Category Archives: Cool Shit

Visual kei is most accurately defined as Japan’s alternative to glam rock, focusing directly on the fantastical (and very questionable) fashion attire more so than the music itself. It now ties closely with other cosplay-esque genres such as lolita fashion. (The NY Times did a great piece in September of 2008, featuring six different girls from NYC involved in the lolita fashion scene.) Visual kei reminds me strongly of the Asian pop phenomenon, or even the Korean Wave, throughout the mid to late nineties—a strong relationship to budding fads of over-the-top bubblegum pop groups turning into hip-hop/rap undertones (H.O.T., Sechs Kies, Shinwa, etc.) that reflected popular Western music at the time. Though, like with any reappropriation, the extremes get extremer.

As NY Times noted in an article about X Japan, one of the pioneers of the visual kei aesthetic, in September of 1998, their presence stirred rabid fandom exponentially scarier than what American pop tweens are capable of.

For visual kei bands, outrageous, usually androgynous looks — gobs of makeup, hair dyed and sprayed in ways that made Mohawks look conservative, and a small fortune spent on leather and jewelry — were as important as music (or, in many cases after X, more important than music). When X members followed in the steps of American hard-rock bands like Metallica and cut their hair in the 90′s, thousands of Japanese girls wept openly in the streets.

While the genre has slowly withdrawn in intensity over the years as sales and popularity have declined, it’s interesting to see how popular media in the nineties became a tipping point for going viral, before going viral was even an Internet term. It reminds me of Princess Diana’s death, where there was some form of universal grief, as though, worldwide, people had known her without actually ever having met her, or in most cases, ever having heard of her. I remember reading about the death of a singer in a Korean boy band a long time ago, and the ensuing hysteria from the public as they mourned his death on the streets. X Japan was no exception.

At his funeral, 50,000 young fans mobbed the streets. By the day’s end, some 60 of them were taken to hospitals, and nearly 200 received medical treatment in first-aid tents after passing out or injuring themselves. (One girl tried to slit her wrists with a plastic knife.) ”Please do not follow him,” urged the surviving members of X. ”Do not commit suicide. Send him off to heaven warmly.”

Bryan Burton-Lewis, a radio- and video-show host who toured with Hide as a disk jockey, said the funeral was the most crowded ever for a postwar Japanese musician, which was surprising considering that hardly anyone over 30 knew who he was. ”The wake was sad,” he remembered. ”I was sitting in there for two hours, and all you heard outside was kids screaming from the bottom of their stomachs. They sounded like demons. In Japan, the image that we have of the X audience is rural kids going through a rebellion phase. They put their life into being X fans: they dress like it, they breathe it, they all talk about how he gave them something to live for.

It’s kind of a scattered thought in light of all this, but I don’t recall much visceral communion in the public sphere in quite some time. Perhaps this post about visual kei, and the things it reminds me of, isn’t the best example, but I have a feeling we’re all a bit too sedated from information overload to care this much about anything. They don’t make bands like these used to

So, peep the awesomeness that is this X Japan performance from 1994, where they perform “Standing Sex” to a crowd of epic proportions. Look at that stage…it looks like a fucking intense show.

(Thanks, Isabelle.)