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J-pop (J-POP) is an abbreviation for Japanese pop, but is also a loosely defined musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. It refers to Japanese popular music, and was coined by the Japanese media to distinguish Japanese music from foreign music. Today, the Japanese music industry is the second largest behind the United States in the world.[1]
The origin of modern "J-pop" is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by The Beatles[2][3], but it is also influenced by Japanese pentatonic scale and distortional tetrachord.[3] Unlike former Japanese popular music called kayōkyoku, J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to English language.[4] For example, Keisuke Kuwata pronounced the Japanese word "karada" (body) as "kyerada".[4]
Japanese Tower Records defined J-pop as all Japanese mainstream music except Japanese independent music in 1990, but they began to use more segmentalized classification such as J-club, J-punk, J-hip-hop, J-reggae, J-anime, Johnny's and Visual kei when indie musicians also went on to release their works under major labels in 2000s.[5]
Whereas rock musicians in Japan usually hate the term "pop", Taro Kato, a member of pop punk band Beat Crusaders, pointed out that the encoded pop music was catchier than "J-pop" and he also said that "J-pop" was the pops ( poppusu?) music remembered by being aired many times in an interview when they completed their first full-length studio album under a major label, P.O.A.: Pop on Arrival, in 2005