Talk:J-pop

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1 J-Pop or Japanese pop
2 List of popular J-Pop artists
3 Definition
4 Category renaming
5 External links
6 "Z-Pop"
7 use of all-caps
8 This page needs an overhaul
9 Japanese Family name - Given name
10 sifow
11 Being artist
12 Images
13 Bias
14 "New Music"
15 What is it? A Style? Or just pop from Japan?

[edit] J-Pop or Japanese pop

I moved Japanese rock to J-Rock to mirror this article, but I've been thinking about it, and now I believe that Japanese pop and Japanese rock look neater than J-Pop and J-Rock, and it seems a wikipedia policy to not use abreviations for main article names. What do you guys think, should we move both articles back to their full names? xDCDx 16:03, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'd rather have J-Pop than Japanese pop as the main article. That's how Japanese refer to the genre anyway. How about making Japanese pop redirect to J-Pop? Revth 09:39, 2 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I'm with xDCDx on this one. The wikipedia policy is to use the full article names and then have the abbreviations redirect, regardless of common usage. The first sentence of the article could then mention that J-Pop is the commonly used term. --Junesix 18:33, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Actually, that is exactly the opposite of Wikipedia policy. Wikipedia policy is common usage. See Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). —Lowellian (talk) 00:31, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

No, im with Revth, its called J-Pop by the Japanese, and is known commonly like that, so i think the article should be called that as well. Thats what is more likely to be searched for i reckon, so i think it should stay. - 81.155.168.239 19:09, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you aware of any cites to this effect? I've only seen 'Jpop' or 'JPOP' used at the CD stores in Japan, but never 'J-pop'. This is actually the first time I've ever seen 'J-pop' and I'd love some more background on this. --J Bush 19:31, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] List of popular J-Pop artists

Do the list of popular J-Pop artists here and the List of popular J-Pop artists linked on "see also" not blatantly duplicate each other? 81.155.168.239 19:09, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I really miss a short list of ther most popular J-pop artists on this page.

[edit] Definition

There's some ambiguity concerning the definition of jpop. In the first paragraph, it's distiguished from folk music and under Definition, from enka. They are two completely different things. I think this needs some clearing up. I will give it a shot if I have time . --Himasaram 12:30, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[Comment by nightfire117]: J-Pop and "Japanese Pop" are terms all too often generalized to include all Japanese music. This is not so. Japanese pop, rock, hip-hop, and even uncommon genres (at least for Japan) such as ska are produced by Japanese artists as well. I agree that there is certain confusion around the accurate definition of J-Pop, which should refer to exactly what it means: "Japanese pop." Nightfire117 00:15, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

J-pop does not refer to the music genre "pop music" it refers to popular artists from Japan. There is J-pop, and J-indies. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.49.157.156 (talk) 07:30, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with nightfire117 and addressed the problem as well as did a general clean-up of some unnecessary things. Enshi 03:57, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category renaming

I've nominated Category:J-Pop for renaming to Category:J-pop, and ditto Category:J-Pop (releases), to follow the capitalisation of this page. SeventyThree^(Talk) 18:41, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

All done. SeventyThree^(Talk) 00:16, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a link well. According to the External Links directives, only a few fan sites should be linked as much. Thus, I propose deleting all repeated links and those links with Alexa rank over 300,000. Although the External Links aren't ruled by Alexa ranking, it should be a good measure of link notability to prevent the section from growing more. -- ReyBrujo 04:24, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I don't see why any of the links deserve a mention in an Encyclopedia, but maybe that's just me. I noticed that the jonwilks.com link was added by User:220.58.224.240 (presumably Jon Wilks himself). According to his edit history, most of his edits have been adding his resumé website into the external links section of Japan-related articles, so the Alexa ranking for jonwilks.com is probably overrated.--Tokek 13:14, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

I removed all the links that appeared to be non notable, that had only forums, trackers and other unnecessary redirects. Please do not add more external links unless you discuss here why they should be added. Thanks! -- ReyBrujo 00:04, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Which criteria do you consider to be "non notable"? Only Alexa? Ok. I know about "wiki directives". Jpopmusic is the BEST jpop "news source" via their FORUMS. Wiki.theppn is the BEST source for INFO about Jpop music. Why do you want a "short list"?. Jpop movement is Growing right now, there are many and VALUABLE Jpop sites, maybe more useful than these links you have selected. What are you doing is a kind of CENSORSHIP, just allowing the sites you JUST ACCEPT. I'm sorry, but your criteria about Which sites are "notable" is VERY QUESTIONABLE. Maybe you are a "great wiki collaborator", but you don't have all the TRUE about jmusic. Please, we invite you to Do a REAL DISCUSSION about the reasons why some sites are "notable" or not.Cbpm 29 april 2006.

