Trends come and go in Japan, but the Eurobeat goes on.
The BPM-busting style of dance music is encoded in J-pop’s DNA, and the sights and sounds associated with the genre have helped define how people remember the 1990s. Picture huge clubs full of revelers showing off their para para dance skills while hit songs produced by Tetsuya Komuro block out any worries about post-bubble economic woes.
“They were very happy times,” Akira Yokota, better known as DJ Boss (stylized in all caps), tells The Japan Times as he waxes nostalgic over the dawn of the Heisei Era (1989-2019). “In the ’90s, the bubble collapsed. But at the clubs, nobody felt that until the middle of the decade. It was still a vibrant time for nightlife.”