The Japanese Version

Today's topic is globalization in Japan. For this topic, I have decided to focus on on the Japanese glocalized version of hip-hop, not specifically just the music, but also the lifestyle and culture associated with it. Hip-hop is extremely popular in Japan, with its roots beginning around the early 1990's. This popularity can be seen all around, weather it's people practicing hip-hop dance in front of a window's reflection (which is extremely common, at least here in Hirakata), someone with a New Era baseball hat tilted to the side, or graffiti art on the side of a building. All of these things can be said to be associated with the culture and lifestyle of hip-hop. Something I find extremely interesting about the Japanese version of hip-hop is the fact that real hip-hop originates from the ghettos of America, with hip-hop being an outlet for disenchanted minorities to express their daily life struggles, and yet there is no real ghettos in Japan (Japan is by-and-large a majority middle-class society), and there really is no minorities relatively speaking considering Japan is a 98.5% homogenized society. (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ja.html). What do people rap about in America generally speaking? Generally speaking, selling drugs, guns, and going to jail, (it is a generalization, but if you were to take any random sampling of hip-hop being played on the radio, you would find this to be a very realistic generalization). In Japan, drugs, guns, and rappers going to jail are virtually nonexistent, especially in comparison to the United States. Therefore, in many respects the very roots and foundations of hip-hop have been wiped away, and the entire concept of hip-hop itself has been Japanized in a way that allows it to have its own major popular culture niche. It takes away the ghetto lifestyle that is associated with the American version and replaces it with an emphasis and prioritization of the fashion and dance elements associated with hip-hop.
Fames, Japan's most famous baseball hat store, in Harujuku, Tokyo. As you can see in the picture, the store is necessarily about just selling baseball hats, but also other hats associated with hip-hop. Take for example the Run DMC hat in the lower left hand corner of the advertisement sign. Hats, and in particular New Era 59 brand hats, play an extremely important hip-hop fashion - practically every rapper in America and Japan too wears one at any given time. So, these baseball hats have gained much popularity in Japan, generally not because of enthusiasm for American Baseball (the stores generally don't sell Japanese Baseball team's hats), but rather because of the connection between them and the hip-hop fashion.

A hip-hop store in Hiroshima, called "Hip-Hop Style Be Cool"

A graffiti (or can it really actually even be called graffiti considering it was done on a board for an advertisement?) advertisement for Zero's -Kansai Gaidai's largest club on campus, with about 6-10 subgroups within the main group representing each of the various hip-hop styles of dance (e.g. break dance, house, anime, west coast, etc.) - dance competition during the Culture Festival at Nakamiya campus earlier this year.

As the 2 photos below demonstrate, another element of the American hip-hop scene which Japan has imported is the car scene. Rappers in America love old "gangster" cars like the 60's Impalas featured below.

They had these babies spit shine clean, and even had them rigged up with hydrologics and the whole real deal like you would see in the inner-city of a major city in the United States. It's pretty funny to think about. One the one hand, American cars have virtually no popularity in Japan, with over 90-95% of the Japanese car market being absolutely dominated by the Japanese auto companies, and yet here you have a straight old school American cars right smack dab in the middle of Osaka. I wonder how much these cars cost? Based on my knowledge of cars, considering that this looks to be about a '63-'65 Impala (I forgot to ask him unfortunately), this car goes for about a minimum of $20,000 back in the US. Both of the cars also had fully rigged hydrologic systems in them, which is another minimum of $5000 or so. So that’s simply $25,000, BEFORE even calculating how much money it cost them to import them. I would say that it would probably make the price skyrocket, maybe to the point of even doubling the cost. Either way, the point is these guys paid a butt-load of money for some old school American gangster cars. These owners obviously aren’t some run-of-the-block salary man who randomly decided he wanted an American classic muscle car, it is obvious that these people own these cars because of the influence hip-hop has had on their life. Very interesting to say the least!

Since I have been Japan, I have had at least 15 Japanese people look at me, notice I am wearing an LA hat, and then throw up the Westside hand sign, as demonstrated in the picture above (also notice his 80's Cadillac on spoke rim wheels with hydraulics!!!). I find this extremely interesting, and honestly hilarious, considering,
1) They have most likely never even been to the West Coast of America
2) They probably don't realize the implications of the gesture being associated with the Bloods faction gang in the West Coast of America, and
3) Even if they were to try and Japanize this hand gesture, where is the "West Side" of Japan? Anywhere west of Tokyo? How about the Kansai area? or I guess Kyushu since it's the most west of all the islands if you don't include Okinawa? This just goes to show that it's "cool" to them because they probably saw in a magazine or a music video somewhere, and decided that it was a cool thing to do.

Background Readings:
History of hip-hop dance scene in Japan
https://www.msu.edu/~okumurak/japan/history.html
Globalization and Japanese Creativity: Adaptions of Japanese Language to Rap
http://macsem.org/pantaleonipaper.htm