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Center for East Asian Studies
Japanese Youth and Popular Culture
Daily Yomiuri || Japanese Youth Index || News File Index
Daily Yomiuri
Techno music finds its way home
Thousands of revelers get down to the sound of techno music at the Rainbow 2000 rave event at Hakusen Sena Kogen ski resort in Ishikawa Prefecture Saturday.
By Steve Matthews and Sayaka Yakushiji Daily Yomiuri Staff Writers
It is 6 a.m. and the early summer sun is already shining brightly in the morning sky; a wake-up call for most people on another hot, humid day. But time has become an abstract concept to Dai, a 20-year-old record store clerk who is still furiously blowing his whistle and jerking his body as he nears the end of a 12-hour dance marathon.
Together with Dai are about 2,000 like-minded young hedonists, enthusiastically punching the air and twisting their bodies in time to the electronic sounds emanating from the giant speakers on either side of the dance floor. Occupying center stage in front of the heaving mass of bodies is Jeff Mills, a Detroit native and one of the founders of the musical genre that had shaken the hall to its rafters throughout the night: techno.
"I used to be a fan of rock music," Dai said. "But the atmosphere and energy that is generated at techno parties like this cannot be matched."
The isolated venue of the party, a huge nightclub in the Odaiba waterfront area of Tokyo Bay, and the rather hefty investment of 9,000 yen that was required for a ticket, were apparently no object to the drove of revelers who in mid-July flooded to The Future Music Festival, the country's first showcase for electronic-based music. They were there to indulge in the euphoric atmosphere of music comprising booming bass lines and synthesized sounds on which the pitch and frequency is repeatedly changed to produce one crescendo after another.
The enthusiasm displayed at the event reflected an explosion of domestic interest in techno, which was pioneered by DJs from Detroit who first mixed and experimented with electronic music in nightclubs almost two decades ago.
The development of the local scene is a result of a ripple effect from the West: Techno music has already gained a solid foothold in the mainstream cultures of Europe and the United States.
In July, Love Parade, an annual techno carnival held in Berlin, drew a crowd of 1.4 million--five times as many people who attended this year's Woodstock concert. With every street corner in Berlin jammed by young people eager to demonstrate the strength of their common bond, the event has become a symbol for peace, much in the same way as the original Woodstock.
The event in Odaiba marked a kind of homecoming for techno music, which is created mostly with equipment manufactured by local companies, and more than 30 members of international media organizations, including MTV Europe and U.S. music magazine Rolling Stone, were there to report on the all-night party.
In the West, the trend of the music began to shift away from traditional instruments and toward electronic equipment during the 1980s, and it was only a matter of time before the sound that is expected to take the music industry into the 21st century came full circle.
Rushing to catch up However, it took some time for techno to carve out a niche in the rock-dominated market of its mother country, but local artists are now beginning to gain recognition at home as well as abroad (Japanese DJs took part in Love Parade as long ago as 1992), and electronic music is starting to become firmly entrenched in the country's popular culture. "Five years ago, only a limited number of specialist stores carried techno music," said Kenji Ikeda, a buyer for the techno department of Tower Records' branch in Shinjuku, Tokyo. "But now, the number of domestic releases has increased and techno CDs are carried in our stores around the nation."
Changes in public perception has also contributed to the rise in popularity of the music. "Being a DJ is now considered more cool than being a guitarist," said Yoshiaki Takebe, a market researcher at Oricon Co., which publishes weekly rankings of popular music.
This was further evidenced at the Fuji Rock Festival, an annual three-day music event held from July 30 to Aug. 1, where a marquee featuring techno acts and DJs drew long lines, even as world-famous rock bands performed on the main stage.
Technology for techno The birth of electronic music can be traced back to the 1982 release of Roland Corp.'s TB-303, a user-friendly and very affordable bass synthesizer that was designed by one of the firm's Japanese technicians. Though the 303 was originally intended to give amateur guitarists the ability to create a virtual support band, dance music enthusiasts in the United States got to grips with the machine and realized that if the knobs and dials were turned during play, completely different effects could be obtained: From deep bass pulses to high-pitched screeches, the repertoire of sounds required to create a completely new style of music had been discovered.
With the dawning of the digital age, the range of sounds and functions offered by the successors to the 303 gave amateur musicians the ability to produce more sophisticated tunes.
"The production of electronic music does involve trial and error, but I use computerized equipment because I can't play guitar," said Tatsuya Oe, one of the artists who performed at The Future Music Festival. Oe records under the pseudonym Captain Funk.
