The Case of Japanese Rock-Copycats of a genre, unique or something else?

Yasser Mattar's (2008) "Miso Soup for the Ears" is an analysis of the emergent musical styles in Japanese culture that have mirrored their contemporary Anglicized counterparts, tracking this development from the dissemination of popular Rock music in the 1950's and 60's across the world and through to the present day's rocker's and hip hoppers in the Japanese music industry. Whilst the mainstay of the article's audio comparisons and visual contrasts read like a 10 year old's science lab report (okay so that may be a slight exaggeration), the article does note a few key points:

1. The assertion of copycat trend mimicry in Japanese music only really holds weight in so far as it notes that cultural trends disseminate across global borders regardless of notions of race, culture and authenticity.
2. Japanese cultural forms of Rock music have developed over the course of decades, exhibiting both similar trends to anglicized Rock and later more divergent fusions of Japanese culture and Aesthetics through the use of what Mattar describes as Kei visual, a generically diverse form of semiotic communication through costumes and aesthetics of appearance designed to "shock the audience visually with pomp and pageantry". I have provided a youtube video below exhibiting some of the differing Kei styles. Ironically enough the video itself is referencing the adoption of many of these trends into Western societies and sub-cultural groups and shows an interesting retroactive loop in the communication of cultural trends.




Conversely, in Bourdagh's (2006) article on the stages and cycles of musical culture in Japanese rock culture, special attention is paid to the role of Record Labels themselves and their role in both producing and by extension limiting the images of popular rock groups of the day, especially in regards to how this is believed to have inspired the emergence of Japan's own unique Rock Aesthetic.

It seems then that the biggest similarity between the two counterparts, Japanese and Anglicised Rock lies not so much in the perceived transplanting of trends, but more in the similar ways in which the two have evolved through the processes involved in the establishment of the culture itself.


References

1. Mattar, Y. (2008) 'Miso Soup for the Ears: Contemporary Japanese Music and its Relation to the Genres Familiar to Anglophonic Audience', Popular Music and Society, Vol. 31, No. 1, pp. 113-123
2. Bourdagh, M. K. (2006), 'Za Kinkusu: Ray Davies and the Rise and Fall of Japanese Rock and Roll', Popular Music and Society, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 213-221