Use of English in Japanese pop songs due to the influence of globalization
Introduction
In contemporary society, the need for common understanding has pushed English to the forefront as the lingua franca, which is also reflected in one of the most creative domains: music. Lyrics play an important role in the symbolic communicative power of popular music. It’s a way to express one’s emotions, make statements, question society, or, by incorporating English lyrics, internationalize the music of a non-Anglophonic country. One may immediately think the latter definitely is the case for Japan, which – spoiler alert- it is! But it would be superficial to think that there’s not more to it. With this qualitative study, we’ll try to show you how thanks to globalization J-Pop artists use English as a creative sociolinguistic force in their lyrics. The quantitative study will look at how the ratio of English to Japanese lyrics in songs has progressed.
What is globalization?
In a previous study done by fellow students about globalization and Japanese popular culture, an extensive definition of the word was already given. In a nutshell, globalization is a social phenomenon that is connected to several trends and models in regards to cultural, social, and economic dimensions.1 This social phenomenon produces significant changes in consumption and tourist production. It is a developing result of global communication and the expansion of information networks that boost economic activity while also raising global awareness. By bringing different groups together from all over the world, people’s interest in exploring cultural singularities and commonalities and consequently wanting to travel to those destinations to experience different cultural identities is boosted thanks to globalization. 2
However, J-pop isn’t the outcome of global homogenization but rather of hybridization, which itself is a result of the globalization process. A quote from GAKU-MC of the group East End about hip-hop in Japan gives a general definition of the term:
“Hip-hop is like a dandelion. It was born in New York, but the wind blew
it to other places. It got nourished by different soil, warmed by a different
sun, and watered by different rain. It grew into something changed from
its origins, and the greater the distance and the longer the time from those
origins, the greater the change Hip-hop in Los Angeles, Canada, and Mexico
is different from the New York version. It's different again in Japan: hip-hop
here is unique”. – GAKU- MC
Thus, hybridity focuses on the integration of diverse local realities to create a third space through the globalization processes. It would be wrong to believe that it’s simply mixing different cultures together. It is complex and overlapping3, beliefs of identity are being interrogated4 and so new cultural realities emerge and it continues the heterogeneity in different places. 5 Nobody can overlook the impact of Western pop-rock on popular music including J-pop, yet the localized forms of pop music and the discourses and practices deconstructed the dominant Western culture altered it, and reassembled it in a new way that responds more to the local life.6 The accessibility of records through the international market, and the increasing availability of information about foreign artists and music through the advancement of technology and media, all resulted in the acceleration of the fusion between the worlds of music. Western elements in Japanese popular music have become so hybridized and/or even assimilated that the Japanese themselves have long not considered them Westernized. People in Japan dress in ‘Western clothes’ designed in Japan and see different private/public buildings constructed under the influence of Western architecture and just like for popular music, aren’t particularly aware of this synthesis, that is in fact international.
Defining J-pop
Before we dive into when the term J-pop was used for the first time, we need to understand where the genre actually comes from. Although the roots of J-pop can be traced way back to the days of commodore Perry’s arrival in Japan, going so far back for our research would be somewhat redundant. Briefly said jazz made an apparition in Japan, mostly popular in Tokyo, before the Second World War. During the Showa era a new form of popular music was born in Japan, ryuukouka, influenced by Western jazz and classical music. Japanese artists were already known in that time period for covering Western songs in Japanese. For example, the cover of ‘Mon paris’ by Takarazuka Koushinkyoku in 1929, originally from Vincent scott and Lucien Boyer. Although there was a ban on all Western things during the war years, including music, American music was gladly welcomed again during the American occupation. A new musical genre that gained popularity in the 50s and that also finds its roots in ryuukouka was kayoukyoku. Although some say that a characteristic of the genre is that there’s no use of English, there were some exceptions to it. Especially in the 70s when rock musicians didn’t feel like they could express their dissatisfaction with the Japanese establishment in Japanese since it would feel too limited, thus they used English hooks in their songs, English songtitles etc. The tradition of covering Western pop songs, using English hooks, but also pursuing similar vocal techniques, chord progression are all part of the hybridization process of what we now call J-pop.
In the 1990s a radio station called J-WAVE used the term J-pop for the first time. The commercial broadcasting radio based in Tokyo first started airing Western-only music but by the end of 1988 music companies like Victor Company of Japan wanted the radio to distribute not only foreign songs but also Japanese pop songs to rival the western pop songs. What the producers didn’t want though was to air kayoukyoku or old Japanese popular music since it was considered not fashionable enough and too ordinary for the trendy and young urbanite audience J-WAVE was aiming for, the program TOWN MUSIC was officially born. Between 1991 and 1993 a new ‘urban-oriented’ style of music emerged, called ‘Shibuya-kei’. It was characterized by its incorporation of different Western influences and embodied J-POP as made by the Japanese music industry. Groups such as Pizzicato Five, Original Love, and Flippers Guitar really embodied that style. Hence why the program was first named TOWN MUSIC, to refer to the area where Japanese pop was the most popular. Then they changed the name to JAPANESE POP and later shortened it to J-POP to finally have the program called J–POP CLASSICS. They chose musicians such as Yumi Matsutohya, Tatsurou Yamashita, and SAZAN ( the Southern All Stars), artists whose songs sounded as if imported from Europe or the US but were made in Japan and sung by Japanese artists and characterized by the frequent use of English and the English like Japanese lyrics. The latter is a technique of hybridization, called language blending. We’ll explain later what it means and why the ‘Don’t touch my mustache' sentence of Al in Toy Story 2 wasn’t him butchering the Japanese sentence “Do itashimashite”.
