The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Abstract

Abstract Japan is a difficult place to express antinuclear views: Much of the media avoids antinuclear viewpoints, and the culture discourages controversial opinions. Drawing from the author's ethnography since 2011 and interviews with key musicians and activists, this book examines the structures that inhibit political expression, and how musicians work within or usurp the constraints of performance spaces. While American musicians regularly attract publicity to their political causes, Japanese musicians are discouraged from engaging in politics, particularly concerning antinuclear issues. The four spaces of political music performance—cyberspace, demonstrations, festivals, and recordings—are analyzed as conceived and lived spaces (cf. Lefebvre) marked by hegemonic constraints and opportunities. The four spaces encourage different modes of participation and methods of political messaging. Cyberspace, particularly under anonymity, has helped Japanese to overcome the spiral of silence, but it has also enforced it. The "sound demonstration," featuring musicians on top of trucks rolling along ahead of protesters, has evolved in performance style. The urban landscape and soundscape impact the performance and reception of protests, as analyzed in walk-throughs of demonstrations. Political music festivals range between two types of communication approaches: informational, where arguments are presented, or experiential, where an immersive environment opens one's mind to different points of view. On commercial recordings, which are industry-censored, major-label musicians rely on allegories, metaphors (textual and musical), metonyms, and purposeful misplacement of words. These patterns have carried over into movements against the Secrecy Law and remilitarization.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 54 citations exist upstream.