Japanese Culture Essay

Japan has historically taken ideas from the United States on its business, merchandise, or other corporate sectors to improve within its political borders. These practices have become massive cultural and economic movements in Japan. Interestingly, Japan takes ideas and molds them into Japanese culture and style; therefore, these products are “Japanized.” To further elaborate on this statement, Japan has succeeded in its businesses and corporations such as the automobile industries around the world (for example, the NUMMI plant production transcended those of American automobile productions due to an enhanced Japanese corporate culture). Albeit many Japanese industries have roots in the United States, they have expanded globally. The music

In fact, the way Japan molds their hip-hop culture should not be a surprise to us because hip-hop is a part of culture. Culture is rooted in the nature of humanity, and the essence of human nature is to be different, diverse, and malleable. Due to the plasticity of human nature, the cultural medium of hip-hop is manufactured and sculpted into a masterpiece, musical and lyrical, that transcends across borders.

Masses of the Japanese population enjoy listening to American hip-hop today. Some youths actually visit the United States to experience what they believe to be real hip-hop culture. When one thinks of hip-hop culture, one would tend to imagine blowzy clothes, violent lyrics, drugs, guns, and chains. These are just some of the factors that outsiders tend to form together to form a generalization of hip-hop. Despite these negative associations, hip-hop has actually been dominating the Japanese culture and music industry. The Japanese hip-hop movement is economically, culturally, and generationally

Japanese hip-hop artists are rapping more about their unique life experiences, and more importantly producing Japanese lyrics. Instead of lyrics focusing on the traditional topics of gun and violence such as those lyrics in American hip-hop, the Japanese lyrics have matured into their own form of Japanese raps and freestyles about deeper political and economical unrest in Japan. This emergence of modern hip-hop has caused several ethnic hip-hop artists and groups to break onto charts, therefore explaining the tremendous share of the music market held by Japanese hip-hop artists. These Japanese hip-hop artists who have been producing records for the Japanese audience first learned their skills by watching artists from the United States. Despite the American roots, different ethnic groups are continuously reinterpreting hip-hop because hip-hop itself is a globally malleable commodity, an object that can be twisted, shaped, and enhanced into something unique by those who choose to work with it and make it