Though the music first developed abroad, the seeds for its growth in Japan had been sown some time before its arrival from foreign shores.
"About 20 years ago the Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) was very big in Japan, and computer-generated sounds were used for the soundtracks to computer games. YMO began to use noises from computer games in its music, and my interest sprang from there," explained Ken Ishii, one of the most successful Japanese techno artists.
Rise of local artists The music found its way into Japan after local DJs and media figures experienced for themselves the energy that was being generated by the musical revolution throughout Western societies at the end of the '80s. Ishii and Susumu Yokota, who began producing electronic music in 1992, were the first Japanese to pursue their interests on a professional level. However, as the local scene was still very much at an embryonic stage at that time, they were left with no choice but to send the fruits of their labor abroad.
The compositions of Ishii and Yokota impressed established record labels in Europe, and they were both eventually asked to sign recording contracts and later participated in Love Parade.
Ishii and Yokota offered the West a slightly different slant on techno, and they set a precedent for the innovative style for which Japanese artists have now become renowned.
Other local artists have since followed in the footsteps of Ishii and Yokota, many of whom have toured Europe and the United States.
While pop groups such as SPEED and Glay may sound more familiar to Japanese ears, it has been the country's techno artists who have gained more recognition abroad. To some European youths, the names of Ishii and Yokota would be more familiar even than that of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.
"Unlike Japanese pop music, techno is borderless," explained Hanako Tabata, the cofounder of SIGN, an office set up by Sony Music Entertainment to focus on the development of independent artists. "It has no lyrics, so how the music is perceived is left more up to the individual."
Sony first recognized the potential of electronic music in 1994, when it set up the predecessor to SIGN to nurture domestic artists and raise the profile of the music through events such as The Future Music Festival, which it organized.
From the underground... However, even with the backing of Sony and the tidal wave of techno artists who have swept through the international music industry, experts say the genre is still bubbling under the surface on a domestic level. "Techno is still underground," said Takebe, who pointed out that techno sales are still minor when compared to Japanese pop music.
"During the 1980s, beat became as important as melody, if not more so, in Europe and the United States," he said. "But melody is still key in Japan. It is the country that made karaoke popular, after all."
After the death of disco in Europe and the United States during the 1980s, the club scene developed in Western capitals along with the rise of electronic music. The new sound centered around extremely fast, pounding bass lines that challenged those on the dance floor to stay in time.
Some blame the late development of a similar club scene in Japan for the slow growth in the popularity of techno music.
According to Manabu Yamazaki, a former party organizer who is now the owner of independent techno label Sublime Records, strict government controls have also played a major role in inhibiting the growth of a domestic club culture.
"In Japan, nightclubs are regarded in the same way as the sex industry," he said, citing the harsh restrictions of the Entertainment Establishments Control Law.
Others pointed to the limited amount of time that Japanese youths are able to spend on social activities.
"In Japan, young people become less interested in music after they graduate from university," according to Eisuke Sato, who organizes Rainbow 2000, an annual techno party that attracted in the region of 20,000 people at its inaugural event in 1996. "They start to buy clothes instead of CDs as soon as they get their first bonus check and frequent establishments where the emphasis is on picking up potential partners, and not on the type of music being played."
...into the mainstream Nevertheless, after many years in the dark, the domestic club scene has finally started to take off. Oricon's Takebe also noted a change in attitude among the new generation of music lovers.
"The audience at Fuji Rock Festival this year looked a lot more relaxed and easy going," he said.
The slump that followed the bursting of the economic bubble and led to the breaking down of the traditional work environment also helped bring about the changes required for the rise of the new music.
"From around 1996, the number of 'freeters' started to rise," Sato said, referring to workers who engage in casual labor. "People have so many different values and different lifestyles now compared to the past.
"Techno doesn't have lyrics. It doesn't have a specific message, and that is precisely the point. People can adapt it to their own philosophy. They can apply it to their own situation," he added. "If there are 100 people at a party, that's 100 different ways the music can be perceived."
According to Takebe: "Techno does have the potential to make it into the mainstream in Japan. It just needs a little more time."
And this view is shared by one of the global industry's leading figures.
"A lot of people look to Japan for innovation, especially in Europe," Mills said during an interview prior to his appearance at the Future Music Festival.
"If the Japanese market acts like every other, it will grow--new producers will evolve along with new labels, distributors, booking agents and magazines--it will just keep expanding," he added.
