Japanese Religion and Popular Music

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | A presentation, in English, by Jennifer Milioto Matsue, Associate Professor in Music, Asian Studies, and Anthropology at Union College.

Within Japan, religion is difficult to identify, with much mixture and an ambiguous position in contemporary society. Not surprisingly, there are few examples of prominent popular music performers, genres, or scenes that explicitly play with religious iconography, texts or practice. Considering reasons for this, however, reveals much about Japanese culture’s experience of religion in general. This presentation explores this complicated connection between religion in Japan and various popular music, including heavy metal, hip-hop, psy-trance, and hardcore, in the end requiring an extremely flexible read of what religion means for Japanese in their daily lives.