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Are Japan's music festivals just sterile, fun-free cash cows?
They're a raging success, but some say Japanese music events take advantage of their fans
Festivals are marathons of endurance for fans who walk from stage to stage and stand in crowds for hours in extreme heat to see their favorite bands.
When Japan was emerging from its lost decade of the 1990s, many music fans hoped that Japan’s adoption of Western-style outdoor rock festivals would lead to more freedom and openness in society.
The idea was that Japanese people, who have a tradition of exuberant local festivals, would naturally follow the path of Europeans and North Americans, who created their own alternative culture at liberating festivals such as Woodstock, Lollapalooza and Glastonbury.
As U.S. funk godfather George Clinton told his audience at the Fuji Rock Festival in 2002, “Free the butt, and the mind will follow.”
More than a decade later, a plethora of successful Japanese rock festivals, which continue to attract enormous crowds despite a shrinking population and sluggish economy, are indeed developing a culture of their own.
That subculture, however, is too often defined by many fans saying they have to endure harsh conditions, excessive commercialism and a crowd-control mentality that continues to dominate mainstream Japanese society.
Mood killers?
This year’s Summer Sonic, a festival that sold out despite a nuclear meltdown just 250 kilometers away, is perhaps the most obvious example of how many Japanese festivals -- renowned for their organization -- are possibly too efficient for their own good.
On stage, the world’s leading social rebels, from Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Jamaican reggae scion Ziggy Marley, called out for freedom and justice to overcome the ills of what Rastafarians call “Babylon,” a system driven by TV, advertising and mindless materialism.
But that English-language message, preached by many foreign musicians who love playing in Japan, is not reaching most Japanese, who say they are more influenced by the music and hype than the content of lyrics in another language.
Joining the hordes at Summer Sonic, one has a feeling of actually losing -- not gaining -- freedom and power.
Scalpers at work
Security staff line up to face the crowd at Summer Sonic.
Arriving by train at Kaihin Makuhari Station in the Tokyo suburb of Chiba, fans have to pass scalpers -- in full view of police -- who buy up tickets and sell them at exorbitant prices to music lovers who couldn’t order sold-out tickets beforehand.
Inside the concrete caverns of the Makuhari Messe convention center, megaphones blare out warnings and directions designed to create a Confucian order, not an uplifting vibe.
This relentless cattle-prodding seems unnecessary for Japanese crowds who have won global admiration for their self-discipline and harmonious coexistence at train stations and tsunami shelters alike.
