• Date: September 18th, Friday, 2026, 14:00 – 16:30
• Location: Room 304, SNUAC (Bldg. 101)

The global revival of Japanese City Pop has often been explained through internet circulation, vaporwave aesthetics, and an imagined nostalgia for 1980s Japan. After briefly reviewing these existing interpretations, this lecture explores the role of the musicians who created City Pop’s distinctive sound. Situating the genre within the emergence of nyū myūjikku (New Music) in the 1970s, I examine how freelance studio musicians transformed Japanese popular-music production through collaborative “head arrangements,” rhythmic experimentation, and the adaptation of American soul, funk, AOR, and jazz fusion. Although these musicians generally remained invisible to the wider public, their individual styles formed audible signatures that became central to City Pop’s identity. This emphasis on musical production also provides a basis for examining City Pop’s connections with K-Pop. In particular, I consider how City Pop’s sounds and imagery—as well as the forms of nostalgia associated with the genre—have been incorporated into selected K-Pop productions. How does this Korean reinterpretation resemble, and how does it differ from, the global image of City Pop produced through its recent revival? By tracing these processes of musical and cultural translation, I argue that City Pop is best understood not as a fixed national genre but as an evolving field of transnational exchange, collaborative authorship, and fabricated memory.