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Elusively Ubiquitous: Issues with the Application of Hybridity in Visual Kei

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Sounds and the City

Part of the book series: Leisure Studies in a Global Era ((LSGE))

Abstract

In this chapter, using the example of Visual Kei, a form of rock music in Japan, I will first consider some concepts that have been used to describe the eclecticism present in contemporary Japanese music forms such as ‘hybridization’, ‘transculturality’, and ‘localization’. I discuss ways in which these concepts reiterate and reproduce tropes about ‘peripheral’ forms of music as only able to exist vis-à-vis institutionally established, sonically identifiable, and (sub)culturally recognizable genres of music. Visual Kei as a difficult-to-pin-down, eclectic, ever-renewable template for the production of music serves as a good case for how the deterritorialized experience that is rock music in the contemporary global sonic-scape can no longer simply be described in terms of having ‘local’ and ‘foreign’ elements.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While Kei can be literally translated as system or lineage when used as a suffix to refer to music or fashion, it indicates a grouping of style or genre (Inoue 2003; Koizumi 2002). Visual Kei is believed to have gained its name from the catch-copy written on the sleeve of X Japan’s 1989 Blue Blood album that reads ‘Psychedelic Violence-Crime of Visual Shock’. The bands popularity coupled with the growing usage of the term in a variety of media formats to describe the rise of aesthetic trends and tendencies in and out of music led to the term becoming a useful label to describe rock bands that appeared to fall into such categories, despite the diversity of musical genres that they belonged to or had their roots in. Furthermore, the social relations (peer and rivalries) between bands that developed regionally or as part of a live circuit, as well as through bands setting up their own labels and signing other bands, and the growth of several specialist media platforms, including magazines and television programmes that featured those already within or aspiring to enter this circuit emerged, thus contributing to the solidification of the appearance of a genre.

  2. 2.

    A weekly hour-long variety television programme on TV Asahi that features a jam session and talk session format with guests hosted by Kanjani Eight. This particular episode aired on 8 October 2017.

  3. 3.

    Montagemagoria is a term I coined that describes the compression of common visual images of Japan that draw from resources across time and space but at once unquestionably signify the nation. It relies heavily upon hybrids such as old vs. new, nature vs. hypermodernity, solemnity vs. chaos and is frequently employed in advertising. The entirety of this package itself results in tropes about the contents of Japan, not as a country of diverse experiences, but one of extremes and conditions viewers into accepting clear binaric views of Japan.

  4. 4.

    The former guitarist of Megadeath who is now active as a musician in Japan.

  5. 5.

    The tour was headlined by Marilyn Manson, took place on 7–8 August 1999 at Fuji-Q Highland Conifer Forest, and showcased foreign and local Japanese acts.

  6. 6.

    Examples include (band name, followed by year of formation) Janne Da Arc (1991), L’Arc~en~Ciel (1991), La’cryma Christi (1991), LAREINE (1994), MALICE MIZER (1992) and ROUAGE (1993) to name a few.

  7. 7.

    Kizu can be translated into a number of things including wound, flaw, scar, tarnish, dent, hurt, damage, etc.

  8. 8.

    Sakito is the guitarist of the band NIGHTMARE who are currently on a hiatus, and JAKIGAN MEISTER is the name under which he is currently pursuing solo activities.

  9. 9.

    The original word chuunibyou has its origins it manga/anime culture and but is now also widely used as a trope to describe a number of fan/subculture know-it-all and better than you type personalities (Saegami 2008). In terms of music fandom, a phrase that is thought to capture chuunibyou-ness is ‘I was so into that band before everyone else was’.

  10. 10.

    Sakito has elsewhere revealed that the name was also chosen as it shared the same initials as the Fender Jazzmaster, a guitar he likes (ROCK AND READ 72 2017).

  11. 11.

    ‘Band boom’ is a term used in Japan to refer to periods in which playing in a band or band format music, mainly rock, becomes popular (Minamida 2001; Stevens 2008).

  12. 12.

    This concept is an approach to the ‘active, embodied practices involved in making sound meaningful’ (Hankins and Stevens 2014, p. 2) and while this includes the actual production and reception of sound, it is in interactions that sound comes to have a relational meaning, ‘through on going practices of contextualization that produce sounds as well as the social and special contexts in which they come to have signification’ (2). Significance is never simply an effect of audition, nor is it universally channelled or received; thus the concept ‘necessitates an examination of the production of social and special relations alongside any examination of the production of sound’ (3)

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  1. Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

    Mira Malick

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  1. Mira Malick
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Correspondence to Mira Malick .

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  1. Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK

    Brett Lashua , Stephen Wagg , Karl Spracklen  & M. Selim Yavuz , ,  & 

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Malick, M. (2019). Elusively Ubiquitous: Issues with the Application of Hybridity in Visual Kei. In: Lashua, B., Wagg, S., Spracklen, K., Yavuz, M.S. (eds) Sounds and the City. Leisure Studies in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94081-6_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94081-6_9

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