Visual Kei in Japan: The Freedom to Describe Yourself

Visual Kei in Japan: The Freedom to Describe Yourself

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Visual Kei
How a music-fueled rebellion against conformity and fixed gender roles became a significant cultural movement in Japan - and why some people are still trying to keep it alive.

Many years ago, I was an awkward high school teenage girl obsessed with rock music and manga. I’d never even heard the words “visual kei”. But one day, I trawled through YouTube and stumbled upon a music video by a Japanese band. That music video was “Filth in the Beauty” by the GazettE. Intense makeup, dazzling outfits, and a dark aesthetic unmatched by the rock bands I was used to.

Naive fifteen-year-old me had so many questions. Is that guitarist a guy or a girl? Why is that guy wearing a noseband? What’s with the heavy makeup? What’s he even saying? Is that English? Underneath all these questions was the certainty that I had discovered something awesome, and I loved it.

Many people I’ve talked to since identify idol groups and singers as their gateway to the larger Japanese music scene— AKB48, Arashi, Utada Hikaru, Crystal Kay, and so on. For me, it was the Gazette and DIR EN GREY, both bands who represent the Japanese movement of visual kei.

The Origins of Visual Kei

Cover of SHoxx
The cover of a 1997 issue of Shoxx, a leading magazine of the visual kei movement.

Visual kei (ヴィジュアル系; vijuaru kei; visual style), often “vkei” or “V系” for short, sprung up in the underground scene in the 1980s when Japan was at the height of postwar economic prosperity. Household names of that first generation include X Japan, Buck-Tick, Dead End, and D’erlanger. The closest Western equivalent would be glam rock as popularized by artists like David Bowie and Alice Cooper.

The movement wasn’t first known by the name visual kei. The “visual” originates from the X Japan slogan “psychedelic violence crime of visual shock” emblazoned on their 1989 album Blue Blood. From there, it became “visual shock kei,” and then eventually just visual kei. Magazine Shoxx debuted with the name a year later, cementing the term for the movement. Other magazines like Arena 37 °C, Rock and Read, and Cure commonly featured interviews with artists.

X Japan’s guitarist hide is credited as one of the main founders of the movement. With his signature neon pink hair and guitar solos, hide lulled and captivated audiences all over. He was one of the few visual kei musicians who found wild success as a solo artist after X Japan disbanded. hide’s 1998 death due to hanging — publicized as a suicide, but believed to be an accident by those close to him — heralded the end of the movement’s reign. To this day many artists pay tribute to hide’s legacy and his contributions, not just to the visual kei movement, but to Japan’s music scene as a whole.

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Music Genre or Fashion Statement?

Visual kei was largely seen as a rebellion against a group-oriented, non-confrontational society. Its members crossed the line between gender and sexuality with ease, wearing dramatic makeup and sporting intricate and flamboyant costumes that immediately grabbed people’s attention. Bands usually release a new look when promoting a new single or album.

the GazettE – DOGMA

Music video by The Gazette performing Dogma. (C) 2015 Sony Music Records, a division of Sony Music Labels Inc.http://vevo.ly/64N0XK

Interpretations of visual kei vary from artist to artist. Critics, notably Western ones, are quick to label it as a “music genre” and leave it at that. However, visual kei musicians themselves purport it as a style. As X Japan drummer and frontman Yoshiki said in a JaME interview in 2011, “…visual kei is more like a spirit, it’s not a music style…I think it is a freedom about describing myself, a freedom to express myself, that’s what I believe visual kei is.” Other bands like MUCC, Angelo, and Plastic Tree have made similar statements.

Rock and metal certainly aren’t the main sounds represented by visual kei artists. As with any music movement, offshoots of the main genre eventually sprung up. Nagoya kei (名古屋系), reputedly born even before the movement’s boom, centered in the late ‘90s in the city of Nagoya (prefecture). Nagoya kei bands like Kuroyume (黒夢) and lynch. drew their inspiration from British punk rock bands, and there’s less of an emphasis on the costumes and makeup. On the flip side was oshare kei (オサレ系), which evolved in the early 2000s and emphasized fashion and the latest trends. Bright colors, optimistic lyrics, and a rock/pop sound are key elements in oshare kei. アンティック-珈琲店-(Antikku Kissaten), or An Cafe, is the best-known representative of this style. Other bands adopted a specific fashion style that made them easily memorable among other acts. Versailles, for instance, sported French rococo outfits and aesthetics.

アンティック-珈琲店- 『アメージングブルー』

http://www.ancafe-web.com/全世界の女子中高生に絶大な人気を誇る5人組原宿ダンスロック系バンドアンティック-珈琲店-。2010年の日本武道館公演を機に活動を休止するも、2012年約2年半ぶりに活動を再開する。

The music video for An Cafe’s アメージングブルー (Amazing Blue). The band describes their music style as “Harajuku Dance Rock.”

Neo-Visual Kei: A New Generation with a New Agenda

The 2000s witnessed a newer generation start to gain headway in the scene. Golden Bomber (ゴールデンボンバー), an air band, made a name for themselves with their wacky dances, parodies, and pop cultural references. The GazettE, Dir en grey, Alice Nine, Angelo, and Plastic Tree are just some of the acts that established themselves as fixtures in the neo-visual kei scene.

