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The King and the Wave: Michael Jackson’s Influence on K-pop

When BTS performed at the 2019 Billboard Music Awards and Michael Jackson’s estate published a statement calling them “true artists who embody the spirit of MJ,” few in the audience understood the depth of what was being acknowledged. It was not flattery. It was recognition of a lineage, a transmission of artistic values that had crossed the Pacific and been absorbed, transformed, and exported back to the world. Michael Jackson died in 2009. K-pop, in the form the world now recognizes it, was only beginning to take its global shape. And yet Jackson’s shadow had already been cast long and deep across the Korean entertainment industry, shaping the very training philosophies, performance aesthetics, and commercial strategies that would eventually produce the Korean Wave known as Hallyu. To understand why, one must look not only at who cited him but at what the Korean idol system was fundamentally trying to achieve, and how Jackson had already solved many of the same problems decades ear...
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Jazz Kissaten as Living Archives: Listening, Memory, and Cultural Ownership in Contemporary Tokyo and Yokohama

Introduction In contemporary Tokyo and Yokohama, a quietly distinctive cultural institution continues to resist the rhythms of modern urban life. Jazz kissaten, small, dimly lit listening cafés dedicated to the concentrated experience of recorded jazz, occupy a singular position within Japan’s cultural landscape. Neither concert halls nor ordinary cafés, these spaces operate according to their own internal logic: curated music selections, carefully constructed atmospheres, and an unspoken discipline of listening that transforms the act of hearing into something closer to collective contemplation. At a time when music consumption has become increasingly privatized and algorithmically mediated, the persistence of jazz kissaten raises a compelling question: how do these spaces continue to reproduce their cultural meaning, and through what practices do they sustain a shared listening culture across generations? The first cafés focused on playing recorded jazz opened in Japan in the late ...
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