The Japanese have been making reggae almost as long as Jamaicans have been exporting it. This phenomenon could have started as early as the mid-’70s, when the film “The Harder They Come” grafted the crime drama to Kingston’s reggae scene and became an international cult classic. Or, more likely, it began sometime around 1979, when Bob Marley landed for the first time in the Land of the Rising Sun. Since then, the reggae scene in Japan has cycled through several styles and sub-subcultures, but only in recent years has one crucial aspect of its identity fully emerged: Finally, Japanese reggae stars are singing in Japanese.
These days, the Japanese reggae scene is more rude boy than rasta. A vibrant roots reggae scene flourished in beginning in the mid-’80s, but ebbed about a decade later. And there’s still a population of spiritual, ganja-smoking disciples of the Rastafari religion; they live mostly in Japan’s rural communities. But the scene is now dominated by dancehall the pulsing, sweaty variant of the genre that centers on the D.J. clusters known as “sound systems.”
The current dancehall boom aligns with the success of Japanese performers abroad. Yokohama’s Mighty Crown won a 1999 sound system competition a “sound clash” in New York; the group now plays to tens of thousands in Jamaica, New York and hubs of the Jamaican diaspora in Canada and Germany. And in 2002, the Japanese reggae dancer Junko Kudo became the first non-Jamaican to win the Dancehall Queen contest in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Now, the largest contingent of international contestants there is Japanese. Kudo’s uniform has become something of a blueprint for Japanese reggae dancers: gold dreads, “Daisy Duke” cutoff shorts, knee-high socks.
Source:New York Times Magazine