japanese rock music in the 1960's

Andrew KnoxPostwar Japan – Term PaperMay 21, 2012

Eleki Buumu and Group Sounds : The Ventures, The Beatles and the Adolescence of Rock n' Roll in Japan

In the aftermath of World War II, Japanese culture was suddenly more prone to

assimilating foreign arts and cultures than ever before. Long renowned as a closed and insular

society, the defeated Empire was in the midst of an identity crisis as the American Occupation

dawned. For a society that had never witnessed major pressures for change, internal or external,

the prostrate nation was due for a thorough re-evaluation of the national character. Due to the

circumstances and influence of the Occupation, Japanese culture began to adopt trends and

practices introduced by foreign troops. In Japanese popular music, this influence was drastic and

immediate, and, especially following the invention of the electric guitar, completely recast the

Japanese music scene in an American mold. But, while Japanese rock music began as a mere

facsimile of the American genre, it grew into a populist national youth phenomenon. With an

urge for distinctiveness best summed up by rock critic Julian Cope in his book Japrocksampler,

“the Japanese thrust everything they discover from the outside world through their own

singularly Japanese filter, mainly resulting in a peculiar copy of the original, but quite often

bringing forth something magnificent and wholly better than that which had first inspired it.”1 In

the following paper, I will analyze the evolution of two Postwar Japanese proto-rock genres,

eleki and Group Sounds, paying special attention to the competing and simultaneous drives to

emulate and differentiate from American precedents and the parallel dilemma afflicting the

artists of these genres, of how to reconcile commercial viability with artistic integrity.

1 Cope, Julian. Japrocksampler. London: Bloomsbury, 2007. Print. p. 10.


This is not to say there was no significant indigenous musical tradition, or to say that the

Japanese were completely unfamiliar with Western musical styles prior to World War II; in fact,

quite the opposite. Japan has always taken cues from foreign cultures, especially in their

traditional music. No matter how dominant a foreign influence may be, the Japanese, through

their self-conscious process of nihonjiron (“Japan-izing”) always devise a way to nativize the

alien practice and make it their own. Japanese musical lineage stretches as far back as the Nara

period (710-794), when Chinese visitors to Japan brought their instruments to the islands. There

are essentially three nativized musical instruments that play the bulk of Japanese traditional

music: the shamisen, the shakuhachi and the koto.

Following the beginning of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Western musical styles arrived

in Japan for the first time. With the rapid modernization and nationalization of the Empire

proceeding along the lines of the European powers, brass band military marches and patriotic

songs emerged. Early in the Meiji period, Japanese traditional music was cast aside as

“uncivilized,”2 but was later revived when the Japanese felt they had reached an equilibrium

between traditional and Western culture. While assimilating vast segments of the European

cultural corpus, the Empire made sure Japanese culture retained a distinctive identity. The Tokyo

Music School was founded in 1879 with three core purposes: “1) to compose new songs which

were a compromise between the West and East, 2) to train teachers who would promote Japanese

music in the future, 3) to teach music in schools.”3 This interest in foreign musical styles and 2 Fisher, Paul. "The History of Japanese Music." Far Side Music, 8 Nov 2004. Web. 29 Apr 2012.

<http://www.farsidemusic.com/historyJa.html>. p. 2.3 Takeshi, Kensho. "Music Education in Japan, 1868-1944." Tokyo Gakugei University, 15 Mar 1996. Web. 29

Apr 2012. <http://www.u-gakugei.ac.jp/~takeshik/mused1868j.html>. p. 2.

http://www.farsidemusic.com/historyJa.html

http://www.u-gakugei.ac.jp/~takeshik/mused1868j.html


promotion of Western-style musical education encouraged the following generations of Japanese

to take up Western instruments and styles.

