Inside Hot Wax, a hip music shop in Shibuya's Udagawa-cho, the wet, modern sounds of Ryukyu Underground's "Tinsagu nu Hana Dub" wash over racks of used records, compact discs and a half-dozen music lovers. One of the browsers, a young woman, describes the music as "like summer with the windows open."
Daisuke Hattori, the shop's manager and a professional DJ, listens carefully to the music. After a few long moments, he pushes his baseball cap back, nods and says. "I can see they've done this respectfully. Okinawan music has its own swing, and this music respects that."
Hattori speaks in a guarded, almost proprietary way that suggests he does not take the appropriation of traditional music lightly. When told that the music was created by two gaijin, he says, "I think that's great. That's globalization."