Thanks to a mix of language barriers and cultural stereotypes, most 'heads think Japanese hip-hop is derivative, silly, or downright racist. But the emerging Japanese underground is pumping out excellent, innovative tracks that deserve to be heard around the world. Japan The Beats highlights the best of these releases and tells the stories behind them. Click here to access the archive.
At 9:00 PM on Sunday April 26, I was in Tokyo underground hip-hop mainstay Heavy Sick Zero in Nakano, at a political fundraiser/rap show co-sponsored by Irregular Rhythm Asylum and the Shirouto no Ran (“Amateur Revolution”) collective. I was surrounded by friendly faces, had caught a rare set by the instrumental breakbeat duo Deep Throat X, and briefly met ECD, a stalwart of Tokyo hip-hop who's been pushing a radical political message for more than a decade. By 10:30, though, I was in Shinjuku, where I squeezed myself into a tiny seat in the windowless belly of a sleeper bus, unable to sit up straight without bumping my head. But my goal made it worth it -- I was headed to meet Shingo Nishinari, Japan's tough-but-smart answer to Jay-Z, in his home turf of Osaka. The interview with him will show up in fuller form in a future column, but this week I wanted to give you a little glimpse of my time in Osaka – a place that is in some ways much like Tokyo and in others profoundly different.
After a bit of a detour through Kyoto (more about this in a future column), I started my time in Osaka with a run through America-mura (American Village), the commercial center of Osakan youth culture. It reminded me of Shibuya more than any other part of Tokyo – American and Japanese rap blasted from streetwear storefronts selling rhinestone hoodies, Timbalands, and spray-painted imitation BAPEs. Just like in Shibuya, there were Nigerians standing around pretending to be Americans – in this case, selling boots. Osaka has a reputation as a sort of countryfied part of Japan where people talk funny, and the crassness of America-Mura definitely lives up to this.
It's not just a question of Shibuya-style hip-hop-as-fashion boutiques, either. I stopped by the record store run by Infumiai Kumiai, one of the most successful rap groups in Osaka, and the flyers outside the shop gave me my first big window on the differences between Osaka and Tokyo, showing an absolute explosion of gangster imagery, thug posing, heavy tanning, and general blackfacery. The contents of the independent, music-oriented store were just as worrying, with a bling-bling fashionista style from the Tokyo-painted custom meshback caps to the corner display of bottles of tequila and a bejeweled model car. The store immediately struck me as primarily an outlet for local reproductions of American styles, sometimes in really, really silly ways -- lots of "thugs" and such, low-budget CDs copping the No Limit photoshop ethos, showing rappers next to awkwardly computerized stacks of money.
It's not that these sorts of things don't have their place in Tokyo, but they're easy to escape; my favorite example is that Game (a pseudo-thug hangout where you get frisked at the door -- one of my favorite pieces of Tokyo theatre) is right across the street from Family, a black box whose vibe lives up to its warm, understated name. When I talked to the clerk at the Kumiai store, he said that all of Osaka's clubs are in America-Mura, and that there was a lot less money to go around for artists here than in Tokyo. Maybe, I thought to myself, Osaka just isn't a setting that can support that kind of diversity. Maybe the artists are forced into the lucrative, easily marketed thug rap market.
After our interview, Shingo Nishinari took me along for an early free drink at a bar owned by a friend of his, who I was surprised to see did not at all seem like a gangster. On the other hand, the bar itself was criminal – the DJ was putting on tracks that made Kelly Clarkson sound like Mussorgsky, the kind of hyper-flanged, high-pitched, extremely simplified pop-techno designed for synchronized dancing by groups of 20. The place itself was full of glowing pinks and yellows, including a giant level meter bouncing behind the DJ. About a dozen girls in cartoonish makeup and 20 guys in untucked buttondowns went nuts for every song. Nishinari said to me, “This place makes me worry about Japan.” I reassured him – “There are plenty of places like this in the States. You should be worrying about the whole world.”
Just after, we headed to the ragga show Nishinari was playing that night, which made me worry for different reasons. I'm often the only white guy in any given club, but it's never really a problem. Within five minutes of me walking into this club, though, a man I would conservatively describe as gorilla-esque grabbed my ass as he passed behind me, then turned to give me a nice ironic smile and vague, threatening gesture (thumb and pinky out? Is this a come-on I'm not aware of?). I may have let my lack of sleep and natural persecution complex take over from there -- maybe the guy was a lone dick in a crowd of perfectly nice folks -- but it felt like I got bumped, elbowed, and jostled one hell of a lot that night, and I couldn't help but feel singled out.
In Tokyo, club etiquette is pretty unfailingly polite -- and the re-interpretation of black music tends to be more interesting, too. Every act on this Osaka stage was pumping out surly, hyper-energetic ragga, some good but all quite cookie-cutter -- and whether you're in Kingston or Osaka, it's not exactly the classiest music in the world. They were all done up in some version of ghetto fabulous, including Nishinari, who stood out for his vastly more interesting music but still wore about five pairs of sneakers as a necklace. I even saw a legitimate male ‘blackfacer,' a Japanese guy with an absurd George Hamilton tan and cornrows, a style I was certain had died out over a decade ago.
My final glimpse of Osaka came the next morning. I'd spent the night in an extremely cheap hotel at Doubutsuen Mae, near the notoriously dilapidated heart of the city's Nishinari district, and I took a look around after checking out. I'd learned plenty about life in Nishinari from talking to the rapper who had named himself after it, though that'll too have to wait for another column. What I saw that morning was just a surface glimpse, but there were still subtle signs of the difference between it and much of big-city Japan. On the shopping street around the corner, rather than the usual buzz of commercial activity and neon lights, there were mostly shuttered storefronts, the sidewalks in front of them grimy. A fleamarket selling used clothes and knockoff watches was set up under a train overpass across the street, and a long line of men awaited the opening of the pachinko parlor across the street, hoping to gamble their way out, if only for a few hours.
This certainly isn't much to judge a city on -- in general, Osaka seemed perfectly lovely, and at any given moment it might have been tough for me to tell I wasn't in Tokyo. This is in contrast to, say, Kyoto or even Koenji just on the edge of Tokyo, both of which have hugely distinctive characters. But Osaka's hip-hop culture, compared to Tokyo's, is a rich home for self-styled thugs and hustlers. This appropriation comes across as generally pretty lame, and I'm not likely to defend most of these guys on artistic grounds (Shingo Nishinari excepted). On the other hand, there does seem to be something in the air in Osaka that Tokyo, secure at the top of the heap, doesn't have -- a certain grimy desperation, with occasional flashes of belligerence, that may someday find a more interesting artistic expression.
