Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between October 2013 and October 2017 in Hokkaido, northern Japan, this paper explores the trajectories of individuals engaging in hip hop music. Participant observation and narratives indicate that the majority of individuals work as regular members of society (shakaijin) and only pursue hip hop in their free time. The paper highlights the intricate entanglement of individuals in subordination to mainstream values despite their references to elements of resistance. I contend that in contrast to previous generations of hip hoppers who chose to lead lives of open resistance to mainstream values, contemporary youth who largely belong to the “Generation Resignation” (satori sedai) prefer to engage in practices of resistance that may not be evident rather than overt contestation of societal conventions.
AdedejiW (2013) African popular culture and the path of consciousness: Hip hop and the culture of resistance in Nigeria. Postcolonial Text8(3&4): 1–18.
2.
AppertCM (2016) Locating hip hop origins: Popular music and tradition in Senegal. Africa86(2): 237–262.
3.
BeerD (2014) Hip-hop as urban and regional research: Encountering an insider’s ethnography of city life. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(2): 677--685. Available at: https://Onlinelibrary.wiley.com (accessed 6 December 2018).
4.
BennettA (1999) Hip hop am main: The localization of rap music and hip hop culture. Media, Culture & Society21: 77–91.
5.
BennettA (2002) Researching youth culture and popular music: A methodological critique.British Journal of Sociology53(3): 451–466.
6.
BestK (2007) Hip-hop on the east side: A multi-sited ethnography of breakdancing and rap music from St. John’s and Grand Falls, Newfoundland. Newfoundland and Labrador Studies22(1): 315–334. Available at: journals.lib.unb.ca (accessed 6 December 2018).
7.
BhabhaH (1985) Signs taken for wonders: Questions of ambivalence and authority under a tree outside Delhi. Critical Inquiry12(1): 144–165.
8.
CondryI (2001) Japanese hip-hop and the globalization of popular culture. In: GmelchGZennerW (eds) Urban Life: Readings in the Anthropology of the City. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, pp.357–387.
9.
CondryI (2006) Hip-Hop Japan Rap and the Paths of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press.
10.
DasguptaR (2000) Performing masculinities? The ‘Salaryman’ at work and play. Japanese Studies20(2): 189–200.
11.
DruryM (2017) Counterorienting the war on terror: Arab hip hop and diasporic resistance. Journal of Popular Music Studies29(2): 1–11.
12.
FoucaultM (1978) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Random House.
GillT (2003) When pillars evaporate: Structuring masculinity on the Japanese margins. In: RobersonJSuzukiN (eds) Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan. London: RoutledgeCurzon, pp.144–161.
15.
GreenA (2017) The ethnography of hip hop Nostalgia: Indigeneity, intimacy and ‘roots’ in Mexico. Suomen Antropologi42(2): 43–59.
16.
GuarneBHansenP (eds) (2018) Escaping Japan: Reflections on Estrangement and Exile in the Twentieth-First Century. Japan Anthropology Workshop Series. London and New York: Routledge.
17.
HaenflerR (2014) Subcultures: The Basics. Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
18.
HanB-C (2019) Vom Verschwinden der Rituale: Eine Topologie der Gegenwart [The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present]. Berlin: Ullstein.
19.
HidakaT (2010) Salaryman Masculinity: The Continuity and Change in Hegemonic Masculinity in Japan. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishing.
20.
HoS-L (2015) ‘License to drink’: White-collar female workers and Japan’s urban night space. Ethnography6(1): 25–50.
IngoldT (2014) That’s enough about ethnography. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory4: 383–395.
23.
KurotaniS (2005) Home Away from Home: Japanese Corporate Wives in the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
24.
LamotteM (2014) Rebels without a pause: Hip-hop and resistance in the city. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research38(2): 686–694.
25.
ManabeN (2015) Japanese hip-hop: Alternative stories. In: WilliamsJA (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 243–255.
26.
MatsueJ (2009) Making Music in Japan’s Underground: The Tokyo Hardcore Scene. New York and Abingdon: Routledge.
27.
MaxwellI (2009) True to the music: Authenticity, articulation and authorship in Sydney hip hop culture. Social Semiotics4(1–2): 117–137.
28.
MintzSPriceR (1992) The Birth of African American Culture. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
29.
MorrisD (2010) Minzoku madness: Hip hop and Japanese national subjectivity. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Iowa, USA, p. 256.
30.
MullaneyJL (2012) All in time: Age and temporality of authenticity in the straight-edge music scene. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography41(6): 611–635.
31.
OrtnerS (1995) Resistance and the problem of ethnographic refusal. Comparative Studies in Society and History37(1): 173–193.
32.
PerryI (2004) Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
33.
PersleyN (2015) Hip-hop theater and performance. In: WilliamsJA (ed) The Cambridge Companion to Hip-Hop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 85–98.
34.
PieterseE (2010) Hip-hop cultures and political agency in Brazil and South Africa. Social Dynamics36(2): 428–447.
35.
RoseT (2008) The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop – And Why It Matters. New York: Basic Civitas.
36.
RosenbergerN (2013) Dilemmas of Adulthood: Japanese Women and the Nuances of Long-Term Resistance. Honolulu: Hawaii University Press.
37.
SchneidermannN (2014) ‘Mic Power’: ‘Public’ connections through the hip hop nation in Kampala. Ethnography15(1): 88–105.
38.
ScottJ (1985) Weapons of the Weak: Everybody Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press.
VitoC (2015) Who said hip-hop was dead? The politics of hip-hop culture in immortal technique’s lyrics. International Journal of Cultural Studies18(4): 395–411.
41.
WatkinsS (2005) Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
