Why Do Japanese K-Pop Releases Get Ignored?

There are some of you out there who know that my journey into K-Pop came from my interest in anime and therefore J-Rock and J-Pop (thanks to the opening and ending songs of certain songs). This is the case for a lot of us K-Pop fans from the 2000s. People don’t realise how difficult it was to try and fully listen to a high quality anime OP that wasn’t the “TV size” version (basically, the version of the song made for the anime) or a short PV as YouTube was still relatively new as a platform (we’re talking during the years when I was at university, so 2006 - 2009) as Japanese music companies were not seeing it as useful platform at the time and overall the Japanese music market was pretty much self sufficient that it didn’t need to market its artists outside of Japan. In fact, even now Japanese is still the second biggest music market globally behind the United States and in front of the United Kingdom.

Still, despite its inaccessibility, people of the West still tried to listen to the music as best as they could. And it was only until years later that I realised there were a lot of Japanese songs that I enjoyed that were performed by Korean artists. In fact, I was a long time fan of BoA (I LOVED Inuyasha, you see…) before realising, after I got into K-Pop fully, that she was actually a Korean artist and not actually Japanese. But it was due to the difficulty of listening to these songs on the services we had access to outside of Japan which gave the rise to K-Pop as an industry internationally. Where I would be struggling to find the full discographies of FLOW, NICO Touches The Walls, or T.M Revolution to add to my iPod Touch without using illegal means, companies like SM Entertainment were already uploading music videos to YouTube and songs to the Apple Music store. K-Pop even appeared in Spotify earlier, with playlists appearing in 2014 whereas Spotify Japan was launched in 2016 with very limited availability since, even to this day, consumers in Japan prefer physical sales as opposed to digital streaming or downloads.

I do think this is part of the reason why several K-Pop fans tend to ignore the Japanese releases from their favourite groups. With the way that K-Pop is marketed domestically and internationally, it is easy to access and follow the promotion cycle by following their socials, watching promotional videos on YouTube, and discussing with fans on various portals. But Japanese releases are marketed differently. Their promotional cycle is done differently as the focus is on physical sales and direct fan interactions. Sometimes you would see an idol group having a special event that allows 1-on-1 photo opportunities with your faves; some of them even being big names. However, these opportunities do not exist domestically, much to the chagrin of home grown fans. This certainly is a reason why many of the domestic fans ignore Japanese releases by their faves (among other reasons, but that is a conversation for another day).

But what about the international fans? Why do you never really hear a K-Pop fan say that their favourite song from their bias group is a Japanese release? 

I truly believe it boils down to one thing - inaccessibility due to language limitations from the specific divisions. Korean companies are especially good these days for making sure that key information for promotions, appearances, or any general activity that may be of interest to fans are also available in English (as the de facto global language). This widens the outreach and helps spread the international word as others would be more in tune with translating into their native language from English. However, the Japanese market (and therefore their fandom space) is pretty self-sufficient so companies may feel like there is no need to include any further outside promotion for the release in question. It is in Japanese, so it will specifically be for Japanese audiences only.

Great, so the Japanese releases work as they are for the Japanese audiences. But the way the releases and promotions are so Japanese coded, many fans end up either ignoring or outright missing great tracks from artists who have a fantastic Japanese discography. And I don’t mean songs that have a Korean and Japanese version, but songs and albums that are specifically Japanese only. For example, she may be Korea’s darling, but I am not a great fan of IU’s domestic releases. However, the first time I went to Tokyo, Japan in 2013 I remember seeing a promotional truck playing snippets of her song ‘Monday Afternoon’. I fell in love with it so much that I marched into Tower Records the next day to purchase it. Also, as much as I love SHINee’s discography, their Japanese songs just hit a little bit different for me compared to their more widely known Korean songs. I have special memories tied to ‘3, 2, 1’, ‘Your Number’ and their Christmas ballad, ‘Melody’ (I cry every time I hear that song). On top of that, I don’t think I personally know a single ARMY that knows of BTS’s ‘Stay Gold’ (and I know a lot of ARMY)- but it’s such a great track.

This year there have been some great releases, too. I was OBSESSED with BOYNEXTDOOR’s ‘Count To Love’ this summer as it felt like an old school J-Pop release; something that I would have listened to non-stop in my room at uni back in the mid 2000s. And of course I have to mention ATEEZ as their Japanese album Ashes To Light may be my most played album this year. The track ‘FACE’ is my standout song from that album, but all of them are amazing. And considering this year they gave us both ‘Lemon Drop’ and ‘In Your Fantasy’ as superb Korean and English title tracks, it says a lot that their best work this year was from a Japanese release. Something that I did not see a lot of non-Japanese ATINY talk about.

So, will this change in the future? Well, Japanese music as a whole is becoming more accessible as time goes on with companies like AVEX finally uploading discographies of their artists onto streaming platforms but I think it will still be a case of if you don’t seek it out, you won’t find it. Japan pretty much operates on an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” vibe and it works for them just fine if the size and the revenue generated by their music industry is anything to go by. 

I just wish that it didn’t mean epic classics end up getting missed or ignored by the masses.