The History Of Japanese Hip-Hop © Culture-Universal 2004-2005 Written by Jesse Viinikainen (Bracketed words) contain Sound Samples, be sure to check them out. 0.0 Opening Words 1.0 The Start Of The Movement 1.1 Influences 1.2 Culture Universal 1.3 In The Beginning 2.0 20 Years Of Hip-Hop: The Legend Of Crazy-A 2.1 Original Japanese B-Boy 2.2 B-Boy Park |
0.0 Opening Words Hip-Hop in Japan? a Culture or a trend? What is hip-hop like in countries like Japan? Does hip-hop in Japan have it's own roots or is it influenced by the commercialised hip-hop scene in America? What is hip-hop in Japan, is it just about rap music by few selected individuals emulating something RUN DMC did over 10 years ago? Many people outside Asia actually picture Japanese hip-hop to be influenced by samurais and girls in kimonos and other corny stereotypes. In reality imagining it to be so is only funny to those who don't know about hip-hop culture or hip-hop music outside America and who often label the American scene as the only place where real hip-hop can be made. In the words of Afrika Bambaata the godfather of hip-hop "hip-hop is colorless" and Japan as a country has always been able to accept different cultures and ways of life and blending it to their everyday life. For Japanese people hip-hop is far from being a new thing or a passing trend and in fact a country known globally for its rock music has come to a point where turntables outsell guitars year after year and produces more major label hip-hop artists than America. Hip-Hop today is universal yet many people fail to accept it, not just rap music but the whole culture with all of hip-hop's 4 elements. Breakdancing, rapping, dj'ing and train bombing are finding its way into people's lives everywhere in the world and even though all this happened in Japan 20 years ago, it's now happening in many European and Asian countries whose youth are embracing it as a way of life. While you might argue that many of these countries do not have the roots for it, they are still at least trying to understand and unite people from different races together to enjoy it. Japanese hip-hop has developed it's own roots and the people involved are definetely serious about their own hip-hop culture. But what draws people to listen Japanese hip-hop music? What drives some people away from it? Are you really ready to accept seeing asian kids rip the mic? The reason why people are drawn to it is in the end quality hip-hop is about much more than just the lyricism. Fresh beats, good flow and the fact that Japan has many artists who continue to keep hip-hop in its roots is the secret of it's undoubted quality. Rap music is music with a message to some but in the beginning hip-hop started in the bronx as a way for people to entertain each other and if you feel something when you listen to it don't be afraid to accept it. It's about the overall feeling of the music, about whether the artist knows the roots of hip-hop and it's also about expressing yourself. This is the story of Japanese hip-hop, it's roots and our views on it. £Back to top |
1.0 The Start Of The Movement The nation of 130 million people have come a long way since it all started, there has been golden ages and times when hip-hop was almost forgotten. Hip-Hop in the world is now stronger than ever, maybe not in the artistic way but the markets for it are bigger than before. International hip-hop is slowly making it's way to people's ears everywhere in the world and Japanese hip-hop scene by far is the most respected factor in this success. 20 years ago there were not many people who believed in Japanese hip-hop making it this big, at least amongst the people involved in the global hip-hop scene mostly due to the fact that even American hip-hop was a new thing for the masses. Sugar Hill Gang & Grandmaster Flash brought hip-hop from the basement to the streets in the early 1980's and Flash who is a legend to any true hip-hop head in the world was also a huge influence for the birth of Japanese rap music. Even though Japan till this day might not have such huge hip-hop legends as Flash they definetely do have people who have made hip-hop of Japan a lot different from it's American counterpart during these 20 years. One question, one answer. Did Japanese hip-hop emulate the scene from American when it first started? The Answer is yes. When a new style in music is created it results in people across the world to go and emulate it but it doesn't mean that what started as emulating cannot grow its own roots and evolve something that the people involved cannot call their own. Don't get me wrong though, hip-hop is universal. It's not American, it's not Japanese, it's an artform available to anybody who wish to express themselves through it. Japanese hip-hop is all about the roots of the culture. Graffiti, Breakdancing, DJ'ing & Rapping, all of the 4 elements are visible in today's hip-hop culture in Japan it's all been there since 1983. And when it comes to rap music it has always been about rhyming in Japanese and still today 99% of any rhymes you will hear are delivered in Japanese. £Back to top |
1.1 Influences What lead to the birth of Japanese hip-hop then? The Whole phenomenom what we call hip-hop today started globally with the movie Wild Style in the early 1980's. The Movie followed graffiti artists in new york and also showcased one of the first on screen performances by rappers and dj's (Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five). But what inspired the Japanese youth the most were the legendary breakdancing routines by Rocksteady Crew found on the same movie which made the street kids take up on b-boying that evolved into a hip-hop culture in the years that followed. £Back to top |
