Moritz Sommet, University of Fribourg

Japanese City Pop Abroad

Findings from an online music community survey
Executive summary

Fribourg, Switzerland
February 2021

To cite this document:

music community survey. Fribourg, CH, 2021.
Table of contents
Research topic and questions 2
Survey outline 3
Main findings 4
Demog raphics 4
Listening patter ns and mod es of musical engagemen t 6
Popular City Pop artists 8
Nostalgia, escapism, Japan: the meaning of 'City Pop' abroad 10
Conclusions and further research 14
Bibliography 15
Discography 16

1
Research topic and questions
City Pop is a loosely defined musical genre that first emerged in Japan in the late 1970s. It combines various
styles of Western popular music, such as funk, soul, disco, fusion, boogie, or rock, with Japanese-language
lyrics and a set of visual and textual motifs that reflects the rise of a transnational, urban consumer and
leisure culture in 1980s Japan. Having undergone several recontextualizations and r evivals in its country of

1
disco tune Plastic Love (1985) have
accumulated many millions of views among them between 2016 and 2021 (Calkins 2019), and Miki
Mayonaka no Door - Stay With Me (1979) has climbed to the top of the viral charts
of music streaming service Spotify in late 2020 (Matsunaga 2020).

late 2020, a dozen fan communities on Facebook and Reddit have amassed a combined following of over
60,000 members. At first sight, the community make-up, the aesthetic themes and the listening practices
prevalent among City Pop fans appear to share some similarities with ot her recently emerged Internet-
mediated music genres, such as Vaporwave (Schembri/Tichbon 2017), or Lo -fi Hip Hop (Winston/Saywood
2019). Yet we know little about this community. Who are these fans? How do they engage with the music,
and with each other? Given the contested definition of City Pop in Japan proper, how do foreign fans
characterize City Pop? What does the music mean to them, and how do they engage with Japanese culture?

As a first step towards answering these questions, we conducted an online s urvey among members of the
largest Internet-based City Pop fan communities. In spite of their culturally and geographically diverse
backgrounds, respondents (n = 575) share a clearly defined image of the genre that diverges in some aspects
from common Japa
international City Pop community skews young and male but has strong transnational characteristics, (2)
City Pop in this context is an Internet-based genre largely focused on online activities while allowing for a
wide range of musical tastes and activities, and (3) the community overlaps with other international fandoms
based on Japanese popular culture. Results also show that (4) City Pop is strongly identified with themes of

1980s Japan, these themes appear to find a more specific and clearly defined expression in this community
than in adjacent Internet-based genres.

1
To avoid confusion, all Japanese names are written in the order of English names, i.e. the given name comes first
and the surname second. The transliteration follows the Hepburn system, except in cases where there exists an

2
Survey outline
The online survey was conducted between December 6 and December 23, 2020. It was advertised in the
most prominent City Pop fan forums on Facebook and Reddit. Most participants were a self -selected sample
of members of these communities. Overall, 575 respondents participated in the survey (398 full and 177
partial responses).

Platform Group name Total membership*

Facebook • Ｃｉｔｙ Ｐｏｐ ／ シティ・ポップ Ca. 30,000

• CITYPOP - Japanese 70s / 80s Disco & Pop
• City Pop / Japanese Synth / Jazz Fusion / Funk / Soul
• others

Reddit • Japanese City Pop: 1980s urban driving music Ca. 30,000
• True CityPop -- Just mellow music

* as of December 2020

Methodological limitations

• Online community surveys typically suffer from self-selection bias. The survey is not representative
of City Pop listeners in general, but likely overrepresents the most engaged and enthusiastic part of
that audience: people who are active participants in online communities about the genre and feel
more deeply about it than casual listeners.
• The questionnaire was in English, and the survey was only advertised in online groups that have
English as their main language. There are several City Pop online fan groups on e.g. Facebook that
use languages such as Thai or Indonesian; speakers of these languages are likely not adequately
represented in survey results.
• Our survey tries to capture an online community that is both still young and highly dynamic. The
biggest Facebook group on City Pop went from a few hundred to almost 20,000 members in the
space of two years. Results should be considered a snapshot of the Internet -based community as it
existed in late 2020.

3
Main findings
Demographics
City Pop fans sk ew young and male

Among all respondents, men outnumber

women 3:1. Half of the respondents are
students, the rest mostly young professionals
with a college or university degree. The young
age of most respondents contrasts with Japan,
where many City Pop fans are in the over-50 age
group and remember the music from their
youth. In the context of the international online
scene, City Pop is a recent genre: almost one
quarter of survey respondents first encountered
City Pop in 2020, and another 57% over the last 2 to 5 years. Only 0.5% of respondents know of the music
since the 1980s or earlier.

