Bikkuri Project

I, like many of you, am interested in the topic of JPop in America, but perhaps on a much smaller and more personal level than the debates that fill the h!p blogs now-a-days. I’m not trying to bring the entire h!p troupe to America. I just want some of my friends and family to give Jpop a chance. I want someone who I can talk with about the music I’m interested in, or, failing that, for people not to freak out and get annoyed at me if I try to play it in my own car when I’m driving with them. How to go about this though? My attempts so far have been met with very little success.

My friends know that I like Japanese music. It’s somewhat of a joke among them though. I’ve tried various strategies, from intentionally asking them to listen to something to “accidentally” happening to have a song playing when they come to visit, to even showing pictures of some idols and asking if they think they’re cute. Any serious attempt to get them to listen to something is met with laughter and fond shakes of the head. “Accidentally” playing things is largely ignored. Usually, my friends will admit that the people in the pictures are attractive, but upon learning that they are Jpop singers they immediately lose interest.

My boyfriend despises Japanese music, though he has heard almost none of it. If I try to play a song when he’s around, he will leave the room. If I so much as sing a line from a Japanese song he’ll get angry and say something like, “You know I hate that Japanese crap!” He’s definitely a lost cause as far as making a fan of him, so my goal really is to get him to tolerate at least the most normal-sounding songs in my collection. Since he’s the person I’m with the most, it really bothers me that I can’t listen to the music I like when I’m around him. His main complaints are that ‘it all sounds the same’ and ‘the singing is whiney’. It’s sooo frustrating, because of course we know that it does NOT all sound the same, but it’s hard to get a feel for that when all you’ve heard is a few seconds of a couple of songs that you’ve already made up your mind to hate, right?

My family isn’t much better. My Mom often asks, “are you still listening to that Chinese anime music?” Yes mom, if you mean real, non-animated people singing in Japanese, then yes. Sigh.

Why is it so hard to get people to even give JPop a serious chance? I’ve tried a wide variety of songs on a wide variety of audiences, but no one will take me seriously. All I can think of is to blame the anime. A lot of the Jpop that gets introduced to the US comes via theme songs to animes. Unfortunately, anime holds a major stigma here, with the anime nerds being akin to slime mold on the social hierarchy. I’m not trying to insult people who like anime, and I think It’s a shame they are looked at like that, but please spare the Jpop! It’s really something entirely different. People who are obsessed with anime are looked on as kind of weird in Japan too, but everyone listens to some sort of music, including the cool people. I’m a big believer in trying new things, and to see people blowing off an entire country worth of music due to the negative social connotations of its cartoons kind of infuriates me. I really do believe that if people would give Jpop an honest chance that many of them would find something that they like.

That right there is really the heart of the problem with bringing Jpop to America. It has been labeled ‘uncool’ before it even had a chance here due to the anime that has come before. It’s such a shame, but I’m in the camp that doesn’t believe that h!p or Jpop in general could become popular in America any time soon. It’s not that the actual music would not be appealing to people, or even that the language barrier would stop people from listening (Latin music). Much like your average Japanese person won’t take Morning Musume seriously because they think their fans are weird/gross, the average American won’t take Jpop seriously because they also think its fans are weird/gross. If admitting that you like Morning Musume is going to lump you in with the otaku and you’re not someone who wants to embrace that label, you’re going to be damn sure to steer clear of Morning Musume, right? I’m not an anthropologist or a sociologist, or whatever ologist that this problem would be contemplated by, so I don’t really know how such trends can be turned around or how to change the way one entire culture looks at something. It must be possible. Things do go in and out of style, but what is the driving force behind such change, and how may it be applied to Jpop?

Coming back to my personal dilemma, if I can’t sway the view of an entire culture, do any of you have any tips on how to change the mind of a single person? How can I get my friends/family to give h!p, and Jpop in general, an honest chance? Have any of you had any success in that?