Last month, I was invited to speak at the inaugural Tokyo Dance Music Event — a conference consisting of workshops and talks, loosely modeled on long-running international equivalents like the Amsterdam Dance Event.

On the first morning of the two-day program, I was asked to detail an overview of the club music landscape in Tokyo — something that I first experienced nearly a decade ago, and have been involved with to varying degrees as a journalist, DJ and punter ever since.

In many ways, 2016 was a positive year for club music in Japan.