Jazz and Tango music became popular in Japan in the years before World War II, as did

new forms of indigenous pop music without Western influence, such as zokuyo and min'yo.4

Prewar Japanese music radio consisted of an eclectic mix of indigenous styles, Jazz, Western

classical music and whatever else the DJ could find a recording of. During World War II,

musical choice depended upon whoever the Empire was allied with: “German and Italian music

was welcomed, while American and Allied music was rejected... pitch names were given

Japanese names such as ha (do), ni (re), ho (mi), he (fa), to (so), i (la), and ro (ti).”5

Following the war, a new Western-Japanese hybrid genre of popular music called

kayokyoku developed. Kayokyoku presented Western instruments and characteristics, such as “a

solo voice and an orchestra... melodic solos... 'oom-pah' rhythm [and] quarter note [tempos

between] 80 to 140 [beats] per minute,” while retaining Japanese traditional characteristics, such

as “nasal vocalizations... traditional instruments providing color... ornamentation... and Japanese

themes and lyrics.”6 This blend of Eastern and Western characteristics in early Postwar

kayokyoku allowed it to follow the trend of the Swing and Big Band genres then popular in

America while at the same time differentiating it from such.

The explosion in popularity of electric guitars among young musicians following the

introduction of sleek American Fender and Gibson models was known in Japan as the eleki 4 Fisher, "The History of Japanese Music", p. 4.5 Takeshi, “Music Education in Japan...”, p. 5.6 Kitahara, Michio. "Kayokyoku: An Example of Syncretism Involving Scale and Mode." Ethnomusicology. 10.3

(1966): 271-284. Web. 29 Apr. 2012. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/924345>. p. 271-273.

http://www.jstor.org/stable/924345


buumu, or the “Electric Guitar Boom.” While the first generation of American Rock n' Rollers

wound down in the late fifties, the genre didn't hit its stride in Japan until 1961. Before, the

language barrier diminished Japanese enthusiasm for Western rock music, and since many early

rock songs came in extremely simple structures and relied on lyrics for meaning, many young

Japanese musicians gravitated towards more complex instrumental forms that didn't depend as

heavily on lyrics, like Jazz, experimental electronica and Western classical music. In the late

1950's, the only rock songs performed by Japanese artists that could get radio-play were cover

versions of American rock n' roll and country & western songs, such as Kosaka Kozura's cover

of Elvis Prestley's “Heart-break Hotel” or Eri Chieri's cover of “Rock Around the Clock.”7 This

paradigm changed significantly with the December 1960 release of “Walk, Don't Run” by the

Ventures. The Ventures were a four-piece surf rock band from Tacoma, Washington, who

released a series of eight carefully themed albums between Dec. 1960 and Nov. 1963.8

The Ventures were strictly an instrumental group, one lead guitarist, one rhythm guitarist,

one bassist and one drummer, so learning their songs did not require a strong grasp of English or

Western pop vocal harmonization, it only required three friends, a wad of yen for instruments

and hour after hour of meticulous practice along with the record. Kazuhiro Uda, a Japanese

music critic at the time, felt that the Ventures “transplanted the

genes for the electric guitar into nearly all the young people in the

entire country. I think that Group Sounds (GS) and Japanese rock

7 Cope, Japrocksampler, p. 35.8 Ibid, p. 73-77.


after that would probably not have been possible without the model of the Ventures... Even if

people tried to imitate the Beatles and the Stones, the basic technical know-how was missing in

Japan at the time, but the Ventures taught them everything.”9

Eleki, as a genre synonymous with first wave Japanese rock, reached its height with the

Ventures' 1965 tour of Japan. While the tour was originally only planned for five stops (Tokyo,

Yokohama, Nagoya, Osaka and Sapporo), the Ventures were blown away by their extreme

popularity among the Japanese compared to the rest of the world. After the first five shows sold

out, they realized their commercial potential in the Japanese market, and before the Ventures left

Japan, they performed fifty more shows, filmed a concert movie and released the “Live in Japan”

