At the edge of East Asia, vastly separated culturally and geographically from London, the Japanese dubstep scene is flourishing. Although not much older than the mecca-like London dubstep scene, Tokyo's dubstep culture is growing fast. Japanese and foreign DJs, promoters and producers built the scene from the ground up and are beginning to export Japanese dubstep to the world, here are their stories.

One of the few foreigners active in Tokyo dubstep culture is DJ / producer Harikiri. Now back in his native London, he injected new energy into the Tokyo scene last summer when he started the monthly Dubcake parties. With a possible nod at destiny his artist name means "full of passion" in Japanese.  

"Most of my contact with dubstep has been through the scene in Japan," he says, "and in Tokyo people are more cooperative. I showed my music to some producers over noodles, said I wanted to start a night and they said they wanted to help. But in London it's just words, offers to help don't lead to anything. These Japanese guys researched clubs and did so much for the night. It would take a month to do that in London, it took a week in Japan.  Even though it's mad expensive they cooperate more to make the night happen."

Probably as a result of the newness of Tokyo dubstep and its distance from England Harikiri is surprised at the scene's narrow musical range: "Japanese people haven't heard the whole spectrum of music that goes into dubstep. There are so many styles of dubstep in London but only two styles of dubstep are coming up in Japan – the wobble style and the dubby style."  

Harikiri implies that the wobble sound has become popular because sound systems can support it easier: "Bass-heavy tunes aren't as good on these new systems because they've lost their edge. Before in London there was huge emphasis on big sound systems but as the scene grew and more tunes had more midrange and bass the scene lost the focus on sound systems. But Club Asia has the best sound system I've heard in Japan. It's great for dubstep."

Harikiri touches on the contentious issue of vinyl vs. digital and how that plays out in Japan: "In the dubstep scene there are two camps: those who DJ vinyl but also secretly DJ CDs, and the new breed of DJs who only use CDs. In the new mp3 culture people can put out anything even if it's crap. Paying for dubplates was a form of quality control. In Japan people are excited to use different technologies and there is no taboo about mixing CDs instead of vinyl but in London you would get no respect for that."

As to where the scene will go in the future, his reflections are mixed: "It's great that lots of women go to dubstep events here unlike London because of the testosterone-laden grime raves which women don't tend to like. The lack of vocals in dubstep will prevent it from getting bigger here. DJ culture needs more respect. The idea of quitting your day job and becoming a full-time DJ isn't popular in Japan."

Words: Blair McBride

 

• Harikiri

Related Links:

• Japanese Dubstep: Greg G
• Japanese Dubstep: Goth-trad
• Japanese Dubstep: Hyaku-mado
• Japanese Dubstep: Ena
• Virus Night In Tokyo

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