I gladly accept to discuss. First of all, you should know that Wikipedia is not a link repository. Quoting its first point:

There is nothing wrong with adding a list of content-relevant links to an article; however, excessive lists can dwarf articles and detract from the purpose of Wikipedia. On articles about topics with many fansites, including a link to one major fansite is appropriate, marking the link as such.

Please see above. 21 external links can be considered excesive. Also, note that on articles about topics with many fansites, including a link to one major fansite is appropriate. Note that it doesn't say five or ten, just one. This is confirmed in the third point of this section of the guideline. Thus, from all the fan sites, one needs to find the best one.

When I deleted the links (26 links by then), there were radios, communities, forums and even a tracker. According to the external link 10th guideline, blogs, social networking sites and forums should not generally be linked. Thus, I removed all the forums, and several of the communities that appeared to be smaller than the others, recently created pages and empty sites.

Still, there were just too many external links, so as last alternative, I used Alexa do determine which links could be notable and which ones could be dismissed. Note that since I posted that list until I effectively deleted them, there were 3 months in which anyone could delete non necessary links, but nobody did. I know about J-pop, talk some japanese, have quite a good number of J-pop discography, but I do not belong to any J-pop community. In other words, I am rather neutral about that. Usually members of communities link here believing their site is the best one about a determined topic. Unluckily, if the people who supposedly know about all the communities don't clean themselves, others need to do it. I have cleaned other articles in the past, always following the same guidelines: reduce the amount of fan sites to a minimun, keeping official sites at the top, removing duplicated links, removing forums, trackers and blogs, and removing those whose Alexa rank are lower than others.

Finally, I answer to your claims. You claim that Jpopmusic is the BEST jpop "news source" via their FORUMS. I know, that is why I kept the link after cleaning the others. You claim that Wiki.theppn is the BEST source for INFO about Jpop music I know, that is why I not only kept the link after cleaning the others, but also moved it to the top of the list. Of course, you can question my criteria anytime, I am not perfect. But if you are questioning my criteria putting those two examples, you are not questioning me because I kept those two links. Again, see here both lists, before (left) and after (right) I deleted the ones I considered non notable. -- ReyBrujo 00:45, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

http://www.nozomionline.com/ 138,924. This website (which have repository of images and files, violating your "criteria") is more important than http://www.jpop.com 615,076 or http://www.nippop.com 815,849? Maybe you have a personal interest in "erase" this sites.Cbpm

Why it violates my criteria? I believe you misunderstood something I said. Let me repeat it: Wikipedia is not a link repository. That means, Wikipedia articles can't become them. You can't just upload images or sounds to Wikipedia for the sake of uploading them there, or to later link them from your site. Nor the articles can have a long list of external links. There is nothing wrong about adding a link to a repository of images or other links as long as the link "deserves" to be here (being the official link of the subject or being notable enough).

Finally, as I said before, I have no personal interest except in polishing articles. If you don't believe me, please do request a mediation about the external links. -- ReyBrujo 01:30, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Ok, i'll do a request for mediation. You haven't answered my question. Why nozomionline.com (listed by you) is "more notable" than jpop.com (not listed)? Cbpm

As I said, I removed those I considered not as notable based on Alexa ranking after having purged links that did not fit the external link guidelines at all, with keeping a goal of just five external links (considering that there are no "official" links about this subject, links appearing here were likely to be fan sites, and that the current guidelines consider that only one fan site should be linked). It is likely that in a couple of months the external section of the article will be again filled with links. If such is the case, I hope regular editors of the article will keep it trimmed to relative few ones. If not, I (or someone else on clean up patrol) will come and deleted the extra ones. -- ReyBrujo 02:46, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

3rd Opinion: ReyBrujo seems to have done a fair and unbiased job of removing what was an extremly excessive amount of external links. I see no significant reason to include the nozomionline link. --Hetar 06:19, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "Z-Pop"

It should be noted that "Z-Pop" (Z is for Zipangu), used to mean J-Pop, is only used by ZIP-FM radio station. Very insignificant. Also, J-Pop is usually spelled as such, but Jpop is also popular. Virtually noone writes it as J-pop, but it should be noted that variations exist. I'm currently behind a bizarre ISP firewall that prevents me from editing the main article.--Tokek 02:38, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] use of all-caps