LP.10 In the wake of the Ventures' tour, Japanese industry finally

stepped in to meet the demand of an electric guitar market hitherto

dependent on American imports; by the end of 1965, “over 760,000”

electric guitars were produced domestically, the eleki buumu was in

full effect.11

In December 1965, shortly after the Ventures' tour, a Japanese

comedy film titled “Eleki no Wakadaisho” (“The Young General's

Electric Guitar”) came to theaters. A smash hit which further

cemented the eleki trend, it was primarily a vehicle for emerging star

9 Fukuya, Toshinobu. The Beatles' Untold Tokyo Story. Amazon, 2011. eBook: Kindle Fire Ed. loc. 325.10 Furmanovsky, Michael. "Outselling the Beatles: Assessing the Influence and Legacy of the Ventures on Japanese

Musicians and Popular Music in the 1960s." Ryukoku University Institutional Repository, 10 Mar 2010. Web. 15 May 2012. <http://hdl.handle.net/10519/905>. p. 5-6.

11 Cope, Japrocksampler, p. 88.

"Eleki no Wakadaisho" film poster

http://hdl.handle.net/10519/905


actor and musician, Kayama Yuzo. Looking back, some critics have labelled it “single most

influential Japanese popular-culture movie of the 1960's.”12 In tone and theme, “Eleki no

Wakadaisho” is comparable to an Elvis film, with a lighthearted plot revolving around teenagers

at the beach and battle of the bands competitions. Throughout the film, Kayama performs

multiple original songs with his backing band, the Launchers, culminating in a guitar duel

between Kayama and Terry Terauchi. The success of “Eleki no Wakadaisho” led to Kayama

being given his own talk show. In one episode, Kayama and Blue Comets drummer, Jackey

Yoshikawa, discussed how difficult it would be for the Japanese to internalize an art form they

struggle to pronounce (“lock'n'lorr”). Challenged to come up with something better, Kayama

coined the term, “Group Sounds.”13

The Beatles, arguably the most influential musical group of the twentieth century, ushered

in the second wave of Japanese rock with their arrival in Tokyo on June 29, 1966, for a series of

concerts in the famous Nippon Budokan Hall. Although they only stayed on Japanese soil for

about five days, and spent most of that time under house arrest for their own protection, the

Beatles had a bigger influence on modern Japanese music than any group before or after. Even

before they arrived, the Japanese viewed the Beatles tour as a “matter of national strategic

importance.” While the government treated the band as foreign dignitaries and the youth treated

them as visiting gods, the Beatles were not welcomed to Japan with unanimous greetings. Many

education committees and high schools across Japan, drawn in by conservative hype regarding

12 Furmanovsky, “Outselling the Beatles...”, p. 6.13 Cope, Japrocksampler, p. 82-83.


rock music and juvenile delinquency, ordered students to avoid the concerts, some even under

threat of disciplinary action. Some right-wing activists were infuriated that “Japan's sacred hall

of martial arts [was to be used] for a concert of 'degenerate Western music'.”14

The build-up to the Beatles concerts may be one of the first noticeable instances of the

powerful cultural schism between old and young we know in the West as the generation gap. In

Japan, this manifested itself through the general differences in opinion between the pre-war

generation and the baby boomers. For Japanese parents of teenagers in 1966, “the overpowering

volume of electric guitar music was just noise, but that was merely a secondary concern. The

main concern of parents was their sense of fear that their children had begun to enthusiastically

embrace something which they themselves did not fully understand.”15 This exclusion anxiety

was slow to heal, as conflicts over familial authority further diminished both the young and the

old's capacity to relate to one another.

