This event is free to attend and will be held over Zoom.

How many times has the headline ‘Big in Japan’ been published in relation to some Western (i.e., North American or European) pop act? The reality is that, as an article by Guy De Launey’s in 1995 (‘Not-so-big in Japan: Western pop music in the Japanese market’, Popular Music, 40:1) pointed out, very few Western acts, beyond those such as Madonna and Michael Jackson, are ever big in Japan.

Keeping with the theme of autoethnographic research for the presentations in the JETAA/MEXT Special Interest Group, this presentation will look at two aspects of Western pop music in relation to Japan. First, it will look at the issues surrounding the success of Western acts in Japan. Second, it will look at the issue of people outside of Japan collecting the Japanese releases by Western acts. I will be doing this in particular in relation to my own experiences of researching, and becoming dragged into some form of collecting, in relation to Frankie Goes to Hollywood and how this ties to the book, Frankie Fans Say Welcome to our World, that I am writing.

Christopher Hood is a Reader in Japanese Studies at Cardiff University. He is the author of Japan: The Basics, Osutaka: A Chronicle of Loss in the World’s Largest Single Plane Crash, Dealing with Disaster in Japan: Responses to the Flight JL123 Crash, Shinkansen: From Bullet Train to Symbol of Modern Japan, and Education Reform in Japan: Nakasone’s Legacy. He is also the author of the novels Hijacking Japan, Tokyo 20/20 Vision, and FOUR.