Japanese popular culture has been steadily increasing in visibility both in Asia and beyond in recent years. This book examines Japanese popular music, exploring its historical development, technology, business and production aspects, audiences, and language and culture.

Based both on extensive textual and aural analysis, and on anthropological fieldwork, it provides a wealth of detail, finding differences as well as similarities between the Japanese and Western pop music scenes. Carolyn Stevens shows how Japanese popular music has responded over time to Japan's relationship to the...