The (Double) Fabricated Authenticity of Japanese Country & Western

This week for my independent study course with Dr. Jeremy Wallach, I read Richard A. Peterson's Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. This is a very interesting and unique read when it comes to the history of American country music as it specifically takes a look at the early formative days of the genre, from the 1920s to the mid 1950s, prior to the "Nashville-ization" of country music that begins to take place in the latter portion of the 1960s and definitely into the 1970s, which is how many of us remember the music genre today. Many of us are familiar with the narrative that the birth of American rock and roll is just a combination of country music (the "white side") and of blues, jazz, and R&B (the "black side"). However, an interesting thought is that while black music (and rock and roll, it can be argued) have always been extremely authentic music forms as they originally never reached commercial success (largely due to racism), country music was fabricated from the start. Even before the phonograph was making its way into homes, country music was used to advertise products and radio stations advertised their performers as "hillbillies" and country bumpkins when, in reality, singers would show up in their Sunday best to perform at barn dances, fiddling contests, and at other places.  

Peterson discusses the geographic dissonance between what "real" country music was and the imagery that it took on. While country music really derived from the folk music of individuals of Scots-Irish descent living in the Appalachian mountain range, we all know the image of the singing cowboy as inherently western and the image of country music has remained as such. While this is definitely confusing even within the confines of the United States, this "poetic escapism," as Peterson refers to it, of the popularity of the singing cowboy is even more complex across borders.

Appalachian folk music

versus

Singing cowboy star Gene Autry

Country music (often referred to as カントリー・アンド・ウエスタン ["country and western" / C&W]) became wildly popular in Japan. Kazuya Kosaka, who some (including myself) argue can be considered the first J-pop idol, started out as a country & western performer as did Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu who would later become a member of Japan's biggest Group Sounds band The Spiders, and of Vodka Collins. Receiving these fabricated images of not only American country music but of the American West as a whole as a land of singing cowboys, this influenced Japanese C&W. While some country & western ensembles half-jokingly referred to themselves as "hillbilly bands," they went fully with the western cowboy aesthetic.

Unfortunately, I do not know who this band is. If you have any information, please let me know!

Jimmie Tokita & His Mountain Playboys

ジミー時田と マウンティン・プレーボイズ

(a young Takeshi Teruachi is in this picture too, third from the right!)

While nothing can get quite as masculine as the image of the American cowboy, particularly as portrayed by individuals such as John Wayne, Hank Williams' more slender build lent better to Japanese C&W icons.

Hank Williams

Kazuya Kosaka - 小坂一也

While even by the late 1950s in America country music was beginning to be seen as "old fogey music," country & western was a symbol of modernity in Japan. Kazuya Kosaka appeared in many films but two of his appearances as a performer with his backing band The Wagon Masters stand out with their interpretations of country & western music in 1950s Japanese culture.

This video contains clips from two different movies from 1957 that Kosaka was in. The first is from 「歌う弥次喜多黄金道中」 ("Singing Yajikita on the Golden Road"), where Kosaka and his Wagon Masters are performing for an audience in a Japanese setting. While this scene may be a bit culturally jarring, I feel that this was the point that was trying to be made: traditional Japanese culture was seen as old, out-dated, out of touch, backward, and just generally kind of dorky, Kosaka and his Wagon Masters' western aesthetic and ability to sing predominantly in English was cool, progressive, and modern - a stark contrast to the environment he was in and to the style the audience was dressed in.

The second clip comes from 「抱かれた花嫁」 ("Embraced Bride"), also from 1957, where Kosaka and the Wagon Masters are more a part of the backdrop. However, they are performing C&W (all in Japanese this time) in a very modern club while everyone in the film is young and in western-styled clothing: all looking very cool and hip. It is interesting to see country music be portrayed this way as in the United States, it is associated with the past, sometimes even in a more negative, antiquated, "hillbilly," context.

While American country music fabricated its authenticity from the beginning (which is quite ironic when you think about it), Japanese C&W therefore became doubly fabricated as it relied first on the fabricated country music coming in from America and then on the fabricated image of the American West as a place where hyper-masculine singing cowboys wearing silver-lined, bolo-tied dress shirts rambled aimlessly as far and wide as the coast of California to the interior of the southeastern backwoods, using the aesthetic of western film and American country music as their main inspirations.

But why was Japan so entranced by western iconography? Some individuals, including Professor Michael Bourdaghs, argue that enka, traditional Japanese ballads, are fairly similar in composition and style to traditional country and that the samurai and cowboy aesthetics blend very well together (see the 1995 film East Meets West which features Ittoku Kishibe, previously the bassist of the Group Sounds era band The Tigers). Did country & western also blend well with Japan's own colonial and expansionist past which ended with World War II and the subsequent Occupation of Japan where Douglas MacArthur encouraged the dissemination of very white-styled American music?

Japanese Country & Western music is an extremely unique transnational cultural gem that I feel is extremely ignored. While its development seems extremely unlikely and generally tends to bring about a visceral feeling to those who have not previously been exposed, it is truly one of the most unique, finely-crafted, and well-loved genres of music I have yet to learn about and quickly became a favorite of mine. The artists who developed it were extremely passionate (and continue to be as C&W's presence continues to be felt in Japan even to this day)

 I will attach some additional images of Japanese country & western performers just because I absolutely love the imagery.

Kazuya Kosaka (小坂一也), arguably the first J-pop idol

Yoshio Ohno & Keiichi Teramoto (大野義夫と寺本圭一). I don't know who is in the middle

Keijirō Yamashita (山下敬二郎), one of the 三人ロカビリー男 (three rockabilly guys)

Takahiro Saito - 斉藤任弘

Although I definitely wouldn't consider Yuzo Kayama (加山雄三) a C&W musician, he did a few songs and is my favorite so 🥰

Even Group Sounds era bands continued to incorporate the western look, including Jun Inoue (井上順), Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu (かまやつ「ムツシュ」ひろし), Katsuo Ohno (大野克夫), and Mitsuru Kato (加藤充) of The Spiders (ザ・スパイダース)

Monsieur was quite an established Country & Western performer before he joined The Spiders

Another Group Sounds era band, The Tigers (ザ・タイガース), mixing western and go-go aesthetics