What Does Japanese Popular Culture Mean to You

What is Japanese popular culture? What does the term "Japanese popular culture" refer to? In this essay, I will examine and discuss some aspects of Japanese popular culture, including Japanese music, visual arts (such as manga, dramas and video games) and some social norms and liturgies, and what they mean to me.

In fact, when we mention "Japanese popular culture", most of us would probably associate this term with "fashionable", "unique" and "adorable". Personally, to quite a large extent, I think Japanese culture has huge impacts on many teenagers, especially in Hong Kong since long ago.

First of all, when we talk about Japanese music, it is not surprising that we can find much Hong Kong pop music (e.g. its melody) which was actually originated from Japan. Though many teenagers in Hong Kong, including myself, may not have learnt and understood Japanese, many Japanese songs are very popular in Hong Kong, especially theme songs of some dramas; some of them are even converted and adapted with Chinese lyrics, thus showing the significant influence of Japanese culture to foreign countries and this also implies the potential overseas markets for the spread of Japanese popular culture.

To me, listening to Japanese music is always enjoyable because it is not simply music, in other words, it is not limited to acoustic enjoyment. Since Japan is the country which came up with the idea of Karaoke and Music Video (MV), we can always "see" its music creativity from singing Karaoke or watching MV from the internet, this delivers pleasure beyond simply listening to the music itself. Another merit of Japanese music is that it is the first few countries which introduced group singers and group idols, the groupings and interactions between idols created a sense of unity and uniqueness, together with their talents and outstanding performance have attracted many admirations from teenagers. For instance, Mr. Children was one of the most successful music bands in the 1990s and now we also see many popular music bands, including ARASHI, KAT-TUN, SMAP, ORANGE RANGE and so on and I often find pleasure when listening to Japanese pop music. Therefore, I would say Japanese music is not solely acoustic enjoyment but a rather comprehensive multi-dimensions entertainment which at the same time, introduce Japanese local culture to foreigners like us.

References:

Japan Pop! Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture:

http://www.mesharpe.com/pop_guide.htm

Thoughts on Japan:

http://www.eltnews.com/columns/thoughts_on_japan/japanese_society/

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