To explain why hip-hop’s influence exists in Japan, I first explain the state of Japan before the hip-hop phenomenon and how that state affected youth. In Japan, a combination of the socio-economic situation and Japan’s family life presented a state of youth that was similar to the situation that allowed hip-hop to first flourish in the African-American community. As Mark Driscoll (2007) explains, starting in the early 1990’s, Japan’s economic reality began to crumble: the nation’s population was rapidly declining as baby boomers were growing older and older, debt was becoming staggeringly high, and the number of sexually transmitted diseases were growing at an alarming rate. Because Japan began to enter a recession, a previously booming economy turned into a dire reality for Japanese adolescents born during the 1980’s. The worsening economic reality made it difficult for Japanese youth to attain jobs, shattering the notion that a good education guaranteed a stable job. In addition to the difficulty of getting jobs, the Japanese adults who did have jobs had to devote all of their time to those jobs, meaning a sacrifice in time spent nurturing their children. This lack of parental care for the Japanese youth along with the shattering of the idea of a stable career path led many Japanese youth to a disillusionment of sorts, bitter at an unfulfilled promise for a stable life and lacking in love, attention, and a sense of family.

At the same time as this recession is occurring, there is a notable shift in ideological values as well. Driscoll (2007) states that around this time is when the freeter (un- and underemployed Japanese people) culture began to rise. As future career prospects looked bleak, many Japanese young adults yearned for a more carefree, happier lifestyle, leading to many youths opting out of the traditional career path. What is interesting to note, however, is that the introduction and rise of the hip-hop culture began around the same time as this ideological shift occurred, having gained recognition in the early 1990’s. A prime example of this is the rise of the ganguro phenomenon, which was a new fashion style that imitated blackened faces, bright clothes, and hip-hop accessories, amongst Japanese teenage girls. The ganguro trend rose out of hip-hop influence as a sort of tribute to the African-American culture from which hip-hop came. To the girls who dressed in ganguro, the new fashion style was a way of expressing and redefining their individual identity as well as a way of stating their desire for a carefree life rather than boring, mundane one. However, to Japanese society, ganguro was in conflict with traditional society’s ideals, as the Japanese public viewed ganguro girls as “creatures” that represented the negative aspects of society (Liu, 2005).

The main point to note here, however, is that freeters were viewed in essentially the same way the ganguro girls were viewed. Interestingly enough, the ideological values of the freeter culture align in certain ways with the ideological values of the hip-hop movement. Just as oppressed African-Americans used hip-hop to express discontent with the current state of society during the 1970’s, Japanese artists used hip-hop to represent the discontent of the youth with the government and its society (Liu, 2012). What this means is that this feeling of isolation on the part of Japanese youth and the freeter culture towards society allowed a cultural movement like hip-hop, a movement that derives its popularity and origins from a sense of oppression, to rise. Thus, while there is no definitive, explicit evidence that the freeter culture caused the growth of hip-hop in Japan, there is definitely a link between the two movements, as they share a similar ideology, both born out of Japan’s declining economy.

Sources:

Driscoll, M. (2007). Debt and denunciation in post-bubble japan: on the two freeters. Cultural Critique, 65, 164-187.

Liu, X. (2005) The hip hop impact on japanese youth culture. Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 32, 145-153.

Liu, X. (2012) Hip hop's global influence and its localization in japan and china. Virginia Review of Asian Studies, 147-160.