The authorities, determined to avoid an embarrassing international incident, took any and

all threats against the Beatles seriously, cultivating a police state atmosphere within the venue –

sharpshooters were even placed in the orchestra pits and in the wings. Security staff culled from

the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department and the Kojimachi Fire Department lined the aisles of

the hall, barking at ecstatic fans to sit down and shut up. Some figures estimate the security

personnel may have outnumbered the audience at some shows.16 The Fab Four, soon to retire

14 Fukuya, The Beatles' Untold Tokyo Story, loc. 65-101.15 Ibid, loc. 340.16 Ibid, loc. 491-511. “In the report released by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, it was stated that a

total of 8370 people, including riot police, plainclothes police officers, and female police officers... provide[d] security for the concert. Since the Kōjimachi Fire Department was also added to provide security, the security measures in place included far more than 10,000 people (some estimates ran as high as 35,000 people).”


from touring to focus on recording, ran through a tired setlist

comprised primarily of early material, essentially performing

the same show on five consecutive nights.17 But, despite the

band's ennui, the oppressive level of safety, and the shoddy

amplifiers and speakers easily drowned out by the roar of the

crowd, the Beatles' visit had a profound effect on the

Japanese public. They began each concert with their raucous hit cover of Chuck Berry's “Rock

and Roll Music,” perhaps, in some small way, referring to Japanese pops' addiction to English-

language covers and the drought of Japanese original content. “The Way of the Beatles” soon

became the guiding philosophy of Japanese popular music.18

Following the Beatles' visit, a whole host of imitators sprang up. Countless bands

adopted the rock band standard format, a lead guitar supported by a rhythm guitar, bass guitar,

drum kit and occasionally a piano, as well as the Beatles' emphasis on vocal harmonization.

Some of the more successful of these first wave Group Sounds bands bore names such as “the

Mops, the Golden Cups, the Tempters, the Jaguars and the Tigers.”19 Many bands considered

themselves lucky to garner at least one hit song before fading away into obscurity.

The fatal flaw of the Group Sounds genre was its genuinely artificial nature. “Eleki no

Wakadaisho” was just one in a long series of “Wakadaisho” films attempting to make a star out

of Kayama Yuzo. A corporate work, with a script written by committees for maximum profit, the

17 Cope, Japrocksampler, p. 89.18 Furmanovsky, “Outselling the Beatles...” p. 10.19 Cope, Japrocksampler, p. 90-91.

The Golden Cups


film and its many sequels manufactured the guitar boom craze through the way it was marketed.

The cross-promotion between films and records created a sort of idealized rock n' roll lifestyle

middle class youth could occupy. These young consumers were led to believe they were part of

a cool revolutionary movement, subtly defying the higher authorities they had submitted to since

birth. These teens apparently did not realize that by buying records, movie tickets and musical

instruments in such mass numbers, they were merely setting up a corporate machine solely

focused on maintaining and increasing its cash flow, always hungering for more growth. This

kind of system, a system focused solely on survival, looks at a song in terms of saleable units

instead of as a creative accomplishment. Prior to the Beatles, Japanese record companies

ignored rock bands, not seeing much potential in original Japanese content.

The huge commercial success of the Beatles and the Ventures suggested to Japanese

record companies that domestic rock bands might be profitable, provided they were kept on a

tight creative leash. Common practice in the Japanese music industry at the time was to hold

composers, lyricists and bands under seperate contracts. Bands were not to make their own

music if they wanted a record contract, they were to dutifully play bland attempts at popular

appeal written by professional sensei.20 The first parade of Group Sounds bands was merely a

line of defective prototypes in the design phase of the “ultimate Group Sounds archetype,” all of

which failed to meet the idealized expectations of the cadre of Japanese record label executives.

While most of these defects were superficial judgments, they were nonetheless fatal to careers –

the Spiders were “too old,” the Mops were “too punk” and the Golden Cups had a habit of

20 Fukuya, The Beatles' Untold Tokyo Story, loc. 608.


sniffing paint thinner. The Tigers, from Kyoto, were later identified as the “uber-GS archetype

with their six-piece ensemble of vocalist, two guitars, organist, bass player and drummer”

wearing moderately flashy matching uniforms and smiles and obeying their management's orders