Memories of City Pop among A sian respondents

Several respondents from Asian countries, however, told us that they remembered City Pop or similar
musical styles from their childhood. spondents as a modern
umbrella term for Pop Kreatif (Creative Pop), a musical style that originally incorporated elements of
Progressive Rock and Jazz Fusion and was first popularized in the late 1970s and early 1980s by young
members of the Jakarta upper class, and Pop Urban, a contemporary stream of Indonesian pop music with
an urban feeling. 2 While these musical styles do not stand in a genealogical relationship with Japanese City
Pop, the answers cited above point to parallel
developments in the reception of Western
popular music across Asia in the 20th century
“I realise I’ve been listening to Indonesian that may play a role in the reception of City
City Pop since the 80s” Pop today.

“City pop is a music in my country [Indonesia] history of covering Japanese hit songs in
known as urban pop or creative pop” Cantonese, a trend that peaked during the
second half of the 1980s; the Hong Kong
“My mom was playing it every day since I audience was also directly exposed to the
was born, we lived in hk [Hong Kong]” Japanese pop when Japanese musicians
toured the city during the early 1980s (cf. Yau

2
(Research Fellow, National Museum of Ethnology) for
his advice on the topic of Indonesian pop music.

4
2012: 331-338, Chu/Leung 2013: 67-69). While Hong Kongers listened not just to

The community is both internationally diverse and transnational

Although the questionnaire was in English and

advertised only in anglophone web communities,
more than half of respondents were from non-
English speaking countries. The most strongly
represented regions are North America, Asia
and Europe. The most strongly represented
country is the USA (35%), followed by the
Philippines (9%), Canada (6%), Indonesia (4%),
Mexico (4%), and the UK (4%). While Southeast
Asian countries are well represented, East Asian
nations are much less so. 1% of respondents live
in Japan, 0.75% in Viet Nam, 0.5% in Taiwan,
0.5% in Mongolia, 0.25% in Mainland China,
none in South Korea.

Interestingly, in spite of the diverse backgrounds of respondents, the data shows few region -dependent
differences in answer patterns. Asian fans are just a
ones, and just as likely to use YouTube, watch anime, or listen to Vaporwave.

5
Listening patterns and modes of musical engagement
The community is heavily Internet -based

More than two thirds of respondents

first encountered City Pop through
“I was introduced to City Pop through Youtube's
YouTube. 44% list Mariya Takeuchi as
Recommendation algorithm. I was really into
vaporwave and it's danceable subgenre, Future the first City Pop artist they ever
Funk, which relies on sampling from City Pop. encountered, and not a few
One day, Youtube recommended Plastic Love and respondents specified unprompted
the rest is history.” that Plastic Love was the first City Pop
song they ever listened to. These

algorithm triggered the recent City Pop boom by exposing Western audiences to a remix of Mariya
Plastic Love
that have caused fans to discover City Pop. Another gateway to City Pop specified by some respondents are
Future Funk or Vaporwave mixes. More than half of respondents indicated that they listen to music from one
or both of these genres.

Answers to questions on listening habits and fan activity indicate little spillover into offline spaces.
Respondents overwhelmingly use YouTube (90%), music streaming services (65%) or downloaded music
files (49%) to listen to City Pop. Only 6% have ever attended an offline City Pop event, and only 2% have
ever seen a City Pop artist live in concert.

There is, however, a core of dedicated fans who identify as collectors of physical media such as vinyl (12%)
or who are part of an offline fan community (2.5%). One respondent from the USA told us:

attracted twice as many people each month, and on the third month I had around 75 folks. An entire crew of
people that run a Vaporwave and Future Funk party about 2 hours away came by, and several local
Japanese-Americans came by to check it out as well. We were about to blow it up into a collaborative effort
when the quarantine hit. I think if things go back to "normal" again, City Pop has a bright future in Western
society.

The most important online platforms for fan communities are Reddit (56% of respondents are par t of a
Reddit City Pop fan community) and Facebook (50%). YouTube channels (35%) and Discord (14%) also play
a role. Most fans are relatively passive within these online communities. 20% use them either daily or several
-themed Internet memes are very popular on these
forums. 59% of respondents like memes, while 7% have created one or more themselves. Only 4% told us
that they dislike them.

