If offered the chance to visit any time and place in the 20th century, I'd go to Japan in the mid-1980s.
Friends who actually lived there in that era, when that country's economic bubble hit maximum inflation before bursting into the "lost decade" of the 1990s, tell me things could get pretty vulgar there as a result, but I still want to experience it firsthand.
Yōko Oginome
The Japanese passages of Chris Marker's Sans soleil take me back, in a way, to that explosive time of exuberant fashion, innovative electronics, and expansive city-building, but (try as I might) I can't watch it every day.
Hence the need for a mix of Japanese 1980s funk like this one, which comes in a part one and a part two. Some wags out there might dismiss the very concept of "Japanese funk," let alone "Japanese 1980s funk," as a contradiction in terms, but they said the same thing about Japanese jazz, and how Japan boasts perhaps the most robust jazz culture in the entire world.
Toshiki Kadomatsu
This mix curates a selection of jams in a mixture of both Japanese and English — English used creatively, as often Japan does — which will put you right back in the middle of the bubble, featuring performers like Yoko Oginome, Toshiki Kadomatsu, Anri, Masayoshi Takanaka, and even the Los Angeles Japanese-American band Hiroshima: all names that, if we have anything in common at all, will soon mean something to you.
Yoko Oginome
