In Japan, Hip is Hip-Hop in New York

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As a teenager in Tokyo, Haruki Kai was a devoted student of what Japanese often call “black style”: he dreadlocked his straight hair, tried bronzing his pale skin under a tanning machine, and diligently practiced hip-hop dance moves by viewing videos of American stars hundreds of times.


When Mr.Kai, 28, moved to New York three and a half years ago to “see with my own eyes what is going on,” his passion for hip-hop dancing took off, but he cropped his hair and let his skin go natural.


“In Japan, I thought it was cool and rebellious,” said Mr. Kai, a founder of a New York-based Japanese dance company. “Now I don’t care. It’s important what’s in the heart, not in the looks.”


The market for hip-hop music in Japan has exploded into a full-scale commercial success during the few years. Tokyo’s hip Shibuya district has more than 300 hip-hop clothing stores, artists rap in Japanese, and breakdancers regularly congregate around the city to practice moves.


Just as hip-hop has entered the Japanese mainstream culture, young people there have also become increasingly mobile and scores are coming to New York to learn about the music from the source.


“So much of culture here is in a vacuum,” said a Tokyo-based researcher of Japanese youth culture for the advertising firm Ogilvy and Mather, Conrad Persons.


“New York draws Japanese people who want to understand the roots of hip-hop because there is a real fascination with authentic sources of the music,” he added.


Some, like Mr. Kai, strive to create a career of performing to American audiences while often waiting tables on the side to make ends meet.


Others, like the Japanese emcee “Das,” who released his first album last year, “Brooklyn – The Life and Times of a Soul Revolutionary,” try to reinvent themselves as New York artists.


Miwako Hosaka, a Japanese-born student who has spent most of her life in America, has observed the boomerang phenomenon make its way from New York to Tokyo and back.


“Because Japan is such a small country in terms of land mass, once it becomes trendy, everyone just sort of picks it up. There’s now tons of Japanese hip-hop and rap artists in Japan,” Ms. Hosaka said.


When she moved to New York four years ago and began to take hip-hop dance classes, she was amazed that at least half the class would frequently be Japanese women.


Three Japanese travel agents have approached Manhattan’s Scratch DJ Academy about arranging tours, and various Japanese magazines and television stations have profiled the school.


“They obviously love hip-hop culture,” said the teacher of one class at the DJ Academy for about two-dozen students visiting from Japan, Virg Minervini.


The translators told Mr. Minervini it was the hardest job they had ever done. Words like “baby scratch” or “chirp scratch,” descriptions of ways to take two records and merge them, did not have translation into Japanese.


But in spite of the language barriers, Mr. Minervini, 26, said, the students were quick at picking up the skills as any class he had and intense learners.


The Japanese dance group Mr. Kai founded, Bi-Triangle Performance, took first place three years ago at Amateur Night of the Apollo Theater, as the only company of foreigners competing.


Still, Mr. Kai said, it has been a great challenge to keep up with the physical prowess of black American artists and to find a way to infuse the music with an original style instead of just copying American music.


For the first time in their next show, he said, they are going to use some Japanese traditional dance, along with hip-hop and jazz.


“When I was in Japan, we used to say lyrics and we didn’t understand any of what we said,” Mr. Kai said, recalling a particular incident where he was shocked to learn the meaning of certain Run DMC lyrics.


“Now that I live in New York I have to figure out what each song is about. I have to have a clear vision.”


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