I'm no J-pop expert, so please forgive my ignorance. But after spending a lot of time in category:Songs by artist, I'm wondering what so many of these songs and albums and band names are in all caps. Is there anything that really separates "ALL FOR YOU" from "All for You?" It's possible that in Japan, it doesn't seem like shouting, but here in the US, it does. There are a lot of articles that would be renamed if we went through and de-capped most of these, so I wanted to see if people were attached to this scheme. (Some interesting comments at the Orange Range talk page.)--Mike Selinker 12:09, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Hello there. I was one of those who used to put titles in all caps. Most japanese titles are given all in caps not only in the CD itself, but also in press releases. Thus, Wikipedians working with J-pop articles tend to copy titles as faithful as possible. However, I have been lately converted (wikilink may break after archiving) and now follow the guidelines stated by the naming conventions. I believe it may take some time for everyone to understand, but I now agree that is better to follow naming conventions. Hopefully everyone will agree. -- ReyBrujo 15:05, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

That's useful info. I specifically find interesting the directive "Do not replicate stylized typography in logos and album art." It would seem to me that the all-caps affectation fits that description. Rey, did you go back and move the articles you started in all-caps, or does that still have to be done?--Mike Selinker 17:03, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Jogers did move all (maybe missing one or two, but surely almost all) the ones I have started to their proper capitalization. I haven't had the time to check all the J-pop articles, though. I may add that to my todo list. -- ReyBrujo 21:23, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

But specific capitalization of letters in song titles is not stylized typography, I think... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.31.156.85 (talk) 09:04, 27 March 2007 (UTC).

The reason why some words are in CAPS is because of the type of Japanese characters used to write the word. Under romaji, words spelled using hiragana and kanji are written in lowercase. Words written in katakana are either loanwords or words that do not have a kanji character assigned to it. In the romaji process, katakana are converted CAPS, to indicate that the romaji-written word was originally written in katakana. Before software like Microsoft IME was introduced, enabling katakana in a wordprocessor was via the CAPS LOCK. The same thing goes for software-based Japanese translators; services like BabelFish and @nifty use CAPS to distinguish between hiragana and katakana. When you enter a katakana-written word into the translator, it'll output the word in CAPS. Hope this enlightens some people. Groink 22:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This page needs an overhaul

I'm sorry people, but this page has a wealth of information, but it's just atrocious to look at. It doesn't flow and is very difficult to make references here.

Also, there're very few places I can find that can verify the information provided here.

The only thing I can find is the earl influences from Jazz, but not much beyond that, and I also fail to see the corrollation between the Jazz influences and the way the music has evolved from that. There's a massive gap in the hostorical information provided here, especially considering the popularity of the topic.

Another thing is the comparison of Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Soundtrack compared to a Japanese Anime's soundtrack. For a start, where is the imporance from an encyclopaedic point of view? And where's the comparison? For one, Anime is cartoons and so is inclined to be very musically based. Secondly, the soundtracks for Anime tend to have every song that has ever appeared in an episode. One Buffy episode that comes to mind is the Tara/Willow break up episode where Michelle Branch sings "Goodbye (To You)" at the end of the episode. The entire song was contained in the episode, however was not included on the soundtrack. The songs contained on the soundtrack say "Selections from the soundtrack" not "all of the songs". It's a maojr difference to be found. Especially when you consider than at the Bronze they'd attend every week in early episodes, there was a different band who'd play a different (usually original) song.

This leads me to believe a great deal of bias hos gone into the writing of the article as a whole.

I suggest getting the article and stripping it to the barebones and only elaborating on the information that warrants elaboration.

Another thing: J-Pop should be spelt as such. Capital P and with a hyphen. All references within the article should be consistent too.

Lincalinca 05:25, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Do not just paste the information from J-pop into J-Pop. The whole article history is in J-pop, if we just paste the information, we won't have it to see how the article was developed. If you want to change J-pop into J-Pop, you need to move the page to J-Pop. -- ReyBrujo 05:35, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Don't cut and paste. There's Wikipedia:Requested moves to request moves that can't be done due to an existing article at the target move. This way the edit history can be preserved. Kevin_b_er 06:18, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

I think you'll find it moves the talk page because of how I processed the move. Lincalinca 06:38, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

