Japanthem: Counter-Cultural Experiences, Cross-Cultural Remixes

In this illuminating debut, Marshall offers an outsider’s look into Japanese culture via its music. While researching her dissertation on contemporary Japanese music in the 2010s, Marshall, an American from Vermont, spent close to a decade immersed in the country’s sounds and scenes. These provide the rhythm of her narrative, as she seeks to understand parts of Japan’s society and aesthetics that are lesser known in Western culture. The resulting survey is far from cut-and-dried. In awe-filled vignettes, she juxtaposes the “inescapable” noise of Tokyo—and its “manically happy” train station jingles—with the “quiet, formal, ritualistic atmosphere” of a music festival in the rugged mountain town of Akita. She contemplates wabi sabi, the Japanese aesthetic that celebrates imperfect beauty; explores the seedier sides of locations not mentioned in tourist brochures—including Okinawa’s Kadena Military Base, where strip clubs butt up against all-night tattoo parlors; and dives into Osaka’s underground music scene, which is more about “resisting conformity” than it is the actual music. Throughout, her sharp observations are interspersed with moving moments of introspection, as when she quietly muses that Japan may be “the only place in the world... where my heart feels like it can rest.” This transportive work is a thrilling escape. (Apr.)