J-Pop

J-Pop and its Impact on the Popular Culture:
Whether you realize it or not, J-Pop is considered to be an integral part of the popular Japanese culture. J-pop is used everywhere - stores, anime, movies, commercials, television shows, radio shows and video games as well as for other forms of J-ENT. There are even some news programs on the television that run some sort of J-pop song within their end credits.

In television shows and anime, especially dramas, closing and opening songs are normally changed up to at least four times each year. Mainly because most of the programs consist of both closing and opening songs, it is possible for one of the shows to use eight tracks within a single season.

During the past decade, J-pop has steadily gained fans from across the world through anime and video games because there are several fans of videogames that import their games from Japan well before they are proposed to be released within their respective country. The soundtracks and theme songs from these particular games can be considered the gateway to further interest in the J-pop music genre as well as other Japanese music genres.

One particular example of this can be located in Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts games, in which the popular singer of J-pop Utada Hikaru performed all of the main theme songs. Easy Breeze, her song was also being used in order to promote the Nintendo DS. In relationship to anime, normally the shows are sold within the west with all of their original soundtracks going untouched, affording the more direct exposure. There are some shows that are aired on television within the United States, that have seen all of their themes travel as far as to commercially become available as ringtones through the mainstream vendors that are located within that country.

Japanese Musical Trends:
The J-pop music genre can be followed all the way back to jazz music which became very popular within the early Showa period. The jazz music genre was able to introduce several musical instruments that were previously used only to perform the military marches and classical music, to clubs and bars. J-pop also added a certain element of fun to the music scene in Japan. The result of this was that the Ongaku Kissa was able to become an extremely popular venue when it came to live jazz music.

During the Second World War, under pressure which was applied by the Imperial Army, the jazz music performance was halted temporarily. Once the war had ended, the soldiers from the United States, which were occupying Japan at that particular time, along with the Far East Network introduced several new musical styles to the entire country. Mambo, Boogie-Woogie, Country music and blues were all performed by the Japanese musicians for the troops from America.