Music in Contemporary/Postwar Japan

General

Abe, Marie. Resonances of Chindon-ya: Sounding Space and Sociality in Contemporary Japan. Wesleyan University Press,  2018.

Bourdaghs, Michael. Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop. Columbia University Press, 2012.

Hashimoto, Miyuki. "Visual Kei Otaku Identity—An Intercultural Analysis." Intercultural Communication Studies 16, no. 1 (2007): 87–99.

Hosokawa, Shūhei, ed. Oto to mimi kara kangaeru: rekishi, shintai, tekunorojī. Arutesu puburisshingu, 2021.

Johnson, Henry, and Akitsugu Kawamoto. "Visual-Kei: Glamour in Japanese Pop Music." In Global Glam and Popular Music, edited by Ian Chapman and Henry Johnson, 199–213. UK: Taylor & Francis, 2016.

Keith, Sarah, and Diane Hughes. "Embodied Kawaii: Girls' Voices in J-Pop." Journal of Popular Music Studies 28 (2016): 474–487.

Matsue, Jennifer Milioto. "Japanese Religion and Popular Music." In The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Popular Music, edited by Christopher Partridge and Marcus Moberg, 160–174. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

Mattar, Yasser. "Miso Soup for the Ears." Popular Music & Society 31, no. 1 (2008): 113–23.

Minamida, Katsuya. Rokku myūjikku no shakaigaku. Seikyūsha, 2001.

McLeod, Ken. "Visual Kei: Hybridity and Gender in Japanese Popular Culture." Young 21, no. 4 (2013): 309–325.

Mitsui, Tōru. Popular Music in Japan: Transformation Inspired by the West. Bloomsbury Academic, 2020.

Mitsui, Tōru, ed. Made in Japan: Studies in Popular Music. Routledge, 2015.

Nagahara, Hiromu. Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and Its Discontents. Harvard University Press, 2017.

Novak, David. Japanoise. Durham: Duke University Press, 2013.

Roquet, Paul. Ambient Media: Japanese Atmospheres of Self. University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

Saito, Mareshi. Kanji Sekai No Chihei: Watashi Tachi Ni Totte Moji to Wa Nanika. Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2014.

Shūtō, Yoshiki. Mijukusa no keifu: takarazuka kara janīzu made. Shinchōsha, 2022.

Stevens, Carolyn. Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity and Power. Routledge, 2009.

Tonoshita, Tatsuya. Sengo no ongaku bunka. Seikyūsha, 2016.

Tōya, Mamoru. Shinchugun kurabu kara kayokyoku e: sengo nihon popyurā ongaku no reimeiki. Misuzu shobō, 2005.

Wajima, Yūsuke. Shōwa bugiugi: kasagi shizuko to hattori ryōichi no rizumu ongaku. NHK shuppan, 2023.

Yoshihara, Mari. Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro. Oxford University Press, 2019

Classical and Dance

Asaba, Yuiko. "'Folds of the heart': performing life experience, emotion and empathy in Japanese tango music culture." Ethnomusicology Forum Vol 28. No. 1 (2019): 45-65.

Nihon sengo ongakushi kenkyūkai. Nihon sengo ongakushi, vol. 1: sengo kara zen'ei no jidai e 1945-1973. Heibonsha, 2007.

Nihon sengo ongakushi kenkyūkai. Nihon seingo ongakushi, vol. 2: zen'ei no shūen kara 21 seiki no hibiki e, 1973-2000. Heibonsha, 2007.

Yoshihara, Mari. Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music. Temple University Press, 2007.

Enka

Wajima, Yūsuke. Tsukurareta nihon no kokoro shinwa: enka wo meguru sengo taishū ongakushi. Kōbunsha, 2011.

Yano, Christine R. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Harvard University Asia Center, 2003.

Hip Hop and Rap

Condry, Ian. Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2006.

Cornyetz, Nina. "Fetishized Blackness: Hip Hop and Racial Desire in Contemporary Japan." Social Text 12, no. 1 (1994): 113–139.

Gotō, Akio, ed. J-Rap izen: Hippu-hoppu karuchaa wa koo shite umareta (Before J-Rap: This Is How Hip-Hop Culture Was Born). Tokyo: Tokyo fm Shuppan, 1997.

Kimoto, Rei-ichi. "Nihon ni okeru rappu jisseki o meguru ichi kōsatsu" (A Look at the Practices of Rap in Japan). Sociology 7, no. 2 (2002): 73–88.

Manabe, Noriko. "Globalization and Japanese Creativity: Adaptations of Japanese Language to Rap." Ethnomusicology 50, no. 1 (Winter, 2006): 1-36.

Jazz

Abe, Kan'ichi et al. Burasubando no shakaishi: gungakutai kara utaban e. Seikyūsha, 2001.

Atkins, E. Taylor. Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan. Duke University Press, 2001.

Metal

Birnie-Smith, Jess, and Wesley C. Robertson. "Superdiversity and Translocal Brutality in Asian Extreme Metal Lyrics." Language & Communication 81 (2021): 48–63.

Horton, Aaron D. "Gender and Non-Conformity in German and Japanese Metal Music and Subculture." In German–East Asian Encounters and Entanglements, edited by Joanne Miyang Cho, 247–268. Routledge, 2020.

Kawano, Kei, and Shuhei Hosokawa. "Thunder in the Far East: The Heavy Metal Industry in 1990s Japan.” In Metal Rules the Globe: Heavy Metal Around the World, edited by Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene, 247–67. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

Kennedy, Lewis F. "Is Kawaii Metal? Exploring Aidoru/Metal Fusion Through the Lyrics of Babymetal." In Multilingual Metal Music: Sociocultural, Linguistic and Literary Perspectives on Heavy Metal Lyrics, edited by Riitta-Liisa Valijärvi, Charlotte Doesburg, and Amanda Digioia, 201–219. Emerald Publishing Limited, 2021.

Matsue, Jennifer M. Making Music in Japan's Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene. Routledge, 2009.

Overell, Rosemary. Affective Intensities in Extreme Music Scenes: Cases from Australia and Japan. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Plourde, Lorraine. "Babymetal and the Ambivalence of Cuteness." International Journal of Cultural Studies 21, no. 3 (2016): 293–307.

Robertson, Wesley C. "Screaming of Slaughter and Samurai: Motives and Methods for Exploring Premodern Japan in the Japanese Folk Metal Scene." Parergon 39, no. 1 (2022): 79–104.

Wallach, Jeremy, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene. "Affective Overdrive, Scene Dynamics, and Identity in the Global Metal Scene." In Metal Rules the Globe, edited by Jeremy Wallach, Harris M. Berger, and Paul D. Greene, 3–33. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011.

Notes

The foundations of this reading list were generously provided by Wes Robertson and Hiromu Nagahara.

Suggest Additions

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