Noriko Manabe

The revolution will not be televised : protest music after Fukushima

Nuclear power has been a contentious issue in Japan since the 1950s, and in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the conflict has only grown. Government agencies and the nuclear industry continue to push a nuclear agenda, while the mainstream media adheres to the official line that nuclear power is Japans future. Public debate about nuclear energy is strongly discouraged. Nevertheless, antinuclear activism has swelled into one of the most popular and passionate movements in Japan, leading to a powerful wave of protest music. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Protest Music After Fukushima shows that music played a central role in expressing antinuclear sentiments and mobilizing political resistance in Japan. Combining musical analysis with ethnographic participation, author Noriko Manabe offers an innovative typology of the spaces central to the performance of protest music-cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings. She argues that these four spaces encourage different modes of participation and methods of political messaging. The openness, mobile accessibility, and potential anonymity of cyberspace have allowed musicians to directly challenge the ethos of silence that permeated Japanese culture post-Fukushima. Moving from cyberspace to real space, Manabe shows how the performance and reception of music played at public demonstrations are shaped by the urban geographies of Japanese cities. While short on open public space, urban centers in Japan offer protesters a wide range of governmental and commercial spaces in which to demonstrate, with activist musicians tailoring their performances to the particular landscapes and soundscapes of each. Music festivals are a space apart from everyday life, encouraging musicians and audience members to freely engage in political expression through informative and immersive performances. Conversely, Japanese record companies and producers discourage major-label musicians from expressing political views in recordings, forcing antinuclear musicians to express dissent indirectly: through allegories, metaphors, and metonyms. The first book on Japans antinuclear music, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised provides a compelling new perspective on the role of music in political movements.

New Technologies, Industrial Structure, and the Consumption of Music in Japan

tal audio players (DAPs), including the iPod. While consumers in all developed countries have adopted these technologies, their preferences have differed not only due to variables in the social environment, but also to corporate policies and technological infrastructure in these countries. One case study examines the differences in adaptation of these recent tech- nologies between Japan and the United States. While Japan, the second-largest music market in the world, has had a similar industrial structure to the American one, with sales concentrated in a few, primarily global recording companies, differences between the two countries in the structure of radio and television

Streaming Music in Japan: Corporate Cultures as Determinants of Listening Practice

Although Japan led the world in the adoption of mobile-phone consumer culture (e.g. ringtones) in the 1990s to late 2000s, it now lags behind in the adoption of streaming formats. Why has streaming music been slower to catch on in Japan? Pre-existing conceptions of old media, such as a Japanese tendency to listen to radio less often and radio stations that do not specialise in a particular genre, made Pandora-style, DJ-less online radio a less compelling format; naming an online streaming service ‘radio’ did not familiarize the new media, as it did in the USA. Growth was further inhibited by a lack of statutory licences, so that streaming services had to negotiate rights with record companies, and record companies were reluctant to supply streaming companies with Japanese content, including current chart toppers and back catalogue. Finally, smartphones took a longer time to catch on in Japan, as mid-2000s flip phones were so advanced that the iPhone did not look that groundbreaking at its launch.

Representing Japan: ‘national’ style among Japanese hip-hop DJs

Based on ethnographic interviews, this paper examines how Japanese hip-hop DJs distinguish themselves in the global marketplace in ways that reflect on Japans two self-images: its impenetrable uniqueness and its adeptness at assimilating other cultures ( cf . Ivy, Iwabuchi). Following the autoexoticist strategies of Takemitsu and Akiyoshi, DJ Krush and Shing02 draw on Japanese uniqueness by integrating Japanese instruments (e.g. shakuhachi, shamisen, taiko ), genres ( biwa narrative), and aesthetics ( ma , imperfection) into their works; Evis Beats takes a more parodic approach. At the DMC World Championships, Japanese DJs including DJ Kentarō have competed on the basis of eclecticism and originality in assimilating multiple sound sources. While countering the stereotype of the Japanese as imitators, this emphasis on originality may place some contestants too far from prevailing trends, putting them at a disadvantage. Both strategies imply that Japanese artists experience anxieties regarding their authenticity, necessitating strategies to differentiate themselves.