6
City Pop fans listen to a w ide variety of music

On average, respondents say that their music consumption consists of 40% City Pop and 60% other musical
styles. Many other Japanese genres besides City Pop are popular: Out of the 70% of fans who are interested
in other music from Japan, most listen to mainstream J-Pop (54%), Japanese Jazz/Fusion (55%), Indie
(43%), or J-Rock (34%). A still remarkable 12% told us that they listen to traditional styles such as
or gagaku . As for non-Japanese or transnational genres, 83% of respondents indicated that they listen to
1970s/80s music from Western countries that is similar to City Pop. As me ntioned above, Internet-based
microgenres Vaporwave (53%) and Future Funk (54%) are also popular. Retro music from other Asian
countries (33%) is slightly more popular than contemporary K -Pop (31%).

“Listening to my first City Pop song got me into the world of Japanese music
as well, a whirlwind of a journey that has expanded my tastes considerably,
and not just in Japanese either. From City Pop, I also explored the Western
music that inspired it, the music it was imitating, such as French chansons,
the Motown sound, and the 60s British pop/rock music. It's difficult to
imagine how my musical tastes would look without City Pop.”

Many respondents cited the high musical quality of City Pop — melodic sophistication, technical musicianship
or high production values — as reasons why they liked the genre. Several people also wrote that City Pop has
served them as a gateway to discovering other music. Fans also actively engage in a variety of musical
activities. 28% have played City Pop songs themselves, while 6% have composed music inspired by City Pop,
or used City Pop samples in their own music.

7
Popular City Pop artists
When asked about their three favorite City Pop artists and bands, respondents named 140 different acts.
The table below lists the 20 most frequently cited artists and bands and the percentage of the overall vote
they received:

# Name % of votes # Name % of votes

1 17.57% 11 Junko Yagami 1.94%

2 Anri 12.15% 12 Akina Nakamori 1.62%

3 Mariya Takeuchi 9.39% 13= Tomoko Aran 1.30%

4 Toshiki Kadomatsu 6.15% 13= Kiyotaka Sugiyama* 1.30%

5 Miki Matsubara 5.59% 15 1.21%

6 Taeko Ohnuki 5.51% 16 Takako Mamiya 1.13%

7 4.37% 17= Casiopea 0.97%

8 Momoko Kikuchi 2.51% 17= Kiyotaka Sugiyama & 0.97%

Omega Tribe*

9 Meiko Nakahara 2.27% 18= Cindy 0.89%

10 Omega Tribe* 2.02% 18= Haruomi Hosono 0.89%

* For reasons of internal consistency, we elected not to group votes for solo artists and the bands they have
been a member of. Other than Kiyotaka Sugiyama and Omega Tribe, this concerns artists such as Haruomi
Hosono (Yellow Magic Orchestra, 0.40%) or Momoko Kikuchi (RAMU, 0.24%).

8
Notes on the ranking

• Female artists (61%) received significantly more votes than male ones (39%).
• 98% of votes went to Japanese artists, 2% to artists from other countri es (mostly South
Korea, USA).
• There was relatively little variation in voting patterns between male and female fans, or fans
from different countries.

Most artists represented in the ranking are typically associated with City Pop in Japan and have frequently
been featured in the many Japanese guidebooks and music press articles on the genre that have been
published since the early 2000s. There appears to be a shared basic unders tanding of which artists are to

votes are concentrated among the five most popular artists also speaks to a clear -cut and fairly orthodox
image of the genre.

Some results, however, stand out. From a Japanese perspective, the popularity of Anri, a singer who has
had her biggest commercial success in Japan only from the late 1980s onward, is remarkable. Cindy is
another artist who is relatively little known in Japan, but surprisingly popular abroad. Conversely, there are
several prominent artists and bands who are commonly associated with City Pop in Japan but received zero
votes in the survey. These include both veterans of the 1970s music scene such as Yo

like Akira Terao, Masamichi Sugi, and Tatsuhiko Yamamoto.

Notably, the former members of the Folk-Rock band Happy End obtained relatively few votes. While
Haruomi Hosono is popular, Eiichi Ohtaki received 0.24% and Shigeru Suzuki only 0.08% of the vote. With

scene associated with Happy End are not very popular either. These results may appear surprising to a

common to trace the origins of the genre back to the band, its forme r members, and a handful of artists
closely linked to them (Sommet 2020: 23-29). This disconnect may have to do with the fact that international
respondents overwhelmingly associate City Pop with the 1980s (89%) rather than the 1970s (5%). It is
unlikely that the band and its members are simply not well known enough; there are English press articles
that relate Happy End to City Pop history (cf. Arcand/Goldner 2019), and it is easy to find Facebook or Reddit
posts about the band and its presumed importance. -Rock music,
-themed American Pop, falls somewhat outside the image of the genre abroad.

