Visual Kei in Japan

Visual kei is a Japanese music genre where the visual style is very important. It is based on, for example, American glamrock, but contrary to that genre visual kei is still listened to frequently, both in and outside Japan. What exactly is visual kei and what makes it so special? And how popular is it?

Visual kei

Visual kei is a music genre from Japan, but based on American glamrock, such as KISS. Two of the first visual kei bands were X Japan and Luna Sea. What characterises them are the clothing (often very extravagant, sometimes colourful, sometimes dark, sometimes with feathers or glitter, etcetera), hairstyle and make-up (the more visual a band is, the more make-up they wear; this usually changes the more popular they become). Although visual kei definitely plays a role in Japanese society, many Japanese people don't know it or look down on it. In Harajuku in Tokyo you can often see cosplayers walking around, who, apart from anime characters, can also imitate visual kei artists. A cosplayer is someone who copies someone else's entire look: the outfit, the hair and the make-up, sometimes even with props.

This genre actually has an entirely own culture and it is often relatively easy to recognise fans or artists. The shows often contain special things as well: fake blood can be used, there can be vampire-like scenes and fire, to name a few. In music videos this is often even more extreme and these are rarely aired on channels such as MTV, because sometimes they are too explicit or contain too much gore.

Music

The music itself differs greatly per band and sometimes even within a band. Much of the music that is produced is rock and/or metal, but sometimes songs sound more like pop or hiphop. However, it is often fairly heavy music, or at least heavier than "normal" pop. For real Jpop it is better to listen to artists such as KAT-TUN, Gackt, Ayumi Hamasaki and Koda Kumi.

The lyrics are often about sex, death, the world, pain, love (but are more likely to be about a broken heart than being happy), etcetera. Not all texts are dark and some bands write happier music, especially if they fall under the oshare kei branch of visual kei. Oshare kei also has more colour than visual kei does and their music often sounds more positive - although of course this isn't necessary. Actual visual kei bands sometimes also have optimistic songs, but generally speaking the somewhat dark and sad part of life is described.

Popularity

As has been said above, visual kei is not very popular in Japan. Yet, it has its own little world. There are several magazines which pay attention to the genre, such as Fool's Mate and Rock&Read, and the magazines Shoxx and Cure are actually entirely aimed at visual kei. Visual kei artists also appear in the Oricon Charts at times (an important list of most-sold CDs) and are sometimes asked to write songs for popular anime series. For example, Nightmare did a song for Death Note, the GazettE for Black Butler 2 and Sadie for Togainu no Chi. Once in a while they also appear on soundtracks of films. The band MUCC even wrote a song for Cloverfield.

CDs and concert DVDs sell reasonably well - if this wasn't the case, the bands would fast disappear. Indies bands sometimes do need to disband, but if visual kei knew no popularity whatsoever, no band could make money from it. Concerts don't do badly either. Several visual kei bands have performed in Nippon Budokan and Tokyo Dome, the latter of which has received famous international artists like Bon Jovi and Mariah Carey, while the Beatles and KISS held their first Japanese concerts in Budokan. Other than that they mostly perform in smaller venues which hold a few hundred people at the most.

One thing's for sure: it will never be mainstream, not in Japan and not in the rest of the world. Visual kei artists also often don't have the best reputation: many of them smoke and drink, have piercings and/or tattoos and never finished school. Then there's the fact that they look very androgynous, which they often use in their image; not everyone sees this as something positive.

Bands

There are many visual kei bands and artists, but here is a short list of several names who all sound very different from each other:

• Miyavi. A solo artist who used to produce heavier music, but now often takes a quieter or happier route. He has metal, rock, pop and hiphop songs.
• the GazettE. One of the biggest visual kei bands at the moment. Their music can be called rock or metal, but there are also plenty of ballads in their repertoire.
• Alice Nine. They used to have some metal songs, now they seem to be heading into the oshare direction.
• Kagrra,. This band already broke up, but they had a more traditional Japanese sound.
• SuG. They describe themselves as "heavy positive rock".
• Malice Mizer. They don't really exist anymore either, but when they did, they made gothic music. Gackt, who was mentioned above as a Jpop artist, was one of the singers in this band.
• exist†trace. A band with only women. Their music is quite heavy.
• 9GOATS BLACK OUT. A band with a more mellow sound.
• Kiyoharu. A solo artist who, apart from this project, has two other bands as well: Kuroyume and SADS. Every project's music sounds very different from the rest.
• Sadie. Is often compared to the relatively well-known band Dir en grey, but although Dir en grey can no longer be classed as visual kei, Sadie can. This is a real metal band.

Visual kei in the west

There are also people in the west who listen to visual kei and there are concerts regularly. Usually the venues hold no more than 2000 to 3000 people at the most; often even only a few hundred. Yet they are sometimes completely sold out and some concerts are even moved to larger venues. On the other hand, it also happens occasionally that concerts are cancelled because they didn't sell enough tickes. Yet there are people all over the world who listen to this music and the fans often greet the bands very enthusiastically.

Some bands have fan clubs which accept foreign fans too, and CLJ Records (a German record label) works together with several Japanese bands and regularly releases CDs and DVDs. These can also appear in places like Amazon and such.

There are also visual kei bands and artists in the west. A famous one is Marilyn Manson, who might not have intended it this way, but is seen as visual by Japanese people. He even performed at the V-Rock Festival in 2009, where only visual kei and rock music was played. He was the only non-Japanese artist here.

Sources: www.todio.nl