What was most attractive about the word ‘J-pop’ for young Japanese people was that it implied that they could enjoy domestic pop the same way they enjoyed Western pop. For example, when in 1999 Hikaru Utada came up with her first album ‘First Love’ after her debut single ‘Automatic’ in 1998, the album sold unprecedentedly high copies at that time. The rhythmic sense of her songs mixed with her good vocal quality that was nurtured through listening to contemporary African American music and the natural delivery of the English sentences in her Japanese lyrics were refreshing un-Japanese to the people. Which produced distinctiveness. It was in the 2000s also mainly used to differentiate recent pop young urbanite were listening to from folk, ‘new music’, kayoukyoku and enka. Thus throughout the term J-pop referred to any kind of popular music made by and for young people, including visual rock, techno dance music, hip-hop, jazz, etc.
Unlike one may think, the acceptance of the term J-pop wasn’t only thanks to the genre itself but due to the popularity of using the prefix J-, as an abbreviation for Japan in English, in other fields. The first appearance may have been when the Nihon Senbai kosha became Japan Tobacco or JT, however, it was only in 1987 with the arrival of JR (Japan Railways) that there was a nationwide diffusion of the abbreviation. Many other companies followed the trend and were newly named like the JH( Japan Highway), and JA( Japan Agricultural Cooperatives), and in 1993 the professional soccer league, J-league, most likely accelerated the acceptance and usage of the word. In this sense, the prefix “J” of J-pop doesn’t only refer to Japan as a nation but to the construction of a new reborn national and transnational Japanese identity based on the concepts that are associated with contemporary Japanese lifestyle and culture
Language blending
There are different ways of incorporating different languages into songs and it can, even on a small scale, take on various proportions of meaningfulness to the song. With code switching, there is a switch from one language to another in a way that conforms to both languages’ syntax, morphology and phonology. This is the easiest approach to writing multilingual lyrics as a simple musical filler like “oh” or “yeah” counts as code switching. This adds more to the overall flow of the song, rather than relating to people’s knowledge of the language. Code mixing refers to when there is a hybridization of sorts between languages. For example, saying most of a sentence in Japanese and throwing in an English word like “love” or “kiss”. In this case knowledge of both languages is required to fully understand the sentence. It should be mentioned, although we have chosen to make a distinction between these two terms, some scholars use the two interchangeably. Another, a little more special case of language blending is code ambiguation. In this case the lyrics are meaningful in both languages, blurring the line between Japanese and English in our case. A good example, taken from an article by Mariko Takahashia and David Calicab is “キ・ス・ウ・マ・イ ～KISS YOUR MIND～” from boy band KisMy-Ft2’s. The official lyrics state “KisMy”, but in the song it is pronounced “kiss umai [good at kissing]”, further supported by the katakana in the title. Within code ambiguation, there is lyrical code ambiguation and performance ambiguation, which is related to the vocal style of the singer acquiring features of English pronunciation, but this is beyond the scope that is relevant to our research.
The use of English in J-pop
In Andrew Moody and Yuko Matsumoto’s research on language blending and code ambiguation in J-pop, they argue that the meaning of English lyrics in songs is not that important. This is supported by a study of attitude toward J-pop conducted by N. Dowd and Allison Kujiraoka, suggesting that English is used to pay symbolic tribute to the styles of foreign music, especially English pop, which have influenced J-pop artists and songwriters. By trying to emulate the style of English pop, Japanese songwriters would also implement the language of these songs.
In a previous research done by Moody, he discovered that the titles of famous Western pop songs appear in the lyrics of J-pop songs. For example, Cyndi Lauper’s ‘Time After Time’ is referenced in the following lyric of EARTH’s song with the same name, “time after time sabishii nante kizukazuni aruite tano”. Moody also gives the functional roles of English within J-pop lyrics, which are the following: musical filler, single words and phrases, clauses and sentences, and lastly code ambiguation.
The topic of language mixing in J-pop is also researched by Leo J. Loveday. He argues that this phenomenon, which is common in countries that create pop music, in J-pop is mostly a case of code switching. He suggests that the English language has a prestigious image, creating one of a bilingual society that would attract young consumers. By using English, it is deemed easier to replicate patterns of Western pop culture. Furthermore, he gave a few practical functions of the language, such as English being faster to sing than Japanese due to the latter having more syllables, and it being a new emotional expression.
James Stanlaw, who provided an in-depth analysis of the use of English in Japan in his book Japanese English: language and culture contact, examined the motivations for using English in J-pop. Some of these are: as an ‘audacious’ device, English is used to draw attention to a specific word or expression, or to express something in a daring way; a ‘symbolic’ device, the English word represents a meaning that is different than the Japanese translation; a ‘poetic’ device, used to create metaphors and images, and so on.
The variety of connotation and reference of English words worked well since Japanese songwriters would get access to a wider range of metaphors and images.
J. Kettner’s research on the use of English in J-pop and J-rock provides a musical perspective on language mixing, having surveyed and interviewed people in Japan. Musicians are of the opinion that English is used frequently because it is easier to fit with the rhythm of Western pop-music while Japanese, considered to have too many syllables and limited sounds, works better with slow traditional Japanese music. From the perspective of singers and songwriters, the Japanese language is too monotonous and difficult to sing in staccato. Another reason for using English is the consensus that it gives songs a modern and trendy feeling, the reason why J-pop is created to begin with.
Research method
To investigate whether there is an increase in the use of English in popular Japanese songs, which could potentially indicate the globalization of Japanese music, we scraped several annual charts and then examined the ratio of English to Japanese in the lyrics of these songs. (tools & methods)
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