J-pop

The tradition & historical record

J-pop (an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music") is a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. In Japan it is known simply as pops (ポップス, poppusu). Modern J-pop has its roots in traditional music of Japan, and global 1960s pop and rock music. J-pop replaced kayōkyoku ("Lyric Singing Music"), a term for Japanese popular music from the 1920s to the 1980s in the Japanese music scene. Japanese rock bands such as Happy End fused the Beatles and Beach Boys-style rock with Japanese music in the 1960s–1970s. J-pop was further defined by new wave and crossover fusion acts of the late 1970s, such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Southern All Stars. Popular styles of Japanese pop music include city pop and technopop during the 1970s–1980s, and J-Euro (such as Namie Amuro) and Shibuya-kei during the 1990s and 2000s. Japanese country had popularity during the international popularity of Westerns in the 1960s–1970s as well, and it still has appeal due to the work of musicians like Charlie Nagatani and Tomi Fujiyama, along with venues like Little Texas in Tokyo. Japanese hip hop became mainstream with producer Nujabes during the 1990s–2000s, especially his work on Samurai Champloo, and Japanese pop culture is often seen with anime in hip hop. In addition, Latin music, CCM, and gospel music have scenes within J-pop.

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “J-pop”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

J-pop is Japanese popular music genre, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ¹

The source record links this tradition to 19 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ¹