#ian condry

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Review: Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization by Ian Condry

Condry illustrates Japan's hip-hop phenomenon as a negotiable space of localization and hybridization, both of which feed off each other in the development of a unique sound wherein authenticity both is and isn't the point.  

In his densely-packed analysis of Japan's music scene, from earnest debates on the potential misappropriation of black music to dochaku, or the process of shaping global goods and ideas to suit local markets, Condry illustrates Japan's hip-hop phenomenon as a negotiable space of localization and hybridization, both of which feed off each other in the development of a unique sound wherein authenticity both is and isn't the point.  

Indeed, Condry intimates that the vast body of rap in Japan can be viewed on one level as a signifier of marginalized youth and rebellion against both the adult and the sociocultural status quo, but also as a commercial force that participates in Japan's strategy of economic revitalization, powered by the very forces – trademarks, patents, copyrights, mainstream accessibility – that it purportedly disdains. 

However, Condry's analysis is careful to avoid rigid binarizations of cultural purity versus artistic validity, the 'Japanese' sound versus the 'American', cultural blending versus appropriation, corporatist "sell-outs" versus voices from the "streets." Instead, he calls attention to the dynamic performative space of genba as almost the reconstruction of an alternate realm – one that, while presenting the hip hop scene as a mirror image of the conflicts between culture and commerce in an era of globalization, is also a symbol in itself of the alignment between artistic expression and distinct modes of both subjectivity and collective identity. 

By witnessing the interactions between the emcees and their fans, and understanding the linkage with nodal actors in the music industry at both the upper level of a hierarchy, and with horizontal competition between rival performers,  it becomes clear that the definition of 'hip hop' in Japan proves as protean in its complexity as in the United States, and where the styles and sounds of both nations converge and diverge offers not just interesting insights about discursive historical and cultural parameters, but also their different means of negotiating through global flows and resisting, or yielding to, the agendas of varying power structures.

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brief mention of rapper A-Twice in Ian Condry’s 2006 book Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization

The importance of grasping the “trans” rather than “local” in hip-hop in Japan was poignantly brought home to me through the example of Lafura Jackson (a.k.a. A-Twice), an African-American-Japanese rapper and DJ, whom I saw perform in June 2000 in a small, underground club called Web in Tokyo. He came on at around three a.m., urging the sparse crowd of about twenty people to crowd him in, as he rapped in both English and Japanese. After the show, I asked about his stage name, A-Twice, which he explained was a reference to the Japanese term haafu (half) to describe people who are half-Japanese, half-something else. “I’m not ‘half’ anything,” he said. He was African American and Asian American and the doubling of A’s made him “A-Twice.” He grew up in both the United States and Japan, attending high school in Tokyo and college in Massachusetts and then California before returning to Tokyo to pursue a musical career. What he did not tell me when we met was that the previous fall he had been diagnosed with cancer, and a couple months after his performance, he died in a Tokyo cancer ward at the age of twenty-four. When I met him, I didn’t think there was a place for him in my study of Japanese hip-hop, in part because I tended to look down on American artists who were rapping (selfishly, I thought) in English. But A-Twice made a mark on the scene, prompting a stunning tribute song by DJ Krush and Tha Blue Herb emcee Ill-Bostino called “Candle Chant.” By not choosing “either/or” or simply representing his “Japaneseness,” A-Twice helped me see another “both/and” aspect of hip-hop in Japan. This encounter provides insight into the limits of defining authenticity by primarily looking for a core meaning at the risk of underplaying the performative character of activities in the present. (pg. 46)

Condry, Ian. Hip-hop Japan: Rap and the paths of cultural globalization. Duke University Press, 2006.

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reading anthropological articles about hip hop culture in japan yeyaa 

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To Sub or to Dub: Translation and Fansubbing in Anime

To Sub or to Dub: Translation and Fansubbing in Anime

A translator is like a dog with two masters, the author of the original work and the audience. A translator’s allegiance—to culture, to language, even to literature—shapes their every decision. Thus, a single work can have multiple translations, each possessing a unique aspect. In ‘fansubbing,’ the often illegal subtitling of anime series by fans, the translator transforms from a dog to a…

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Smokey Tokyo's hip-hop

Tokyo, as it happens, has a thriving underground club scene.  It is this smoky underbelly that gestated the Japanese hip-hop scene and allowed it to flourish to its present day form. Condry (2006), in his book, traces the development of this scene by examining the sites of performance, the genbas, or all night dance clubs.  What Condry observes is that “globalisation is not driven solely by powerful media companies”, but travels down alternate paths, spurred on by subcultures and local identities that embrace new forms of expression. As he points out, there is a dynamic and complex relationship between the culture industries, or big companies, the artists and the active fans.

The themes of the songs? Condry says anywhere from racisms, military atrocities from WWII, critiques of Japan’s sex industry, and a salary man’s “acquiescence to a life of quiet desperation”.

Condry, I. 2006, Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization, Duke University Press:  

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Cultures of Music Piracy: An Ethnographic Comparison of the US and Japan

"In 2003, the US recording industry initiated lawsuits against its own consumers in an effort to change what some view as a 'culture of piracy.' What is this culture of piracy and what is at stake in trying to change it? In this essay, I take an ethnographic look at music file sharing, and compare the situation in the US with Japan. My findings are based on fieldwork in Tokyo, and surveys and discussions with US college students. By considering the ways social dynamics and cultural orientations guide uses of digital media technology, I argue that a legal and political focus on 'piracy' ignores crucial aspects of file sharing, and is misleading in the assumptions it makes for policy. A focus on fan participation in media success provides an alternative perspective on how to encourage flourishing music cultures."

Ian Condry, MIT. 2004.

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Although rappers deal with a wide variety of subjects, one theme appears again and again, namely, that youth need to speak out for themselves. As rapper MC Shiro of Rhymester puts it, "If I were to say what hip-hop is, it would be a 'culture of the first person singular.' In hip-hop,...rappers are always yelling, 'I'm this.'" Such a message may seem rather innocuous compared to some of the hard-edged lyrics one is likely to hear in the United States, but it is also a reflection of the kind of lives these Japanese youth are leading. [...] The dominant ideology that harmony of the group should come before individual expression ("the nail that sticks up gets hammered down") makes for a social context in which the hip-hop idea that one should be speaking for oneself is, in some limited sense, revolutionary.

- Ian Condry, "Japanese Hip-Hop and the Globalization of Popular Culture"