Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the lyricist Matsumoto Takashi's career as an example of the transmedial extension of author personae in the popular music industry during the era of New Music. I show how Matsumoto's authorial self-staging benefited from his systematic use of both musical and literary paratexts.

Paper long abstract:

The lyricist, drummer and writer Matsumoto Takashi 松本隆 is widely considered one of the more important Japanese pop music artists of the 1970s and 1980s. This paper discusses and contextualizes the then-innovative transmedial techniques that have allowed Matsumoto to exert a lasting influence on the Japanese popular music scene.

I contend that Matsumoto's mastery of intermedial and autofictional literary practices contributed to his success. I apply Genette's (1997) theory of the paratext to analyse Matsumoto's contributions to several rock/pop albums and a selection of related written publications. The analysis sheds an exemplary light on the various textual instruments that music artists in 1970s and 1980s Japan have employed to extend their role as authors: peritextual forms, such as lyrics sheets and jacket designs, and epitextual publications ranging from essays, short stories and poetry to autobiographical novels. I first show how Matsumoto employs these paratexts to divorce himself from the supporting role conventionally assumed by lyricists within the division-of-labor framework of the music industry and become visible as an author. The second function of the paratextual forms examined in this paper is the continuous reinterpretation and recontextualisation of musical productions, allowing Matsumoto to construct an author persona for his song lyrics and continually adapt this persona to changes in the zeitgeist.

His career can thus also be read as an example of the transformation which the Japanese popular music scene underwent from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and which is exemplified in the rise of New Music (nyū myūjikku ニュー・ミュージック). This transformation combines a growing respect accorded to musicians as authentic artists and independent authors with a simultaneously growing pressure to invent new forms of self-staging, as the same artists see themselves confronted with the need to function as auto-entrepreneurs.