[Culture Op-Ed] Is It Really True That Japan Is the Original Source of K-pop Idols?

Surprisingly, this is something people often take for granted and simply accept without much question. Over the years, countless plagiarism controversies involving Japanese pop songs have only reinforced that perception. And of course, it was not limited to pop music alone. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, up to a certain point, Korean popular culture—from variety shows and dramas to films, comics, and animation—survived by repeatedly drawing enormous influence from Japanese content, or, more bluntly, by openly plagiarizing it.

That same perception has resurfaced recently in discussions about K-pop. The trigger was Arashi, Japan’s representative J-pop boy group, announcing its entry into the U.S. market. Let us look more closely at what happened.

Arashi, one of Japan’s most nationally beloved boy groups, released its first English-lyrics single, “Whenever You Call,” on September 18. With production handled by world-famous American musician Bruno Mars, and with dance practice videos and TikTok clips released “in the K-pop style,” criticism quickly emerged that the group seemed overly conscious of K-pop’s U.S. expansion model.

But the actual results fell far short of expectations. “Whenever You Call” failed to enter Billboard’s main Hot 100 chart or even its Bubbling Under chart. Its only notable achievement was reaching No. 17 on the newly created global chart excluding the United States, and No. 51 on the version including the United States. In any case, up to that point, this was really just their own matter. Whether Arashi continues trying to break into the U.S. market or whether this was merely a one-off promotional event has nothing to do with Korea or K-pop.

What actually became a sensitive issue in Korea happened during the promotional process. Below is part of an interview Arashi member Jun Matsumoto gave to the Grammy website on September 25.

“Q: With films like Parasite and groups like BTS gaining major attention and support in the United States and around the world, K-pop, Korean music, and Korean popular culture have become a genuine global cultural phenomenon. In your experience, has the growth of K-pop also affected the popularity of J-pop? Do you sense that new fans drawn in through K-pop are also discovering your music, J-pop, and Japanese culture?

A: I don’t think K-pop influences J-pop. When I listen to K-pop, I’m impressed by the skill level of certain groups in both music and dance. But more importantly, more than the phenomena happening now, I’m impressed by the fact that I am part of the legacy that created all of those phenomena. Johnny Kitagawa, the founder and manager of Johnny’s, has been producing boy groups that sing and dance for over 50 years.

What is actually more moving to me is that all the legacy Johnny built up in Asian entertainment is now shining widely in other spaces as well. Not only in Korea but around the world, people are enjoying the kind of content Johnny sparked. I’m really proud to be part of that legacy, and to see that trend continue.”

Korean K-pop fans reacted with collective outrage to these remarks, which effectively described K-pop as though it were a mere offshoot of J-pop. And this was not entirely without precedent. Johnny Kitagawa, the founder of Johnny’s mentioned by Matsumoto—who died in 2019—said in a media interview back in 2011, when K-pop was sweeping Japan and being called the “black ships of K-pop,” that “Even if people talk about the Korean Wave now, to put it bluntly, everyone is just copying us [Johnny’s].” As a result, sarcastic criticism has arisen that this philosophy—or worldview—of the company’s leadership appears to have been passed down intact to its idols.

The more closely one examines it, the less K-pop’s evolution has to do with Japan

But is Johnny’s claim actually correct? Let us first take a careful look at what Johnny’s, the male-idol-focused agency, and its founder Johnny Kitagawa really were.

Johnny Kitagawa’s real name was Hiromu Kitagawa; he was born in 1931. He was a Korean Japanese born in Los Angeles, which is why he was given the American-style name Johnny, and he insisted to the end on writing his name in American order, with the family name last. During the Korean War, he entered Korea alongside the U.S. military and even taught English to war orphans, learning Korean to a considerable level during that time as well. In short, although his nationality may have differed, he spent adolescence and youth with an American identity and was deeply influenced by American culture.

He then moved to Japan in 1955, formed an American-style rock and roll band, and after seeing the American musical film West Side Story in 1962, founded Johnny’s Office with the intention of creating a music group that would sing and dance like an American musical. Naturally, the influence of American culture remained clear throughout that process. Those efforts ultimately paid off. By the 1970s, he had produced superstars such as Hiromi Go, and in the 1980s, top-tier boy groups such as Shonentai and Hikaru Genji, becoming a giant who dominated both Japanese pop music and broadcasting. In terms of influence in Japanese popular culture today, Johnny’s is often said to be even more powerful than combining Korea’s three major K-pop companies—SM, JYP, and YG Entertainment—into one.