1.2 Culture Universal Yoyogi park, Tokyo, Fall of 1983 the birthplace of Japanese hip-hop culture and the time when MC's like Ice-T and RUN DMC were just coming out in the US making people go into the record stores asking for the new type of revolutionary music known as rap music. How did it end up in Japan so long ago? Apart from the movie "Wild Style" there were the people who promoted the movie and the message of hip-hop during the same year. Grandmaster Flash, Rocksteady Crew and various other people who had appeared on the film toured the record stores and events telling people about hip-hop culture and what it was like to be part of it. DJ Yutaka & DJ Honda the 2 pioneers of Japanese hip-hop who both tried their hands on different music styles before starting to produce hip-hop in the early 1980's can be counted as major players in spreading hip-hop music to clubs and the streets in japan in the early days. Soul & funk music which got the whole Japan interested in "black" music in the late 1970's helped the youth to pick up on Sugar Hill Gang and rap music got accepted into everyday life with much less controversy than it caused in the states. The trips to America, helped honda and yutaka to learn about hip-hop and to represent the culture to the audience who had never heard hip-hop before. £Back to top |
1.3 In The Beginning Going back to 1983 when it all started. Yoyogi park was slowly getting filled with people who had started to learn breakdancing in their free time. Inspired by the people they had seen on movies such as Wild Style & Flash Dance, many of these people performed their moves with the help of street musicians and one of those people went by the name of DJ Krush. Krush a legend in today's hip-hop bibles started out at Yoyogi park experimenting with a turntable drawing inspiration of the moves of the local b-boys. Inspired with Krush's freestyle scratching sessions many people started practising with their own turntables and many local talents travelled to America to discover new techniques and to create different styles. By the middle 1980's some of the DJ's returning to Japan started to get airplay on radio stations and hip-hop went from the streets to the homes of everybody in Tokyo. When did the first Japanese rappers emerge then? Having no counterpart for the African American street slang made it hard for Japanese rappers in the beginning and kept rap music from growing before the start of the 1990's. The First 100% hip-hop club opened in Shibuya, Tokyo (the hip-hop heaven of Japan) in 1986 which at that time was famous for its numerous dance clubs and when the domestic hip-hop went from the streets to the homes and from there to the clubs the country saw its first album releases in 1986-1987. While the markets were pretty quiet during 1986 - 1989 (the whole scene having around 3 hip-hop albums released per year) the few people that were part of it at that time still managed to keep the scene alive by performing at clubs and finding new ways how to write the language to make it into songs. Back to the 1980's to the time of the first Japanese hip-hop releases when the first generation rappers such as (Tagaki Kan) & (Crazy-A) gained popularity in the scene as ambassadors of hip-hop. Influencing many people to get on the mic after appearing on the very first hip-hop recordings, Takagi Kan has been active for 20 years in the scene and along with Crazy-A, one of the people who kept hip-hop alive in the late 1980's. While both of the legends have moved on from making music to promoting hip-hop by arranging events and talking to kids about it in school, the most amazing thing is to know that these people still live for hip-hop. Often critisized for their music styles and flows in the early days but it would be wrong to leave them from the credit the scene is getting today. Artist such as (President bpm), (The Gas Boys) and many others should be mentioned in this article also and remembering that all of classic records in the 1980's and early 1990's came out on vinyl/cassette only and it is hard to come across any of these gems in any record stores. These people are the idols to many of today's rappers in Japan and owning any of the records of that time can be considered as owning part of the very hip-hop culture in Japan in the 1980's. Artists and the albums of that time never got enough recognition and were soon almost forgotten and the whole scene went back to the basements until the early 1990's, which brought a growing fanbase mostly due to the global success of American hip-hop acts Eric B & Rakim, N.W.A., Ice-T, RUN DMC and many others. Spending few years perfecting the grammar, many new artists such as (Muro), (Crazy-A) and (K-Dub Shine) just to mention a few, saw that the first generation rappers were more into performing it than actually writing and rhyming with deeper messages and sought to create a real scene in Japan with more fluent raps and the goal for Japanese hip-hop to be more "Japanese". Albums from the early 1990's showcased a huge difference in the flow and the whole approach for hip-hop music from what it was during the 80's. New styles started to emerge with the new generation of rappers who were inspired to write their own messages in their mother tongue and with all the popularity the records got amongst the scene lead labels to cash in with the first commercial attempts in the history. East End & Scha Dara Parr were the first groups in Japan who combined rap with poppy/catchy hooks selling hundreds of thousands of copies and that gave a boost to the whole hip-hop scene and the scene remained with the roots of hip-hop. (Konoyawa Boogie Back by Scha Dara Parr) and (Da Yo Ne by East End X Yuri) were both one of the main reasons that Japanese labels picked up hip-hop and even if it was pop rap it gave the scene the diversity that its still famous for even today. £Back to top |
