Traditional Pop Music of Japan

After the Meiji revitalization brought into the western musical instruction, a bureaucrat known as Izawa Shuji compiled songs like Auld Lang Syne and commissioned songs using a pentatonic melody. The western music, especially the military marches, soon became famous in Japan. Two major types of music that established during this era were shoka, which was composed to bring western music to schools, and gunka which are military marches with some Japanese elements.

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As Japan stirred towards representative democracy in the late 19^th century, leaders employed singers to sell copies of songs that aired their messages, since the leaders themselves were usually prohibited from speaking in public. The street artists were known as enka-shi, also at the end of the 19^th century, an Osakan form of street corner singing became famous, this was called rokyoku, and this includes the two Japanese musicians such as Yoshida Naramaru and Tochuken Kumoemon.

Westernized pop music is known as kayokyoku, which is said to have and first emerged in a dramatization of resurrection by Tolstoy. The song Kachusha no Uta, composed by Shinpei Nakayama was sung by Sumako Matsui in the year 1914. The song became a hit among the enka-shi and was one of the first major best-selling records in Japan. Ryukoka, which adopted the western classical music, made waves across the country during the prewar era, Ichiro Fujiyama became famous in the prewar era, but war songs later became famous when the World War II arose.

Kayokyoku became a major industry, especially after the arrival of the superstar Misora Hibari, in the 1950s, tango and other types of Latin music, especially Cuban music, became very well-known in Japan. A distinctively Japanese type of tango is known as dodompa which is also established. Kayokyoku became associated entirely with the traditional Japanese structures, while more western-style music was known as Japanese pop or simply called Jpop. Enka music, adopting the Japanese traditional structures, became quite famous in the postwar era; however its popilarity has waned since the 1970s and enjoys little favour with the current youth. The popular enka singers include Hibari Misora, Kiyoshi Hikawa, Ikuzo Yoshi, and Kitajima Saburo.