Product Description

In this lively ethnography Ian Condry interprets Japan’s vibrant hip-hop scene, explaining how a music and culture that originated halfway around the world is appropriated and remade in Tokyo clubs and recording studios. Illuminating different aspects of Japanese hip-hop, Condry chronicles how self-described “yellow B-Boys” express their devotion to “black culture,” how they combine the figure of the samurai with American rapping techniques and gangsta imagery, and how underground artists compete with pop icons to define “real” Japanese hip-hop. He discusses how rappers manipulate the Japanese language to achieve rhyme and rhythmic flow and how Japan’s female rappers struggle to find a place in a male-dominated genre. Condry pays particular attention to the messages of emcees, considering how their raps take on subjects including Japan’s education system, its sex industry, teenage bullying victims turned schoolyard murderers, and even America’s handling of the war on terror.

Condry attended more than 120 hip-hop performances in clubs in and around Tokyo, sat in on dozens of studio recording sessions, and interviewed rappers, music company executives, music store owners, and journalists. Situating the voices of Japanese artists in the specific nightclubs where hip-hop is performed—what musicians and fans call the genba (actual site) of the scene—he draws attention to the collaborative, improvisatory character of cultural globalization. He contends that it was the pull of grassroots connections and individual performers rather than the push of big media corporations that initially energized and popularized hip-hop in Japan. Zeebra, DJ Krush, Crazy-A, Rhymester, and a host of other artists created Japanese rap, one performance at a time.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61496 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780822338925
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Review
"Anyone that's interested in--or just plain baffled by--Japanese pop culture will be happy to have Condry's book demystify one of the country's most complex subcultures." -- Max Herman, XLR8R

"Ian Condry's wonderful Hip-Hop Japan . . . is as intellectually engaging about cultural globalization as it is an impressive introduction to Japan's vibrant rap scene." -- David Leheny, The Daily Yomiuri

"[A] well-research study of race, gender, prosody and praxis in Japanese hip-hop. . . . [T]he author's resistance to pleonasm and his love for his subject matter make the book as useful for a general audience as for the academy." -- Brian Howe, Paste

"[T]he book attractively combines a careful combing through of other material on the topic with a reader-friendly amiability and marked loyalty to the artists interviewed. . . . [N]on-academics interested in the subject can approach it and be fairly certain to find plenty of material in its pages to inform and even entertain them." -- Bradley Winterton, The Taipei Times

From the Back Cover
“I found Hip-Hop Japan fascinating. Ian Condry writes with both authority and intimacy. Taking on the movement of musicians, CDs, soundtracks, graffiti, breakdancing, fashion, racialized culture, style, musical genre, lyrics, and history from the United States to Japan, he offers a groundbreaking transcultural study of popular culture explored through an ethnography of the local.”—Anne Allison, author of Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination

About the Author
Ian Condry is Associate Professor of Japanese cultural studies in Foreign Languages and Literatures at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.