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Old 2015.07.04, 01:18 PM   #1
zeroryouko
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Default Definitive Genre Classification for Japanese Music?

Does anyone know of a definitive (or at least consistent) resource for classifying Japanese music by genre? In addition to wanting to become more educated about Japanese music in general, I have a rather mundane goal: I have enough albums that it has become unwieldy to navigate based on artist and album name alone, particularly using the car stereo.

Most of the English-language resources I've found either lump everything together as "J-Pop" or try to classify it based on Western genre categories. But I haven't found anything very helpful in drawing the line between, say, kayoukyoku and Shibuya-kei, or J-Rock and J-Pop, and even then sometimes sources disagree. And where do you even put artists like Oomori Seiko or Togawa Jun? (Luckily, at least there's "Shinjuku-Kei" for SR & TJ, even if that term is not widely accepted.)
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Old 2015.07.06, 09:23 AM   #2
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I'm always struggling when people ask what kind of music I listen to.
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Old 2015.07.06, 01:24 PM   #3
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I certainly wouldn't label SR is "Shinjuku-Kei". Shiina dabbled in lots of genres, but is mostly jazz/rock/show tunes now. Many of her early work can be described as rock before she started to experiment more. Tokyo Jihen is mostly a jazz/rock band. How could anyone argue otherwise? Oomori? Started out as a folk artist with the occasional electro-pop song. Started to get more into rock and pop, then fused everything more on Sennou.

I wouldn't try to label Japanese bands using a Japanese district, or by putting "J" in front of the genre, because I find it annoying and I think many Japanese bands might find it insulting to their integrity. For example, do people say Utada is a "j-pop" artist? I wouldn't say so. She's an accomplished pop artist, but dabbles with lots of other genres like dance, electronic, r&b, rock, etc. these are not "Western" ways to describe music, IMO. Aoba Ichiko plays folk. She's also Japanese. Does that make it "Japanese" folk? Hardly.

Just because a band is Japanese doesn't mean they need to be lumped into some "Japanese" category of music.
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Old 2015.07.06, 01:47 PM   #4
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Originally Posted by zeroryouko View Post
(Luckily, at least there's "Shinjuku-Kei" for SR & TJ, even if that term is not widely accepted.)
lol Pretty sure that's just a made up term by Ringo so that's why it's not widely accepted. Why would you want to use it? You'd just have to explain what it is in "western" terms anyway.
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Old 2015.07.06, 03:32 PM   #5
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Originally Posted by FadedSun View Post
I wouldn't try to label Japanese bands using a Japanese district, or by putting "J" in front of the genre, because I find it annoying and I think many Japanese bands might find it insulting to their integrity. For example, do people say Utada is a "j-pop" artist? I wouldn't say so. She's an accomplished pop artist, but dabbles with lots of other genres like dance, electronic, r&b, rock, etc. these are not "Western" ways to describe music, IMO. Aoba Ichiko plays folk. She's also Japanese. Does that make it "Japanese" folk? Hardly.

Just because a band is Japanese doesn't mean they need to be lumped into some "Japanese" category of music.
In principle, I agree that Japanese artists do not *necessarily* need to be categorized separately. In practice, however, this is difficult. My tastes first of all tend to run to certain specific genres, resulting in overloaded categories; then there are genres that *are* uniquely Japanese (e.g. enka) that deserve to be categorized separately; and even in categories where there is significant overlap, it seems like Japanese artists often have a particular, subtly different sound, which I would argue is something deserving of pride and/or recognition.

Then again, in trying to research this topic online, I came across a discussion as to whether Japanese jazz music really counted as "jazz" for the simple reason that "jazz" is supposedly a uniquely American genre. To me *this* seems like kind of a silly distinction that isn't supported by the sound of the actual music - Shiina Ringo being an excellent example; she has every bit as much right to that label as any other jazz artist. So on the other hand I can certainly see why Japanese artists might bristle at such distinctions.

My ultimate goal here is to find a way to categorize the various albums (whatever their origin) in my collection, and to do so intelligently - specifically avoiding lumping Japanese groups together willy-nilly as you have noted. The simple reason for doing so is that I need to create a deeper but narrower hierarchy, in order to make it easier to locate a particular artist or album. (There is also a more particular complicated/annoying technical reason for trying to categorize by genre specifically, which I won't bore everyone with.)

I certainly wouldn't label SR is "Shinjuku-Kei". Shiina dabbled in lots of genres, but is mostly jazz/rock/show tunes now. Many of her early work can be described as rock before she started to experiment more. Tokyo Jihen is mostly a jazz/rock band. How could anyone argue otherwise? Oomori? Started out as a folk artist with the occasional electro-pop song. Started to get more into rock and pop, then fused everything more on Sennou.
I'll admit that the "Shinjuku-Kei" was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but it seemed at least slightly better than setting genre="Shiina Ringo", which in all honesty is really what I was thinking at the time.
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Old 2015.07.06, 06:44 PM   #6
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I understand these arguments and often argue for them but at the same time Japanese acts often sound very unique to other Western acts of the same genre. I have a hard time calling Utada Hikaru "pop", for example. So, in my music collection the "genres" are actually separated by language. Not because all Japanese music is the same but because they're culturally linked.
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Old 2015.07.06, 06:54 PM   #7
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This reminds me of this last.fm group
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Old 2015.07.06, 07:02 PM   #8
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Originally Posted by TurtleFu View Post
-Ringo claims to be "Shinjuku-kei", which isn't a genre, just a pun she made on Shibuya-kei. Shibuya-kei is a type of Japanese electronic music influenced by 70's pop and funk music. Think early capsule and Pizzicato Five.
-But that's the problem? Not all solo female pop musicians sound similar the same way not all bands with 2 guitarists, 1 bassist, and 1 drummer sound similar. It's completely superficial and not at all a "genre". It's jarring because the author bothers to micro-genre all these rock bands then goes "LOL? Have a vagina? Sounds similar!"
-I'm talking about early 90's here, where PJ Harvey was harder alt rock, Tori was mostly piano and not all that hard, and Bjork was solely making house music. And yet! Vagina? Sound similar!
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