of delight went up from the audience of 11,000

please what?

That's way too much mingle-mangle for entertainment & politics

source: arama