With that in mind, let us revisit the so-called “legacy of Johnny’s” in the history of Korean K-pop. Certainly, in K-pop’s early formation, the boy group Sobangcha, which debuted in 1987, blatantly copied Shonentai, then one of Johnny’s top boy groups in Japan. Likewise, the boy group Yacha, which debuted in 1990, extremely copied Hikaru Genji, another wildly popular Johnny’s group of the time—even copying the concept of a boy group that sings while riding roller skates. Looking only at those two cases, it would not be excessive to say that today’s K-pop is in some sense part of the legacy of Johnny’s, and more broadly of Japanese pop music.

But the real question is whether Sobangcha and Yacha can truly be regarded as the beginning of today’s K-pop. Unless one takes the simplistic view, as Jun Matsumoto appears to, that a “group that sings and dances” is the exclusive property of Johnny’s or the Japanese pop industry, the matter is far more complicated. For one obvious reason: Johnny’s did not “invent” the concept of a group that sings and dances.

In fact, there were many influences besides the Hollywood musical that inspired Johnny Kitagawa. The concept of a boy group that sings and dances had already appeared earlier in American pop. In the 1950s, Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers marked the beginning of the “boy group made up of teenage boys,” followed in the 1960s by acts such as the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys, and the Jackson 5. In the 1970s, the Latin American boy group Menudo is often cited as a case that provided numerous inspirations to Japan’s idol industry.

Even if Johnny’s was not the origin of all boy-group formats, one could still argue that Korea was at least directly influenced by the Japanese version. But if one looks carefully, that is not really true either. Strictly speaking, only Sobangcha and Yacha can realistically be branded copy groups. Beyond them, it is actually very difficult to find comparable examples.

This point is explained in considerable detail in the K-pop episode of Season 1 of the 2018 Netflix documentary Explained. The documentary identifies the birth of K-pop with Seo Taiji and Boys, who debuted in 1992. As everyone knows, Seo Taiji and Boys had almost nothing in common with Johnny’s idols, whether those that came before them or those that continued to appear afterward. Their music was rooted in hip-hop and actively adopted subgenres such as new jack swing. That is completely different from Johnny’s characteristic Europop base. The group also had an internal system in which members handled songwriting, composition, and production. This aligns with a characteristic of K-pop groups that continues to this day: most groups include members who write and compose their own music. This too differs greatly from Johnny’s idols, who simply sing what is given to them.

The biggest difference is that Johnny’s idols were created from the start for so-called all-around entertainment activities, whereas K-pop places overwhelmingly greater emphasis on music, its core profession. Even when members branch out into variety shows or acting, their activity remains centered on music, at least until the group disbands; in fact, many members and groups do not engage in such side activities at all. That is why, if one takes Korean-style idols directly into the Japanese market, they are called not idols but artists. It is because of that distinctive professionalism.

Some also point to the artificiality of agencies assembling and manufacturing groups and interpret that as the influence of Johnny’s or the Japanese pop industry. But that is also incorrect. This model in fact originated with Motown in the United States from the 1960s through the 1980s, and even Michael Jackson, the king of global pop in the 1980s, began his career at Motown. In Korea as well, this Motown system was a direct influence; Park Jinyoung, the head of JYP Entertainment, has often said that his goal is “to become Korea’s Motown.”

If one places Kim Wansun at the beginning of K-pop, its uniqueness becomes easier to understand

The more one looks, the clearer it becomes that K-pop and J-pop either arose from different backgrounds or, at the very least, that it is difficult to prove any clear line of influence from the latter to the former. Broadly speaking, both were heavily influenced by American popular music, but they diverged in how they interpreted it. There may have been a time gap, but in the end they are two different industries that began from the same motive and developed different constitutions.

The same is true even if we look at the first-generation idols generally considered the true starting point of today’s K-pop—groups such as H.O.T., Sechs Kies, S.E.S., and Fin.K.L, which appeared between 1996 and 1998. In the case of H.O.T., the group that signaled the beginning of that era, it is more accurate to see them as falling within the influence of the American boy group New Kids on the Block, which enjoyed explosive popularity in Korea from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s. There is almost nothing about them that would qualify as a copy of Japan. Their trademark socially critical lyrics, if anything, were elements considered taboo in Japan.

If one insists on identifying a Korean agency that was heavily influenced by the Japanese agency system, then strictly speaking there is really only one: SM Entertainment. But even there, the influence should be understood only at the level of marketing—how to package and sell a group made up of members in their teens and twenties. Beyond that, any influence on team formation methods or the trainee system was extremely limited, and such attempts often failed because they did not fit Korea’s cultural atmosphere.

