![]() It didn’t, however, creating an important social dynamic. “The critics hoped the occupation would help Americanize Japanese music,” Nagahara explains. That might sound extreme, but it was not an uncommon view to find in print. “When I listen to these songs,” he wrote, “I get depressed and the reconstruction of Japanese spirit seems totally impossible.” Critics of pop music saw the occupation as a chance to squelch Japanese pop music styles and re-emphasize the value of Western music.įor instance, as Nagahara notes, one highbrow pop critic, Aragaki Hideo, argued that the “despair” and “melancholy” of some pop songs were holding the country back. Consider the post-World War II occupation and reconstruction of Japan by the U.S., which lasted until 1952. But in Japan, the politics of pop music had some unique features. On one level, that represents a familiar cultural clash, with echoes of generational disputes over rock and roll in the U.S. “Well into the 1960s, the common stance of Japan’s intellectual and cultural elite was that these songs were inherently vulgar.” “The ongoing concern was that the music was vulgar and low,” says Nagahara. ![]() Indeed, a central part of Nagahara’s book addresses the ongoing resistance to pop music, often stemming from cultural elites who preferred other types of Western music, including classical music, which they viewed as a mark of refinement. Some songs, like the star Kasagi Shizuko’s 1947 hit “Tokyo Boogie-Woogie,” the basis of the book’s title, were upbeat and swing-based others were more somber and hinted at more traditional influences.Īs the popular music industry expanded, not everyone became a fan of the new songs. To be sure, as Nagahara explains, “popular” music in Japan during this era accommodated a variety of styles. In “Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan’s Pop Era and Its Discontents,” published this month by Harvard University Press, he examines the politics of popular music and concludes that “Japan’s masses … emerged not only as the chief consumers of mass media and mass culture but also as the protagonists of the broader social change” that upended the country. Now Nagahara has written a new book examining the way popular music became intertwined with the larger transformation of Japan. But by the time you get to the 1970s and 1980s, people feel they are all middle class.” “For the vast majority of Japanese, they didn’t feel like they were middle class. “Japan was a highly class-conscious society,” says Nagahara, referring to the era when “Tokyo March” was released. ![]() Japanese popular music, he believes, helped create a larger common culture in the country - including a larger culture of consumption - that placed more people on common social ground. Despite disruptions due to war and postwar reconstruction, companies churned out hundreds of what were termed “popular songs,” or “ryukoka,” in Japanese.īy the time this pop-music boom slowed, in the 1970s, Japan had transformed itself from a traditional and hierarchical society into a nation where almost everyone described themselves as being part of the country’s middle class.įor Hiromu Nagahara, the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Associate Professor of History at MIT, these developments are related. In 1929, the Victor Talking Machine Company of Japan, a subsidiary of RCA, released a recording of the song “Tokyo March,” an ode to modern life, with lines about “dancing to jazz and drinking liqueur late into the night.” Performed by the singer Sato Chiyako, “Tokyo March” quickly sold 150,000 copies, making it the first big pop hit in Japanese history.įrom that point through the 1960s, Japan’s pop music industry became a powerhouse.
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