J-POP

Group Members: Emily Soh

Mabel Lee
 DEFINITION OF J-POP
 J-POP known as Japanese Popular Music
 J-POP is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in
the 1990s.
 J-POP is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by the likes of ‘The Beatles’.

The Beatles
HISTORY OF J-POP
IN 1920S–1960S: RYŪKŌKA
 Japanese popular music, called ryūkōka before being split into enka and poppusu, has origins
in the Meiji period, but most Japanese scholars consider the Taishō period to be the actual
starting point of ryūkōka, as it is the era in which the genre first gained nationwide popularity.
 Ryūkōka ( 流行歌 , literally "Popular Song") is a Japanese musical genre. The term originally
denoted any kind of "popular music" in Japanese, and is the sinic reading of hayariuta, used
for commercial music of Edo Period.
 In the 1930s, Ichiro Fujiyama released popular songs with his tenor voice. Fujiyama sang
songs with a lower volume than opera through the microphone (the technique is sometimes
called crooning.)
IN 1960S: ORIGIN OF MODERN
STYLE
 Rokabirī Boom and Wasei pops
 During the 1950s and 60s, many Kayōkyoku groups and singers gained experience performing
on US military bases in Japan.
 Kayōkyoku is a Japanese pop music genre, which became a base of modern J-pop.
 Many of these performers later became key participants in the J-pop genre.
 In 1956, Japan's rock and roll craze began, due to the country music group known as Kosaka
Kazuya and the Wagon Masters.
 The rockabilly movement would reach its peak when 45,000 people saw the performances by
Japanese singers at the first Nichigeki Western Carnival in one week of February 1958.
IN 1960S: ORIGIN OF MODERN
STYLE
 Ereki boom and group sounds
 The Ventures visited Japan in 1962, causing the widespread embrace of the electric guitar
called the "Ereki boom“.
 Yūzō Kayama and Takeshi Terauchi became famous players of electric guitar.
 Most Japanese musicians felt that they could not sing rock in Japanese, so the popularity of
Japanese rock gradually declined.
IN 1980S: FUSION WITH
"KAYŌKYOKU"
 In the early 1980s, with the spread of car stereos, the term city pop ( シティーポップ , shitī
poppu) came to describe a type of popular music that had a big city theme.
 During this time, music fans and artists in Japan were influenced by album-oriented rock
(especially adult contemporary) and crossover (especially jazz fusion).
 City pop was affected by new music, though its origins have been traced back to the mid-
1970s.
 The popularity of city pop plummeted when the Japanese asset price bubble burst in 1990.
 Its musical characteristics (except its "cultural background") were inherited by 1990s Shibuya-
kei musicians such as Pizzicato Five and Flipper's Guitar.
IN 1990S: COINING OF THE
TERM "J-POP"
 In the 1990s, the term J-pop came to refer to all Japanese popular songs except enka.
 During this period, the Japanese music industry sought marketing effectiveness.
 Notable examples of commercial music from the era were the tie-in music from the agency
Being and the follow-on, Tetsuya Komuro's disco music.
 The duo Chage and Aska, who started recording in late 1979, became very popular during this
period.
IN 2000S: DIVERSIFICATION
 Japanese hip hop and urban pop
 In the first decade of the 21st century, hip hop music and contemporary R&B influences in
Japanese music started to gain attention in popular mainstream music.
 In November 2001, R&B duo Chemistry's debut album The Way We Are sold over 1.14 million
copies in the first week, and debuted at the number-one position on the Oricon weekly album
charts.
 Hip hop bands such as Rip Slyme and Ketsumeishi were also at the top of the Oricon charts.
IN 2000S: DIVERSIFICATION
 Anime music, image song and Vocaloid
 During the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the anime music industry, such as voice actors and
image songs, added weight to Japanese music.
 Though anime music was formerly influenced by J-pop and visual kei music, Japanese indie
music apparently influenced the genre at the 2006 FanimeCon.
IN 2010S: POPULARITY OF
IDOL GROUPS
 Since the end of the 2000s, more and more idol groups have emerged.
 The high number of idol groups in the Japanese entertainment industry is sometimes called the
"Warring Idols Period" ( アイドル戦国時代 , aidoru sengoku jidai), an allusion to the
Sengoku-jidai.
 Some of the most successful groups during the 2010s include Hey! Say! JUMP, AKB48,
Arashi, Kanjani Eight, Morning Musume, and Momoiro Clover Z.
 In 2019, AKB48 announced the postponement of its general election, and Arashi announced
the group's hiatus.
THAT’S FROM
US
THANK YOU
有り難う御座います
arigato gozaimasu