Japanoise

Japanoise
Keiji Haino (top), Merzbow (bottom left), and Yamantaka Eye (bottom right)
Stylistic originsNoise music
Cultural originsLate 1970s, Japanese underground; height of popularity in late 1980s and 1990s
Derivative forms
Fusion genres
Other topics
Post-industrial music

Japanoise (ジャパノイズ, Japanoizu), a portmanteau of "Japanese" and "noise", is the noise music scene of Japan.[1][2]

Nick Cain of The Wire identifies the "primacy of Japanese Noise artists like Merzbow, Hijokaidan and Incapacitants as one of the major developments in noise music since 1990.[3]

Certain Japanese noise artists themselves feel uncomfortable being categorized under the umbrella of "Japanese noise", arguing that use of the term is a way of ignoring the differences between musicians who don't necessarily follow the same approach or even know each other at all.[4]

  1. ^ David Novak, Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation, Duke University Press. 2013
  2. ^ Nancy Kilpatrick, The Goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined, New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2004, chapter 5, "Music of the Macabre," p. 86.
  3. ^ Nick Cain, "Noise", The Wire Primers: A Guide to Modern Music, Rob Young, ed., London: Verso, 2009, p. 29.
  4. ^ Toshiji Mikawa, "日本のノイズを語る", G-Modern, 1994. http://japanoise.net/j/incapa15.htm Archived 2009-06-07 at the Wayback Machine