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Paper short abstract

This paper examines “world music” as a framework shaping modes of listening in Japan since the 1980s. Focusing on Ainu musician OKI, it traces shifts in how vernacular music is framed in the Western-influenced Japanese popular music industry, from exoticised authenticity to reflexive recomposition.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines 'world music' in Japan as a cultural framework through which vernacular musics have been classified, performed, and reconfigured from the 1980s to the present. Rather than treating world music as a transient boom or a stable genre, the paper approaches it as historically situated modes of listening and representation whose effects continue to shape contemporary musical practices.

Japan’s engagement with world music developed within a distinctive historical and geopolitical context, informed by Western Orientalism, imperial hierarchies, and its ambivalent self-positioning between 'the West' and 'Asia'. For Japanese audiences long accustomed to Western classical and popular music since the modern period, world music provided a framework through which musics marginalised in the Western mainstream, including Japanese music, could be heard as 'exotic'. Japanese folk songs, ritual and religious music, and contemporary performances using traditional instruments were juxtaposed and staged within a global soundscape, with music festivals playing a crucial role in mediating live encounters with perceived cultural differences. While the category of world music facilitated the circulation and recognition of diverse musical practices, it also reproduced asymmetrical relations of authenticity, exoticism, and cultural authority. These tensions did not dissipate with the decline of the boom but instead informed subsequent transformations in musical practices and reception.

Focusing on developments from the boom period to the present, the paper highlights a shift from labelling towards reworking and recomposition. To illustrate this argument, the paper examines the case of OKI, an Ainu musician active from the world music boom to the present, showing how earlier framings that emphasised ethnic authenticity within world music circuits have given way to more reflexive engagements foregrounding mediation, authorship, and contemporary creativity.

By tracing these trajectories, the paper posits that world music in Japan should be understood not as a concluded historical episode but as an evolving cultural framework. In this respect, the paper contributes to Japanese studies by situating world music within the context of Japan’s postwar cultural history. It demonstrates how global musical categories were selectively appropriated, institutionalised, and reworked within Japan’s specific social and cultural conditions.