Neo City Pop artists from the 1990s and later also received relatively few votes. Only 2% of respond ents
associate City Pop primarily with the 1990s, and another 2% with the 2010s/2020s. Notable artists in this

Korea-based singer YUKIKA, and Mexican producer Macross 82-99 (0.32% each).

9
In order to get a clearer idea of the image of the genre among its international fans, we asked participants
to

# W ord Frequency % # W ord Frequency %

1 Nostalgia 11.32% 10 Night 1.79%

2 Funky 7.51% 11 Retro 1.68%

3 Japan 3.70% 12= Upbeat 1.57%

4= Summer 3.48% 12= Aesthetic 1.57%

4= Relaxing 3.48% 13 Jazzy 1.23%

5 80s 3.03% 14= Love 1.12%

6 Fun 2.47% 14= Smooth 1.12%

7 Groovy 2.24% 14= Urban 1.12%

8 Happiness 2.13% 14= City 1.12%

9 Chill 1.91% 15 Driving 1.01%

Orthographical variants and semantically adjacent terms were grouped together for this frequency ranking
(e.g., nostalgia and nostalgic both became Nostalgia ). In all, the ranking includes 255 distinct terms after
the semantic grouping. Some notable expressions that did not make it into the list of the 20 most frequent
terms include words like Disco (0.90%), Beach (0.78%), Bubble (0.78%), Tokyo (0.56%), Melancholy
(0.56%), Future (0.45%), and Luxury (0.34%).

10
 As the word frequency ranking
shows, City Pop is strongly
“City Pop provides me with such vivid mental associated with a specific visual
imagery. I personally don’t speak Japanese and so aesthetic
the artists could be singing about anything. But album art, its lyrics, and real or
based on everything else, I can’t disconnect City imagined listening situations: driving
Pop from scenes like “summertime coastline through a Japanese city at night, or
cruising in a convertible car” or “quiet late night relaxing at the beach in summer.
city street cruising”. It just feels like the best These motifs correspond to an
music to fit those scenes. City Pop is the imagery commonly associated with a
predominating genre I play when I drive to uni.” set of Japanese album and music
magazine covers from the 1980s that
has been linked to City Pop in Japan through a series of publications by music writers (cf. Kimura 2006,
2014). International City Pop fans adhere to this established visual canon while sometimes adding their own
twist. 3 In fact, the visual image of the genre that emerges from these keywords appears to be more clearly
defined than its musical qualities, whic

Another subgroup of keywords hints at the emotive impact of the genre. Many respondents told us that
listening to City Pop has affected them deeply on an emotional level. Several mentioned that the music has
helped them through a depression, or that it made being quarantined during the current Coronavirus
pandemic more bearable. City Pop is generally associated with positive feelings such

the Japan of the 1980s:

It reminds me of a time that I wasn't even alive for but wish that I had been. It makes me so nostal gic. Even
though I don't speak Japanese, you can feel the emotions. It really touches my heart and soul.

Fans are aware that this nostalgia for the Japan of the past is not grounded in their own lived experience
(with some exceptions in the case of respondents from Asia). Several respondents explicitly used terms like

of escaping the socio-economic problems of the present. In the words of one respondent,

It is true, and this isn't an original idea but i think it applies much to all of us millenial city pop fans to some
degree, that our present lacks the tools for us to really have a live that really fulfill us. It may be the shitty
economy, the poor future prospects that lie ahead us, but we are enchanted by the japanese 80s, an era of
freedom, personal liberty, breaking of social conventions, and opulence.

3
On the fan-made aesthetics of City Pop, see also this blog post by Van Paugam, a Chicago-based DJ who has been
active in popularizing the genre in the USA: https://www.vanpaugam.com/blog/2020/10/20/city-pop-aesthetics.

11
Another response also contemplates this escapist use of City Pop by Western audiences:

I've found some of my favorite music and artists because of it, so I'm thankful for that. I would say though that
a lot of the fandom for citypop reinforces this false narrative of japanese culture to western audiences that
doesn't necessarily reflect it authentically. Much like how western interpretations of 'otaku,' 'kawaii' and anime
culture aren't really what japan is all about. Rose-tinted glasses for the culture during japan's most prosperous
economic era. I read somewhere recently that 'yacht rock,' the umb rella term for Adult-oriented Radio (AOR)
and 'the California Sound,' was so popular during the 70's because people wanted to deliberately tune out the
implications of the Vietnam War and Nixon's scandals, and that the re -emergence of Yacht Rock is because of
a similar trend due to Donald Trump and the problems of the early 21st century. I think maybe citypop could
be understood through this lens too, but with the added nostalgia for 'Eastern obscurity' and early computer
technology. It's a weird genre. I almost wish there wasn't this emerging culture attached to it because the
music itself is so incredible for the most part.

