Music I Like From Japan

I like a lot of things from Japan. I could go on and on about the elements from Japanese traditional and pop culture that I enjoy. But this is a post about music I like. Music like Minyo Crusaders, Blue Hearts, Number Girl, Uchu Nekoko, and Miyavi.

Minyo Crusaders

This Tokyo group preserves minyo, hyper-local folk songs, through hybridization with world beats. Personally, I’m a fan of the percussive beats and call-and-response of straight tradition in Japanese folk music. Two of my favorite live music experiences were seeing Taiko at Benaroya Hall and attending a Japanese folk music performance at Meany Hall in college. But Minyo Crusaders certainly provide an interesting take.

example from the bandcamp kawaii post

Blue Hearts

In their day in Japan, the Blue Hearts were considered punk, but they sound like a poppy garage band to me. I don’t have quite the nostalgia for them that many of my Japanese contemporaries have, because I only learned about them years later. Their biggest hit, “Linda Linda Linda” became the title of an absolutely charming movie about high school girls forming a cover band for their school festival. I tracked down the Blue Hearts’ CD and . . . I might have memorized the Japanese lyrics to “Linda.”

And I can’t resist sharing the climax of the movie.

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Number Girl

I’d never heard of Number Girl until I read about them in an interview with punk band Otoboke Beaver (whom I’ve previously mentioned). They’re not on Bandcamp, but I dug around and found a couple videos. It turns out, they’re the kind of shambolic rock that made up most of my low-cover-charge Friday nights in college. They are also from Fukuoka, where I lived and worked the summer after grad school.

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Uchu Nekoko 宇宙ネコ子

Like Gorillaz before them, dreamy shoegaze duo Uchu Nekoko appear only as cartoon characters. It’s not even clear if the kawaii characters captured in the pale colors and soft lines of their shoujo-style videos are meant to be the band. Relax and enjoy.

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MIYAVI

I was researching a touring Broadway show for a work assignment and MIYAVI was on the venue calendar. The artist photo showed a cool-looking Japanese guy with a guitar, so down the rabbit-hole I ran. MIYAVI is the stage name for Takamasa Ishihara. Although he got his start in visual kei, he’s known for his guitar playing. So I had a listen of his latest album No Sleep Till Tokyo. Overall it was not really my thing, but I really liked his guitar playing. Sometimes the dub-steppy bits sort of sounded like they might be guitar instead of electronics, which would be a cool concept.

Strangely, I couldn’t stop listening, even as I kept thinking to myself, “This is not my thing.” I went back an album, to Samurai Sessions, Vol. 3: Worlds Collide (the title is a conceit – there are no Vols. 1 & 2 that I can find). It still sounded more like something my kids would like than my music. But this one had more of the traditional guitar sound I lurve, and more lyrics in Japanese, which I find interesting. It also includes a song in support of refugees, featuring Afghani rappi Sonita, which pretty much cemented his place among Japanese musicians I like.