Hip Hop Japan's Rise to Fame

I will begin with a brief history of how hip hop and rap came to be popular art forms in Japan.

 The popularity of hip hop and rap began in the late 70s in the United States and has climbed to its peak in the 2000s. In Japan hip hop had a bit of a later start, only becoming popular in the 80s, but it has also seen the same boom that hip hop and rap saw in the 1990s in the United States. But the rap culture was treated differently in the United States than it was in Japan. In Japan rap began in the underground or club scene. Ian Condry, the author of Hip Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization, writes that: "Even among those who were skeptical about hip hop in Japan, everyone agreed that to understand Japanese rap music it was necessary to go to the genba, that is, nightclubs" (Condry 5). Japanese media was not highly interested in Japanese rap at first because they felt it would be just a fad amongst Japanese youth.

Yet rap and hip hop have not just stayed musical sensations in Japan, they have seeped into Japanese clothing and culture. I will elaborate more on this point in my next post, "Hip Hop Culture in Japan".This Generation West documentary called "Hip Hop Lives: Japan (Louis King x Oh No x Joe Iron x Zen la Rock)" gives a general perspective on the rise of hip hop and rap in Japanese culture and what could make it thrive or what could make it fall out of favor with Japanese youth.