How Does Japan Culture Affect Hip-Hop in USA
In the 1970s and 1980s, various elements of Japanese pop culture, such as manga, anime, costumes, and popular music, including the J-POP and visual departments, have influenced the production of much Western pop culture. The themes, styles and forms of these art forms are often based on futurism and advanced technology, which further reinforces the Western stereotype of Japan as a technologically advanced but inhuman society. The influence of Japanese pop culture then extended to Western pop music. Some notable Western hip-hop artists, including Wu-Tang Clan, Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, have been particularly influenced by Japanese pop culture and have adopted it in many ways.
( "Stronger" is a song by American rapper Kanye West. The background was set in Japan)
The hit song "Mr. Roboto" is perhaps the most famous expression of electronic Orientalism in Western pop music. Written by Dennis De Young and sung by Styx on their 1983 concept album 'Kilroy Was Here', 'Mr. Roboto' reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and is one of the band's most popular songs. The Japanese lyrics "dmoarigat, mr. Roboto" highlight the chorus, which became a popular slogan in the 1980s. While the lyrics and interludes clearly carve out that the Japanese are the main proponents of this inhumane oriental technocratic future, the video for this song is even more disturbing. It features a Japanese racial cartoon depicting a menacing robot (with prominent buck teeth and stereotypical squinting eyes). Such cartoons with strong racist overtones were in fact not out of place in American World War II anti-Japanese propaganda. But the prevalence of such content in egalitarian-conscious America in the 1980s was enough to see how deeply the idea of technological orientalism penetrated the hearts of the Japanese and how low their international cultural status was at the time.
Indeed, the so-called ACG culture - anime, manga, and games - is sought after among young people; but the image of the Japanese in mainstream Western culture stems in large part from their ability to produce and improve technology - be it cars, computers, television, video games, cameras, or robots. Since World War II, Japan has maintained an image of technological progress and proficiency that surpasses almost any other country. But in the view of the American media. Japan has become a new country that is technologically anthropomorphized, or has no respect for individual human beings at all, so the West can project its own sense of superiority on it. While demeaning and alienating Japan, the West has actually passed on its fear of technological alienation of humanity and reinforced its own liberal and individualistic ideology and core values. Japan, on the other hand, has fallen victim to this system of discourse. Many Westerners around the world see Japan as a cold, calculating country inhabited by soulless workers, obsessed with mathematical efficiency and a vast bureaucracy, and obsessed with technology. Doesn't that sound a bit like the international image of the Chinese today? Those Western media that were critical of Japan forty years ago. Now, the blame is being turned to China.