Global Music is the topic of this blog post. Who do you come up with WORLD MUSIC ARTIST when you hear the term global music? There are so many music genres that have been famous in the world. K-POP is one of those established music genres. When looking for the history of K-POP, however, you can see the history is not as long as other music genres such as rap, R&B, and Latin. Before K-POP has become popular, Hallyu which is Korean wave became famous, and then K-POP has recently entered the lexicon of global popular cultures since the late 1990s. In the early 2000s, the scale of K-POP has widened gradually and they focused on overseas. To get success in foreign countries, they sung their songs in foreign languages such as Japanese, Chinese, and English. Through these efforts, many K-POP groups have become world-star such as BIGBANG, Girl’s generation, and BLACKPINK. BTS can be said that they are most world group among those worldwide K-POP groups. 

BTS which stands for Bang Tan Sonyeondan is a famous South Korean boy band and they debuted in JUNE 2013. They have released many albums and it is said that they have sold an estimated 5 million albums worldwide until 2018. As one of the reasons they have been bigger and got the international recognition, one thing is really related. That is BTS has won of Top Social Artist nomination from Billboard Music Awards in 2017. To win the Top Social Artist nomination on Billboard Music Awards in 2017, BTS has managed to get international attention. The fact that BTS won the Top Social Artist nomination on Billboard Music Awards has reported in the world. 

Now BTS is one of the world-class artists as their songs hit music chart and hold their concerts in many countries. On the other hand, BTS had some issues which can be related to appropriation. When one member of the BTS wore a T-shirt which has two photos – the celebration of Korean independence from Japan’s colonial rule and the atomic bomb exploding over Japan. This fact was reported in Japan and many people complained about what they did. At the same time, they were canceled to perform at the music TV program in Japan due to the issue. BTS members and the creator of the T-shirt apologized about that problem but they said they did not intend to insult Japan, and they just wanted to connect history and street fashion. Even they said, the fact was unacceptable for Japanese and everyone said they did not understand how painful Japanese feel by the history of the atomic bomb. No one knows what they actually think about the T-shirt but it is important to keep in mind what it is required to consider when it touches other countries’ history, especially if the person has huge influence like BTS. Otherwise, it can be a serious problem which may affect the career when it enters the world. 

What I have chosen and watched a global movie was Death Note which was made in Japan in 2003. Death Note has comic series, anime series, and movies and those series were very popular in Japan. In 2017, Death Note was remade by Netflix. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, Japanese Death Note is one example of success anime globally. So when it was announced that Japanese Death Note would be remade and released on Netflix, it attracted a lot of attention.

I will write down the review of Death Note. One notebook was dropped on and one high school student discovered it. The notebook is a supernatural notebook which has the power to kill anyone when somebody writes someone’s name. The high school student, he demonstrated if the notebook is real so he wrote down one student name he hated. After he wrote it, he saw the student died and he believed the notebook. When the notebook was found by him, one death god appeared. The death god is watched and talked with only who has the notebook. Since this happened, he started to kill many people who breached heavy crimes. Many unclear incidents happened everywhere and police struggled to find the criminal but it was too difficult, and one detective who is L appeared and he declared to catch the criminal. As he repeats killing people, he meets one girl and they had relationships, and they became the existence of a single mind that name is KIRA. Once KIRA realized the fascinates of the notebook ( I know this is kind of madness), they increased the uses of it. To fight them, L made strategies but he took a long time to reveal the KIRA’s identity.

This is the brief story of Death Note. When Netflix released this movie, the producer of this movie mentioned the target audience which is all adults. He said that it was not totally for children, he also mentioned the emphasis on real even the story was based on fantasy. However, this movie had a low reputation because most of viewers complained about the comparison between Japanese original story and Hollywood version. As this cause, the movie director deleted the Twitter because many people send a message of complaining about the movie. This was reported and shocked public.

I guess the biggest cause of failure of Death Note is related to hybridisation. When Netflix release the remake Death Note, they changed the characters’ identity, the structure of the story, and the killing expression. Hollywood version was intended to horror movies so there are some cruel scenes but this kind of scene is the scene that Japan tries to avoid direct cruel expression. Also, most of the viewers of Death Note is the people who have already know Japanese Death Note so it was difficult to accept this hybridisation.

So Death Note demonstrates that global success depends on the background of the story and if people can accept the new story.

Now we are living in a modern society which enables us to connect anything easily such as SNS and Internet. It is easy to search and experience other cultures, unlike the days when technology was not developed. I expect that most people answer they enjoy many televisions which are from foreign countries because those televisions are on the Internet like YouTube and Netflix. Even if they can not understand what people in the program actually say, they can understand the detailed contents because there are subtitles or dubbing function into own language. Personally, I enjoy American TV dramas with subtitles as well. At the same time, most of my international friends like to watch Japanese anime. I have noticed Japanese anime culture has been popular in the world. It is often reported that many Japanese animes are remade and released. This environment in which we can enjoy other countries TV programs is familiar with our generation and our parents’ generation. However, when it focuses on our grandparent’s generation, this environment is totally different. There might be a  few TV programs which were related to America or other countries but most of them enjoyed own culture televisions. Thus there is a big difference between our generation and their generation. When I noticed this one, I have one question that what has made changed our style of enjoying television. To find this answer, I have chosen Japanese anime because Japanese anime is watched by many countries and it is possible to say Japanese anime has succeeded in global.

So why Japanese anime is liked by many countries? For this question, one article mentioned it. It says that the concept of Japanese anime has many topics widely. For example, One anime is about western culture, and another anime is about sports such as basketball and baseball. In addition, Japanese anime has a high reproducibility of those concept worlds. So those high qualities of drawing are accepted in global. Also,  it is said Japanese anime mixed with reality and fantasy so that wide culture can enjoy the stories. The style of Japanese anime is relevant to the context of international history or culture sometimes. One anime uses the name of Chinese historical person for the character who is replaced to Japanese. So this article concluded like this.

“Anime is able to engage multiple cultural politics, whose interplay with its mixed signifiers results in an interesting postmodern landscape”

Amy Shirong Lu

Through these things, Japanese anime has established the characteristics and it is adopted globally. Surprisingly, Japanese anime influenced international politics. Another article reported President Barack Obama visited Japan to talk about politics by thanking for Japanese culture such as anime, manga, and karate. This fact is enough to show how Japanese anime is adopted and important as one of the global cultures.

As my ending comment, I am so proud of Japanese anime culture and we have to protect this amazing culture because it will be getting bigger in the future.