Yet with this new generation came criticism from critics and first-generation artists. Who was really in it for the music, and who was in it just to look unique and cool? This debate continues to this day. Many artists feel the soul of the movement has largely become lost due to commercialization, and has lost its emphasis on refusing to fall in line with normal societal expectations.

Many bands from the first generation ended up phasing out the costumes and makeup as they migrated towards a sleek rock star look. Glay and LUNA SEA are some examples of this toned-down of image and physical appearance. Other groups have disbanded with individual members securing successful solo careers, such as musician Miyavi, formerly of the band Dué le quartz, who maintained the visual kei aspect for many years before adopting the slick look he currently has. Other bands, like D’espairsRay, dropped the visual kei moniker altogether and self-identified as rock bands, often refuting people who continued labeling them as visual kei.

Thanks to the Internet and anime, visual kei started gathering attention overseas. Perhaps sensing the rise in awareness of visual kei, many bands starting out toured in Europe and the US before hitting it big in Japan. When Japanese-themed conventions started popping up, organizers would invite visual kei acts to perform and do meet-and-greets.

While the majority of visual kei bands consist of male members or a mix of male and female members, some all-female visual kei bands have made a dent in the music scene, notably exist†trace, who’ve been invited to overseas conventions more than once.

[フル] exist†trace 「TRUE」 2011.6.15 Release!!

無類!異端!革新!女だらけのVISUAL–ROCKバンド、メジャーへ!!http://www.tkma.co.jp/j_pop/exist-trace/★AIR-G’「AV Music Channel」2011年6月番組マンスリーエンディングテーマに決定!!「Kawaii girl Japan 」6月のフィーチ…

The PV for exist†trace’s song 2011 “TRUE.” Like their male counterparts, some of the band members also play with androgynous aspects.

Mixing Music with Politics and Social Commentary

Perhaps more than mainstream bands, visual kei bands are able to get away with social and political commentary as musicians and individuals. The band LOUDNESS had no qualms about writing songs based on their anti-nuclear beliefs, like the song “Sun Will Rise Again”. Glay’s guitarist Takuro published an inflammatory anti-war opinion piece in a newspaper as a response to the outbreak of the Iraqi War in 2003. Musician SUGIZO stated that he wanted to touch upon heavier topics as his band LUNA SEA entered the 2000s:

平和や環境汚染に対するメッセージ性をもっとバンドに盛り込みたくなったんだけど、メンバーは「NO」だったのね。それも俺がLUNA SEAをツラくなっちゃった理由の1 つ。

I wanted the band to incorporate more messages regarding peace and environmental pollution, but the members said “No” to that. That was one of the reasons why I became bitter with LUNA SEA.

The song 体温 (Taion; “body temperature”) by the GazettE is purportedly about the horrific torture and murder of high-school student Furuta Junko (古田 順子) in 1989. DIR EN GREY’s 2011 single “Different Sense” refers in part to 3/11, the tragic Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that triggered the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown. The accompanying music video features clips of medical experimentation and mushroom clouds, interspersed with tentacles and a map of Japan. (Viewer discretion is advised if you decide to look it up).

Is Visual Kei Dying?

It’s safe to say that the movement’s golden era has long passed. Influential magazine Shoxx published their last issue on November 2016 after filing for bankruptcy. While visual kei bands are still forming, many either disband after a few months of activities or end up sounding like dozens of other visual kei acts before them. Music writers with their fingers on the scene’s pulse worry and wonder how it will progress in the future, if at all.

Yet the scene isn’t wholly dead. Longtime bands are still drawing in crowds to their concerts. LUNA SEA and X Japan have since reunited. The GazettE just finished up another successful world tour. DIR EN GREY recently announced a new single and a Europe tour. Japanese music website BARKS published a list of upcoming visual kei bands in 2019 making a splash in the scene.

The fervor and attraction certainly hasn’t died for many people. I myself attended the GazettE’s concert in San Francisco when they finally toured the US in 2016, and let me tell you, people were ecstatic. Fans were cosplaying the band members and gossiping about favorite looks and albums. Some concert-goers had flown all the way from Japan to see them perform.

There’s something about the costumes and lyrics of the style that’s seductive, transporting you to another dimension where fashion and sound unite to create a visceral experience. That’s something that can’t be smothered easily by modern music trends. While we can look back on the golden years in nostalgia, we should also appreciate the talent trying to keep the visual kei spirit alive. It certainly isn’t fading anytime soon.

Sources

Kashiwagi, Yasunari. “ポップカルチャーとしてのヴィジュアル系の歴史: The History of Visual-kei as Pop Culture.” 千葉経済大学短期大学部 研究紀要. 第7号, 89~100(2011).

Saito, Muneaki. “ヴィジュアル系ロックの社会、政治との関わり: Visual-kei rock:its status in Japanese society and politics.” 関西大学大学院人間科学 : 社会学・心理学研究, 88 : 1-24.

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Alyssa Pearl Fusek

Alyssa Pearl Fusek is a freelance writer currently haunting the Pacific Northwest. She holds a B.A. in Japanese Studies from Willamette University. When she's not writing for Unseen Japan, she's either reading about Japan, writing poetry and fiction, or drinking copious amounts of jasmine green tea. Find her on Bluesky at @apearlwrites.

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