The genre that defined optimism for a decade and a half prior was no longer needed. Times were getting rougher, money was tighter, and hopes diminished. A style that, along with Japan’s prosperity in the early 1990s, was lost to the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble as people lost hope and joy. Music journalist Yutaka Kimura described the genre as “urban pop music for those with urban lifestyles,” a once thought everlasting soundtrack for the once thought eternal economic rise of Japan. City Pop was the pop music of the late 1970s and 1980s that complemented the optimism, joy, and fun that Japan was riding high on. A feel-good, exciting flavour of funk, pop, disco, and soul blended into some smooth, jazzy Japanese vocals. A genre that defined a generation of Japan’s urban population. It was this optimism that birthed the gaudy, poppy, peppy, and funky genre of City Pop, シティーポップ, shitī poppu. Disposable income was at a high and spending lavishly, and in excess on clothes, liquor, food, art, and travel was becoming the norm of the metropolitan Japanese public. Sony Walkman, Cassette Tapes, VHS, Video Games, Automobiles, Radio, TV, Infrastructure and Buildings, Japan, was being pushed ahead of the pack due to its economic and technological boom.Ī rapidly urbanising and westernising population was eager to spend they were euphoric and wanting to celebrate. American influence was at an all-time high, instead of the military, money funneled into technology. Born within the boom of late 1970’s Japan, after shaking off the devastation and disease of WW2, Japan was experiencing a technological and economic renaissance.
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