2.0. 20 Years Of Hip-Hop: The Legend Of Crazy-A When a new culture is born into a country, legends are made along with the birth. Hip-Hop's birth in Japan happened over 20 years ago but only now people worldwide are starting to find out about it's existence. Does Japan have their own hip-hop legends like the USA that kept the scene alive on the times when people did not believe in it or when majority of the population claimed that it would only be there for a minute. The word legend can be defined in many ways but most importantly the word is used to speak about those individuals respectively for what they have done for the culture. Comparing people such as Doug E Fresh or Grandmaster Flash to their counterparts in Japan would be wrong and pointless of course but who are Japan's counterparts for these legends? £Back to top |
2.1 Original Japanese B-Boy Born in Asakusa, Tokyo, Crazy-A the now 40+ year old hip-hop sensei has come a long way from starting out as a b-boy to being one of the most respected figures in the Japanese hip-hop game. Crazy-A who has been active ever since the culture landed to nippon in the early 1980's was one of the main reasons behind Japanese hip-hop's success before the real hip-hop culture was embraced by the masses around 1995. Crazy's history goes all the way back to the start of 1980's and the movies Flashdance, Beat Street and Wild Style that started his lifelong journey as a hip-hop mentor. In the early 1980's being a b-boy in Japan was not easy since most of the clubs in Tokyo did not allow b-boys to enter or practise their dancing and instead they had to showcase their talent in local parks and parking lots. Having grown up as a gang member until his life got turned around by the performance of Rocksteady crew on wild style, Crazy practised the moves seen on the movie and went from street brawls to battling his fellow b-boys in the Harajuku and Yoyogi area that at the time were famous for their pack of street performers every weekend. Discovering his passion in life through b-boying, Crazy joined the Tokyo B-Boy Crew one of the 3 original breakdancing crews that along with Tokyo's Be-Pop Crew and Funky Jams from Yokohama used to gather and battle each other every week with new moves just to be recognised as the best in Japan. While the oldest japanese b-boy crew the Be-Pop Crew used to dance at clubs obeying the sophisticated dress code that kept the other crews out, it was the Tokyo B-boy crew that brought the culture to the street determined to spread the word to people previously unaware of hip-hop. In the latter parts of the 1980's Crazy had become the spokesperson for hip-hop, trying his hands on b-boying, dj'ing and even rapping and when Rocksteady Crew finally came to tour Japan in 1986, Crazy-A along with Crazy Legs (the founder of rocksteady crew) made the blueprint for Rocksteady Japan that officially got formed in the start of the 1990's. Crazy, Chino and DJ Beat the founding members of RSC in Japan went to start b-boy schools and clothing lines which resulted in hundreds of people joining the crew in a short period and thus Japan got their first b-boy's who could now dance professionally under them. After his retirement from the music side of things Crazy-A has become a mentor and an inspirational figure and for many years now he has annually arranged one of the biggest hip-hop events in Asia the "b-boy park" in Yoyogi park where he used to bust a move himself over 20 years ago. |
2.1 B-Boy Park B-Boy Park started out as Crazy-A's idea to pay homage to the 4 elements of hip-hop since before the creation of the event there were no annual events that celebrated japanese hip-hop and culture. Every year from 1999 until 2003 (which was the last b-boy park that was arranged in the legendary Yoyogi park) some of the best artists, graffiti writers & b-boys in Japan have gathered to take part in the event and compete in various battles for fame. MC'ing, DJ'ing, B-Boying and Graffiti in the past have all been equally presented to the public and the event has called people from many countries in the world who have taken part in the competitions and showcases. Yoyogi park has since the birth of the even inherited the nickname b-boy park and the reason it's called with the name is because of its long history with breakdancing that goes way back to 1983. The name might indicate that the main dish at the event could be breakdancing the years have shown that it's been good for the local hip-hop heads to learn about the other 3 elements and more importantly to come and express themselves. B-Boy park on its best years has drawn around 10 000 people to make it one of the biggest hip-hop celebrations in the world. Traditionally during the b-boy park (until 2003) has been the cleaning of the whole Yoyogi park of all the trash after the event and its not just the audience who take part in it its also the artists. No denying hip-hop is a beautiful thing that unites people everywhere in the world and what was earlier embraced only by the urban american ghettoes is now being embraced by the whole planet, which shows how much influence hip-hop culture as an artform has on the youth everywhere. The Culture, the lifestyle we call hip-hop needs events like this and it shows that its not only the stateside who are showing love to the roots. |