More Thoughts on Japanese Music

Think of this post as a follow-up to something I posted back in March entitled, “Japanese Music and Me”.
In the previous post I wrote about how I’ve been listening to a lot of Japanese oldies. In this post, I ask the question: why doesn’t anyone else?

Absolutely no one in Japan listens to old music, aside from the people old enough to have actually been alive when it was popular.

In the US I think old music gets a certain amount of respect. And I don’t think I’m just inferring my own tastes onto everyone else when I say that. It’s a fair statement, right?

Granted the 14 year old teenybopper crowd might not be into classic rock. I was a closet Beatles fan when I was 13 and 14 years old. But around the time I was 17, I noticed that a lot of my high school classmates were big fans of Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and other old musicians.

And by the time I started college I realized any serious music fan had a lot of older music in their collection. In the Delta 4 apartment we used to have long arguments between the Aerosmith and the Beatles partisans, and finally agreed that Led Zeppelin was the only group that could bridge the differences between our two sides.

I remember one night we got in a long, heated, and near the end somewhat emotional debate on whether Jimi Hendrix was over-rated and if perhaps Pete Townsend was just as good a guitarist. Or another night we discussed whether Sergeant Pepper’s was the greatest album ever, or just advantageously timed. And that’s not even counting all the conversations we had about music to kill time during the dorm cleaning days.

But in Japan, old music gets absolutely no respect. The only people who buy old music are middle aged or elderly, and so it is packaged accordingly. In fact you can’t even buy old albums on CD. They don’t re-release them. The only CDs are “Greatest Hits” of a certain artist, or “great sounds of the 60s” type CDs. They are always sold in the cheap section, and have really cheesy packaging and often sold only on cassette tapes for people who haven’t gotten around to buying a CD player yet.

Young Japanese people have absolutely no interest in old Japanese music, and they think it is the funniest thing ever when I attempt an old Japanese song at Karaoke. “We don’t even know that song and we’re Japanese,” they will say. “How old are you really?”
It’s always good for a laugh. When a Japanese person asks me what music I like, and I list off all the old Japanese groups I know, it is always fun to see their reaction. But in America you wouldn’t be knocked over with disbelief if someone cited, say, “The Rolling Stones” and “The Beatles” as their favorite bands, right? You’d just say, “Oh, I guess they like old music.”

Although to be fair, in Japan if you mentioned “The Rolling Stones” and “The Beatles”, they wouldn’t be surprised either. Old American and British music does get more respect than old Japanese music. In fact Shoko, who laughs at me because I like old Japanese music, is a huge Rolling Stones fan. This may be because there is the idea that Japanese pop sucks, and there is no excuse for listening to old Japanese pop unless you were alive and living in Japan during the time it was current.

Which is probably true. (I actually enjoy old Japanese music largely because it is so cheesy, but that’s just my personal taste). Although I think the folk music boom of the early 70s in Japan produced a lot of good music, but again, that’s just my personal taste.

But speaking of old Western music in Japan, here’s another complaint I have. The two most popular foreign groups in Japan are:
First “The Beatles” (no surprise there, right? Love them or hate them, they are undoubtedly the most recognized pop group in the world)

And then …”The Carpenters”.

I know. The Carpenters?

I had never even heard of the Carpenters until my 12th grade Psychology class, when our teacher showed us a movie about the life of Karen Carpenter as a way of introducing us to the concept of anorexia. (Karen Carpenter apparently suffered with eating disorders all her life.) And I don’t really recall hearing much about “The Carpenters” after that movie either. So, I suspect that if it were not for that movie, I wouldn’t have even known who “The Carpenters” were before coming to Japan.

And yet in Japan they’re the most popular group of all time. I sometimes will try and explain to Japanese friends, “The Carpenters really aren’t cool in the US. Really. Hardly anyone listens to them anymore. If you put on a Carpenters CD on at a party, people will get angry at you.” This is always a huge surprise to a Japanese person. Sometimes they don’t believe me. This is one of the many fights I’ve largely given up on.

(Some other fights I’ve largely given up on are explaining that: Not everyone in America has a gun, life in America is not one big sex orgy like you see in the movies, four seasons in a year is not unique to Japan, and Michigan is a state, not a city. We have many different kinds of cities within Michigan the state).

During my time in Japan I’ve heard enough “Carpenters” music to last me my whole life. I can’t wait till I get back to America where I don’t have to listen to “The Carpenters” all the time.