J-pop
J-pop (, jeipoppu; often stylized in all caps; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in traditional music of Japan, and significantly in 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. J-rock bands such as Happy End fused the Beatles and Beach Boys-style rock with Japanese music in the 1960s1970s. J-country had popularity during the international popularity of Westerns in the 1960s1970s as well, and it still has appeal due to the work of musicians like Charlie Nagatani, Tomi Fujiyama, along with venues like Little Texas in Tokyo. J-rap became mainstream with producer Nujabes and his work on Samurai Champloo, Japanese pop culture is often seen with anime in hip hop. Other trends in Japanese music include J-Euro in the early 1990s, namely Namie Amuro, as well, Latin music, CCM, and gospel music have scenes within J-pop. J-pop is 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 technopop during the 1970s1980s, city pop in the 1980s, and Shibuya-kei in the 1990s. Form and definition The origin of modern J-pop is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by the likes of The Beatles. Unlike the Japanese music genre called kayōkyoku, J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to that of English. One notable singer to do so is Keisuke Kuwata, who pronounced the Japanese word karada ("body") as kyerada. Additionally, unlike Western music, the major second (sol and la) was usually not used in Japanese music, except art music, before rock music became popular in Japan. When the Group Sounds genre, which was inspired by Western rock, became popular, Japanese pop music adopted the major second, which was used in the final sounds of The Beatles' song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and The Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". Although Japanese pop music changed from music based on Japanese pentatonic scale and distortional tetrachord to the more occidental music over time, music that drew from the traditional Japanese singing style remained popular (such as that of Ringo Shiina). At first, the term J-pop was used only for Western-style musicians in Japan, such as Pizzicato Five and Flipper's Guitar, just after Japanese radio station J-Wave was established. On the other hand, Mitsuhiro Hidaka of AAA from Avex Trax said that J-pop was originally derived from the Eurobeat genre. However, the term became a blanket term, covering other music genres—such as the majority of Japanese rock music of the 1990s. In 1990, the Japanese subsidiary of Tower Records defined J-pop as all Japanese music belonging to the Recording Industry Association of Japan except Japanese