Japanese Music Recommendations

 By Marius Evans

From City Pop to J-Pop to J-metal, Japanese music continues to remain popular worldwide. Despite a lot of people associating Japanese music nowadays with anime soundtracks and J-Pop, Japanese musicians are innovating in multiple genres such as Ambient, Rap, Funk, and Rock. 80s Japanese City Pop has come to influence many new genres such as Vaporwave and Future Funk. Moreover, the huge industry that is the Japanese videogame market contributes many original soundtracks (OSTs) that are timeless such as Final Fantasy, Zelda, and Mario Kart.

Japanese traditional music is wonderful and Japan has a range of traditional instruments that offer very unique sounds. One such instrument is the Koto, the national instrument of Japan, which is a stringed instrument that is plucked and played on the ground. The Koto traditionally has 13 or 17 strings. Watch this performance for an illustration of how beautiful a Koto is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDTp_YQizqE.

Taiko drums are another traditional instrument from Japan (a performance using them can be seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZagsLrNzg3I). The word “Taiko”  in Japanese refers to any drum, so to refer to this specific style of traditional Japanese drums use the word “Wadaiko”.

Now I will move onto some personal recommendations for Japanese musicians and bands. For Japanese Rock I would recommend listening to SHISHAMO and Base Ball Bear. Kyrary Pamyu Pamyu is a great Japanese pop artist, along with Perfume. Japanese rap artists such as lyrical school, Fla$hbacks, Senninsyou, and Itto are terrific. Fishmans and The Wisely Brothers are also excellent Japanese bands. UNCHAIN and Sekaiichi are great funk rock bands. For ambient music, check out Chihei Hatakeyama and Daisuke Miyatani. The Japanese jazz fusion artist Tatsuro Yamashita is incredible, and great playlist containing Japanese jazz-fusion can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIEMLgb9vjk&list=PLVoNVDHDK-7K8pdYru5eQfDEZU7BnAeCN&index=1.

If you’re looking for more Japanese music to listen to, give my Spotify playlist of Japanese music a listen to, it contains 9 hours and 54 minutes of Japanese Rap, Indie Rock, Jazz, Funk, and Pop. The playlist can be found here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4mkgy6sbBlnPUeHY53DgfY?si=e8d51c86dc674feb.