Agencies other than SM Entertainment started from entirely different premises than their Japanese counterparts and moved in a direction of widening the gap even further. In the case of YG Entertainment in particular, one almost has to wonder where exactly any Japanese influence is supposed to be found at all.

At this point, it is worth revisiting the question of what K-pop actually is. Because that has not been properly defined, strange lines of reasoning keep emerging. K-pop needs to be understood, first of all, as something like a comprehensive artist product built on dance music and featuring highly demanding performance. That is, in fact, how K-pop is perceived not only in Korea but across the world. If so, we need to revisit those characteristics as well.

In the recently released Netflix documentary Blackpink: Light Up the Sky, Blackpink member Jennie flatly states that “what makes K-pop K-pop is the trainee system.” Certainly, from almost any angle, this is an essential component of K-pop. There is also the dimension of overseas expansion, which became K-pop’s ultimate goal. Beyond that, one can add its departure from easy-listening Europop toward sharper, edgier genres, as well as its extremely high degree of performance polish.

Seen from that angle, the artist who can truly be considered the real origin of K-pop, before the first-generation idols, is Kim Wansun, the female solo artist who debuted in 1986. Kim Wansun was in fact a model that laid out the industrial blueprint of K-pop. First, she effectively went through a trainee process long before the concept of a trainee system for high-difficulty performance even existed. There is a well-known story that, before her debut, she spent seven years doing nothing but practicing in a building in Banghak-dong under the direction of an aunt who intended to make her a star.

There is also the aspect of pioneering overseas expansion, which later became K-pop’s ultimate goal. Just two years after her debut, in 1988, she was already exploring entry into Japan and even performed the Japanese version of “Tonight” on Japanese television. Then, in 1992, at the very height of her career, she abruptly announced her retirement from the Korean market and advanced into the Chinese-speaking world. She recorded a duet with Hong Kong singer Alan Tam and released a total of three Chinese-language albums, achieving meaningful results before returning to Korea. At the time, this kind of overseas expansion at the peak of one’s domestic success was virtually unheard of and came as a shock. One could also point to her experimentation with diverse genres—such as receiving the song “Dance in the Rhythm” from rock musician Shin Jung-hyeon—as well as the advanced performance ability she honed through her own de facto trainee process.

When there is in fact such a proper “true progenitor,” trying to understand things in some other way only gives rise to strange logic like that of Jun Matsumoto or Johnny Kitagawa. Then again, given the state of the Japanese pop industry, even if Korean media had been discussing this proper origin and rationale in the same way back then, they probably would have made similar arguments anyway. Timing and jealousy always generate strange logic, and in Japan they also feed a characteristic pride over who gets to claim the mantle of “originator.”

Excessive nationalistic self-congratulation is harmful, but excessive self-mockery and self-denigration are just as harmful

There is a reason for dwelling at length on the Johnny’s case, at a time when K-pop—or rather the Korean Wave across nearly all genres of popular culture—is breaking through not only Asian entertainment as a whole but also the U.S. and European markets. It is because this provides an opportunity to examine Korea’s peculiar way of thinking about the influence of Japanese culture.

As explained at the outset, Korea has such a long history of “copying” Japanese cultural products—one need only mention that even Robot Taekwon V has been accused of plagiarizing Japan’s Mazinger Z—that whenever questions have been raised about the trajectory and originality of Korean popular culture, it has often been regarded as a kind of intellectual conscience to respond in as self-deprecating a manner as possible. The attitude that “everything was copied,” a kind of resigned self-denigration, has been treated as though it were the rational alternative to empty nationalistic hype.

Indeed, even in discussions of the relationship between enka and trot, this kind of copying narrative is treated almost as established orthodoxy; more recently, claims have even surfaced that something as loosely defined as city pop was also influenced by its Japanese counterpart. But if one looks at the substance, the former should be seen as the product of the common phenomenon of cultural sharing among neighboring countries, while the latter, like the formation of boy groups, should be understood as two different developments drawing on the same model of American culture.

Excessive nationalistic triumphalism and hollow self-consolation are harmful, but excessive self-mockery and self-denigration are no less harmful. Indeed, this may be the very point one must be most careful about when trying to understand Korean popular culture as a whole.

---

Original title: [문화칼럼] K팝 아이돌 '원조'는 일본이란 게 과연 맞는 얘긴가?

Author: Moon-won Lee

Date: 2020-10-20

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=6&idx=23181