As these answers indicate, many respondents reflect their own listening practices and are interested in
meta-musical narratives about the genre. The widespread interest in understanding City Pop lyrics also hints
that the genre is not simply used as background or driving music among all of its foreign fans. Of those
respondents who do not understand Japanese, more than 70% indicated that they at least sometimes look

Overlap w ith other Japanese popular culture fandoms

The results discussed above show that City Pop is heavily associated with Japan among its foreign fans, a
fact that finds confirmation in the answers to another survey question. Respondents asked to evaluate the
image of the genre on a scale from 1 (purely Japanese) to 5 (very international) tended to view City Pop as a
Japanese style of music (arithmetic mean = 2.56, standard deviation = 1.08).

12
 -Japanese fans - which might seem
ironic given that the genre originally projected a transnational, heavily Westernized image when it first
emerged in Japan.
Most respondents indicated that they are also
“It makes me nostalgic for the 1980’s, interested in other aspects of Japanese popular
when Japanese technology was cool.” culture. A solid majority of these watch anime
(79%), read manga (63%), and play Japanese
video games (71%). 55% of respondents listen to anison, i.e. songs associated with Japanese animated
films and TV series. Some respondents named products of Japanese popular culture as concrete object s of
reference for their nostalgic feelings, indicating that City Pop reminded them of Japan -made toys, video
games, or television series from their childhood. Fan-produced music videos with City Pop songs uploaded
to YouTube and shared on social media often employ scenes from 1980s and 1990s anime franchises like
Urusei Yatsura or Sailor Moon . This tendency, possibly an influence from Future Funk, contrasts with the
conventional image of City Pop in Japan, which used to have few points of contact with anim e fandom and
so-called otaku culture - even if some artists in the genre have produced music that has been used in
anime.
Finally, proficiency in the Japanese language is surprisingly high: one quarter of respondents indicated
that they speak at least enough Japanese to understand the lyrics to City Pop songs, while another 37%

once.

13
Conclusions and further research
The results from the survey at hand offer a first glimpse into the international City Pop fan community. This
fandom is internationally diverse, mostly male, and heavily Internet -based; most of its members are too

Similar to older forms of international J-

people connected through the Internet and common cultural tastes rather than a tight -
-
artists for the most part matches perceptions of the genre among Japanese listeners of domestic retro music,
while placing less emphasis on established narrati
the early 1970s and the band Happy End. International City Pop fans project their own image onto the music:
that of an economically prosperous 1980s Japan as a semi-exotic place of nostalgic longing and a means of
escaping the pressures of the present.

engagement that places City Pop on a spectrum with several other Internet -based musics of the 2010s:
Chillwave, Vaporwave, Future Funk, and Lo-fi Hip Hop. City Pop intersects with these genres in genealogical
terms: many Vaporwave and Future Funk artists have employed samples from old Japanese pop songs in
their music, and modern City Pop fandom can partly be explained as the effect of listeners seeking out the
roots of these older microgenres. At the same time, City Pop also appears to offer a more straight -forward
and more tangible artificially-nostalgic image than the aforementioned musical styles. It has a clearly

need for the filtering effects that Vaporwave uses to evoke irony and uncanniness (Tanner 2016,
Born/Haworth 2017) or simply laughter (Harper 2017), or that Lo-fi Hip Hop applies to its samples to
artificially age them in order to fictionalize the past (Winston/Saywood 2019: 44 -48). Hardcore City Pop fans
instead tend to hunt for the vinyl rip that most faithfully reproduces the original sound of the music, which

is the only filter that City Pop needs in order to function as artificial nostalgia for its modern aud ience. Future
qualitative research could expand on our results to further clarify the function of musical nostalgia in
connection with Internet technology and social media dynamics, both in the City Pop scene and across the
broader spectrum of contemporary online genres.

interesting insights. The specific retro-futuristic image of Japan that dominates the City Pop scene,
associated with consumer technology, with leisure culture, and the 1980s bubble economy, warrants
discussion in the context of the ongoing debate on techno-orientalism (cf. Roh/Huang/Niu 2015). At the
same time, the internationally diverse nature of the fan community needs to be taken into account. While it
appears that City Pop fandom forms a transnational continuum from the Asia -Pacific over the Americas to
Europe, more research is needed on non-Anglophone fan communities in e.g. Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan
or South Korea, and their intersections with regional musical scenes and inter-asian cultural flows.

14
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