午夜剧场

The prototype for this book originated from a request to write a three-part column series following Donald Trump's election in late 2016.

The primary reason I believed this theme was worthy of a book on contemporary American music culture was the change in the media environment surrounding music.

The 2010s can be seen as the final stage of the music industry's adaptation to the internet, which emerged at the end of the last century. During this period, music shifted from something one "purchases" to something one "accesses" through file sharing, paid downloads, and streaming.

I overlapped this transition with the American music industry during the World War II era. In the 1940s, when the new medium of radio became widespread, intense conflicts such as boycotts and strikes occurred between interest groups representing composers, performers, and the radio industry. However, this chaos changed the distribution channels for music and ultimately triggered the birth of a new genre: rock and roll. Will the emergence of streaming media lead to the rise of a new kind of music?

Since the 1990s, the growth of minority populations, including Hispanics and Asians, has also had a major impact on the entertainment industry. Latin American rhythms such as reggaeton and Latin trap became prominent in the U.S. music scene, and the "visibility" of Asian actors in the film and television industries became obvious to everyone. While the birth of the Trump administration can be seen as a resistance to such trends, political backlash and cultural transformation also emerged as important themes shaping this book.

Initially, I intended to compile the book in a year or two, but circumstances prevented this, and I finished the final two chapters in the United States during my first sabbatical in ten years. Although Harvard University, where I was a visiting scholar, remained under lockdown, the progress of digitizing literature allowed me to browse many materials without visiting the library—the keyword for the final chapter discussing the pandemic is "disembodiment." Though coincidental, witnessing the COVID-19 pandemic, the BLM movement, Trump's defeat, and the birth of the Biden administration on the ground became the decisive factor in bringing the writing of this book to a close.

Toshiyuki Ohwada

Chikuma Shobo

248 pages, 1,760 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are as of the time of publication.