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J-Pop and performances of young female identity

Music, gender and urban space in Tokyo

Csaba Toth received his PhD from the University of Minnesota, and is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Toth's scholarly interests include social movements, production of gender, girl cultures, politics of sound, urban history, and pedagogy. His writings have been published by The M.I.T. Press, St. Martin's Press, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He was a guest professor of American Studies in Japan (1998–2000), lectured in Australia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Georgia, and Sweden, and has been the recipient of several major grants and awards (Fulbright Senior Lecturer, NEH, Newberry, George Soros Foundation, DAAD, Wise-Susman Prize). Toth co-teaches with Katie Hogan the seminar ‘Girl Cultures’. Address: History Department, Carlow University, 3333 Fifth Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA. [email: tealeaf_toth{at}yahoo.com]

This article examines the staging of sexuality and femininity in Japan Pop (J-Pop) and its related club-cultural scenes. While historical research on many aspects of gender in Japan has been extensive, the relationship between popular music culture, gender, and urban space has been given little recognition. Based on extensive field research in Japan, the article provides an analysis of not only how present-day female stars, Ayumi Hamasaki, Shina Ringo and Misia reproduce and enact prescribed gender and sexual roles, but also reveals how, in many instances, they transgress those. These female performers managed to carve out a representational space by highlighting girl themes that energized girl solidarity, and held up the possibility for rearticulating young femininity. They represent different angles of Tokyo's current music and style scenes, and cultural geography. These are scenes and geographies shaped by and inseparable from urban markers that female fans follow night after night in Tokyo in order to reach clubs playing the music of their favorite stars. Girls’ active engagement in clubs with commercialized media texts that J-Pop performers produce assists them with the development of their identity and formation of relationships with other young females. The study argues that from trans-ethnic ‘white’-style scenes, ‘black’ soul, and rhythm and blues (R&B)-oriented clubs in Shibuya to Shinjuku's ‘seedy’ disco bars, young women explore possibilities for new ethnic (trans-Asian, ‘Asian black’), gender and sexual, and generational identities. The essay hopes to contribute to applied, transnational gender and cultural studies as well as music criticism.

Key Words: cultural geography • ethnicity • gender • girl studies • J-Pop • Japan • popular music

Young, Vol. 16, No. 2, 111-129 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/110330880801600201


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