The issue is not the Talk page, the issue is the article history. Please see Wikipedia:Merging and moving pages for the proper procedure. Do not copy and paste content over. -- Gogo Dodo 07:19, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Anyway, J-pop shouldn't be spelled with a capital P in any case. We usually spell "pop", as we do "bubblegum pop", "traditional pop", "K-pop", "Mandarin pop", "Nederpop" etc. etc. There is a strong consensus on the MoS for regularizing Japan originated capitals, so even if it's spelt "J-Pop" in Japan, we probably don't care. Yours faithfully, Shinobu 15:06, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Family name - Given name

The distinction should be make between family names and given names. This is a problem on a lot of Japanese related articles. It makes no sense to have "Ayumi Hamasaki" and "Utada Hikaru" on the same page, because Hamasaki and Utada are family names. If someone knows which way to reconcile this, please change the article. -Oatmeal batman 13:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

I got my question answered. It's "Given name->Family name." See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (Japan-related articles)#Names for the long version. -Oatmeal batman 14:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sifow

Can someone with more knowledge on the subject than I take a look at sifow and http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Lalala+13j in general? There's been a phenomenal amount of edits in the last 8 hours related to this artist, by one user, but their major-label album appears to not be due until September (which could make this promotional spam), and everything else looks like indie/minor label stuff to me. I don't know the second thing about J-pop though, so I don't want to snap somebody's nose off just because I don't recognize their favorite artist... help? -- nae'blis 18:59, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Being artist

In the early 1990s, the music scene can be split up into different parts. With the 1990-1993 being dominated by the Being artists (ZARD, Wands, Deen), B'z and the Southern All Stars.

what is thise "Being artist"??? --83.130.140.228 14:45, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Being is a record label that produces the artists mentioned above. They are notorious for rarely making any TV appearances. mirageinred 16:48, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Images

These two images are like the shittiest I ever saw. The Ayumi one you barely see and everything is dark. Utada's picture the only thing you can see is her ass. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by FreshBulletTime (talk • contribs).

Glad we got your attention. Maybe now you will be able to take a picture of either of them to upload here with a free license? -- ReyBrujo 13:08, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bias

As was mention briefly above, there seems to be a large bias towards J-pop in this article. are lines such as: "...the genre itself demanded a high level of technical proficiency and was difficult to play. As a result many amateur Japanese musicians turned to country music, which was far easier to learn and perform. This in turn led to a proliferation of country-based music." really necessary? -TyRo Sheep STyLz~ 14:16, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "New Music"

The article identifies Yoshida Takuro and Inoue Yosui as "New Music" artists. At the time, however, (mid-70s) both of these artists were known as フォーク artists. I first heard the term "New Music" in connection with Yumin's early work. While Yosui and Takuro were possibly harbingers of New Music in hindsight (i.e., different from the late 60s-early seventies "folk") is it really accurate to call them "New Music" musicians. In fact, the term "New Music" seems to have expanded in Japan from a fairly narrow band to cover just about any kind of pop or rock that is outside TV-oriented geinokai (just my impression). In record shops, at least, it's become a fairly meaningless label.

Bathrobe (talk) 15:26, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What is it? A Style? Or just pop from Japan?

J-pop is popular music from Japan, this is sure. But is that it? Does it have any other defining or common styles, themes or characteristics that set it apart from other types of pop? This article just seems to list pop musicians in Japan but surely there is a J-Pop style. What is it? Since this article is generally uncited I allow myself to suggest:

Singer - Songwriter divide greater (prevalence of idols, more produced) (can be supported by Time Article on Sheena Ringo^[1] and Ayumi Hamasaki^[2])
Greater emphasis on looks, and generaly look better (partly due singer songwriter divide. They don't have to be musically talented)
Use of English as well as Japanese, especially in the chorus and title of songs.
Greater vocal range (rather like R and B in the US, with large tone changes in the same phrase) partly perhaps due to the impact of Karaoke; J-pop is made to be sung, and made to show off the voice (nodo jiman-teki). Also traditional Japanese music has greater tonal swings.
Many singers do not even have good voices, despite the demands of the songs that they sing! (Thinking about it, a "difficult" song hides limitations in the singer, while an easy song, with a simple melody shows the singers voices qualities warts and all) Can be supported by Time Magazine Articles on Ayumi Hamasaki at least with reference to her^[3].)
Fewer guitar riffs perhaps - again, made to be sung.
Stronger female presence (longest string of number one hits one and two are both women)
Beat may on average be faster, or doubled? [Jitterin Jin]'s 'double beat' is minor but perhaps, perhaps, due to a taiko drumming influence the beat in Japanese music seems to be more likely to be doubled or at least fast.

--Timtak (talk) 03:57, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

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