“to the letter.” Tigers-imitators followed the pattern, forming bands with animal-related names

like “the Cougars, the Rangers... the Phoenix, [and] the Lions.”21

As 1968 wore on into 1969, the Group Sounds genre declined in popularity as the Tigers

and the Spiders traded competition in record sales for competition in box office receipts for their

secret agent spoof flicks. At the same time that the Japanese music industry was milking the

surviving Group Sounds artists dry, knowledge of the hippie movement and psychedelic rock

began to trickle in from the West. The death of Group Sounds ultimately came with the

announcement that the smash Broadway musical Hair had been translated into Japanese and that

talent auditions were to begin soon. The show was pitched to a skeptical Japanese public as a

“Tribal Love Rock Musical.” Many Group Sounds bands, both aspiring and faltering, soon

splintered, as upwards of “4,000 applicants” applied for only twenty-eight roles. Nevertheless,

the producers demanded experience and mainstream grounding, the orchestra was drafted from

Japan's jazz scene. The musical's key acting and singing roles, however, were reserved for the

cream of the Group Sounds crop: “Apryl Fool's organist Hiro Yanagida and Out Cast's lead

guitarist Kimio Mizutani were invited to the ensemble. Furthermore, Tigers lead guitarist

Katsumi 'Kato' Takahashi […] was given the lead role of 'Claud.'”22

21 Cope, Japrocksampler, p. 90-100.22 Ibid, p. 102-103.


Through the monumental chorus of the play's signature tune,

“The Flesh Failures” (better known in America as

“Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In”), sung first in Japanese and

then in English,23 Japanese audiences began to cope with the

appeal of the non-conformist, anti-establishment, drug-using

hippie movement. Japanese people, be they record label executives, musicians or casual

listeners, noticed the unmistakeable global shift in the course of rock music and reoriented

themselves accordingly. As mainstream rock began to move closer to the hippies and the anti-

Vietnam War movement, mainstream rock drifted to the left of Japanese pop music as a whole.

Once synonymous terms, the distinctions between the formulaic commercial product of pop and

the wild, unstable renegades of rock grew only more obvious as the Sixties turned into the

Seventies. As rock music lost its broader appeal, the music industry loosened its grip on musical

creativity. Finally allowed some artistic breathing room, the Japanese rock genre diversified

along similar lines as the West, with subgenres carving out niches of dedicated fans. The

Japanese Underground was born. Japanese rock music at last had a chance to be itself.

Just as rock music in America evolved from an array of musical traditions, the

adolescence of Japanese rock music from 1961-1969 was a long painful process of searching for

an identity. Beginning as a foreign import only to be imitated, never recreated, Japanese rock

23 Japanese Cast of Hair. “The Flesh Failures.” Soundtrack to Hair: The Musical. WFMU, 1971. MP3 format: <http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2006/11/hair/17_-_1971_Japanese_Cast_of_Hair_-_The_Flesh_Failures__Let_The_Sunshine_In.mp3>.

The Japanese version of Hair.

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2006/11/hair/17_-_1971_Japanese_Cast_of_Hair_-_The_Flesh_Failures__Let_The_Sunshine_In.mp3

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/KF/2006/11/hair/17_-_1971_Japanese_Cast_of_Hair_-_The_Flesh_Failures__Let_The_Sunshine_In.mp3


music matured along with the Baby Boomers, hugging closely a generation estranged from their

parents. When the business establishment attempted to co-opt the subversive phenomenon, they

only ended up driving a deeper wedge between the old and the young. Group Sounds bands,

while profitable and popular at the time, ultimately lacked the creative, riotous substance the

Japanese youth craved.

If eleki is the caterpillar form, and Group Sounds is the cocoon, then J-rock since 1970

has emerged and blossomed into a beautiful butterfly. In the years following Group Sounds, the

Japanese rock scene has gained moments of global exposure through the success of bands like

Shonen Knife, the pillows, Dir en Grey, Asian Kung-Fu Generation and renowned solo guitarist

Miyavi. While the detachment of rock music from mainstream pop has certainly hurt the

chances of anyone trying to find gainful employment through music, the relaxation of these same

restrictions and commercial pressures has been fundamental to the transformation of Japanese

rock music into the truly unique art form it is today.

japanese rock music in the 1960's

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