Abstract

In this paper I analyse discourses on World Music in Japan, highlightning how the predominantly "Western" phenomenon of World Music was appropriated accordingly to the socio-cultural conditions in late 80's and early '90s Japan, and how "Japaneseness" was imagined and articulated within those discourses. "World Music" in its Western sense is understood as based on old dichotomy between "the West and the Rest", in Japan, however, some critics regarded it as "liberated attitude" based on cultural relativism toward all musics around the world, and as a clue to counter the supremacy of Western music in modern Japan and to empower "authentic" Japanese popular music in modern Japan based on its "tradition". Arguing that this search for "traditional" or "Japaneseness" is an amalgam of such factors as follows: the "myth" of rock seeking for "popular roots"; ethnomusicological thought; self-Orientalistic internalization of "exotic" image of Japan made by Westerners, and Orientalistic view toward "Okinawaa" and "Asia as Japan's periphery"; I would conclude this attempt is understood as "Occidentalism" which is to utilize imaginary difference from "the West" to slogan "internationalization of Japanese culture" then prevalent within the context of "Bubble" economics