a post-blog
so, "utada" aka utada hikaru is about to release her english-language record EXODUS in America, which is obnoxiously being referred to as a "debut album". the single "easy breezy" is definitely the most irratating song i've heard in ages, and its main refrain alone - "you're easy breezy/ and i'm japaneezy" (!?!?!) - has set back Japanese-American relations by twenty to thirty years. (the next single will feature something like a pun on "cool" and "coolie.") her makeup in the video is some kind of mock-asian-American fashion, totally alien to japan - like an Iranian putting a red dot on her forehead to appeal to the "south Asian" market.
everyone in Japan is on the edge of their seats: will she do it? will she actually become a star in america??!? can she finally beat sakamoto kyu's record with "sukiyaki"?
well, of course not.
every couple of years, some one like matsuda seiko or puffy feigns like they are "trying" for stardom in the united states, and the japanese collectively hold their breath until the lackluster results trickle in.
all of these musicians have one thing in common: they are at the end of their careers in Japan and have nothing better to do than go abroad and pretend to "conquer" the barbarians. they didn't send puffy to America in 1997 or 1998 at the height of their popularity; they sent them in 2001, when the dream for ami and yumi was already over. their single this year barely charted in Japan, and now, they play the highly-glamourous anime convention circuit in the States.
the latest video for the kings of avex hack-rock do as infinity features their magnificient exploits during a show in new york city. some nice camera trickery hides the fact basically the entire audience is Japanese.
(the big question mark is, how did a washed-up pink lady get a television show in America??? i can't prove it, but obviously the Japanese dished out a lot of cash behind closed doors. )
these VIP tours of the US clearly cost more money than they can bring in, but they are not the miscalculated failures that they appear to be. they are a giant marketing scam perpetuated on the Japanese public. sending any band to America or the UK takes that band out of its normally socially-understood position (as "washed-up," for example) and places them in the context of the age old battle between East vs. the West. driven by an age old inferiority complex, the consumers get behind the artist in some kind of hope that finally, Americans will love and recognize the value of Jpop and Japan. this plays into a domestic media frenzy and a heightened goodwill to these new Japanese ambassadors of culture. did the tigers' visit to the UK in the late 60s sell any records in the West? no. did it help sell records in Japan? probably.
cornelius and pizzicato five sold enough records to justify the visits abroad, but only because an American label (matador) wanted to release them and market them, opposed to a Japanese label forcing their American sister company to perpetuate this weird intercontinental hoax.
so, utada, good luck with your American debut. that is to say, good luck with your Japanese sales.
Casual readers of my essays and articles would probably assume that my doom-and-gloom pessimism about the current state of Japanese pop culture (see "Lamenting the Death of Trend in the Land of the Rising Sun" in The Fader Sept/Oct issue) stems from some deep, grumpy disappointment with Japan related to 1) the eventual disillusion with Japan that every foreigner faces once he peels back the surface and takes a look at the rot underneath and 2) the lack of interest in "new" cultural products coming from the gradual accumulation of knowledge about cultural history (i.e., once you know the references, the revivals seem boring). I concede both points, but there is also the distinct possibility that Japan has objectively become "less cool." In other words, the Japanese public buys fewer products respected by the culturally elite than in the past, and therefore, these products are less visible.
The whole "Japan is cooler than the West" idea stems solely from two facts. One, Westerner's casual observations that the average Japanese person dresses with more attention to trend and fashion than the average American on European. (The sample may be skewed, however, because foreigners usually go to Tokyo and not Gunma-ken.). Two, the Japanese boast a higher rate of consumption for products which are considered underground, critically acclaimed, or out of the mainstream.
These two points are essentially valid, but we must remember that the underlying premise present in the "popularity" of anything cool is a mass adoption by consumers who do not belong to the culturally elite. In the case of Nirvana, a critically acclaimed band happened to also strike a chord with normal, everyday teenagers in American heartland. With Japan, teenager's manual-style usage of the media - the wholesale belief in a magazine as a strict authority on style and subsequent consumption in the exact, dictated manner - leads to a popular adoption of interesting products for reasons unrelated to the attributes of the product itself. The media euphemistically "educates consumers on product choices," but the Japanese teenager understands these "choices" as the only accepted canon of possibilities, and therefore, stumbles into avant-garde territory out of obedience and not curiosity. Japan does not have a larger class of cultural elite, merely more diffusion of elite products into the un-cool lumpen.
So, why have Japanese product offerings become less cool? Why has Sony Music Entertainment Japan gone from being the label of Denki Groove, Sunahara Yoshinori, and Puffy (circa 1997) to Chemistry, Orange Range, and Puffy (circa 2004)? Why is it that every time I turn on MTV or Space Shower TV the quality of the new artists continues to decrease?
This leads us to the "dasai market thesis," which states as follows: with the continuing rise in diversity among the cutting-edge communities and the general lack of uniformly directed consumption from teenagers, freeter subcultures, and the working hipsters, there is no longer a viable market for "cool" products in Japan, and therefore, record labels and other companies that aim to profit from culture can only find success with products that target the leftover "uncool." These days, if you're engaged in culture, chances are, you are engaged in a subculture that has no need for the mass media, nor is large enough to provide a market for large firms. The only existing market for a megacorporation is then the great lumpen of young boys and girls who have no keen interest in anything and wish for lowest-common denominator culture that makes obvious sense to them.
The same thing is essentially happening in America. If you think of it as an Election, 60 to 40% of the population will always vote for the Soulless Pop Party and in the past, a good 30% of so could at least put up a reasonable fight by supporting all music under the umbrella of the Alternative Party. Now, that 30% coalition is split between the Dance Music Party, the IDM Party, the Vintage party, the Neo-Folk Party, the Indie-rock Party and so on and so on. Therefore, the Soulless Pop Party wins great dominance over the landscape and provides
the only economically-feasible market worth entering. Dasasa is where the money is, and therefore, that's what will define the cultural moment.