The Sonic Forging of the Bubble: Cultural Production and Media Ecology in Japanese City Pop

Abstract

This study aims to move beyond the reductionist narrative that simplistically views Japanese City Pop music as a passive reflection of economic prosperity by integrating the perspectives of cultural production theory and media ecology. This paper proposes that City Pop was the product of a deep intertwinement between the specific industrial capital logic of 1980s Japan and the emerging technological environment of privatized, mobile media. Through a meticulous analysis of four core artists—Kawai Naoko (かわい なおこ), Matsubara Miki (まつばら みき), Murashita Kōzō (むらした こうぞう), and Aran Tomoko (あらん ともこ)—and their representative works, it empirically reveals how economic capital was transformed into an audible "polished sound" through the Fordist production system of the recording industry, and how media technologies like the Walkman and car audio systems inversely defined the music's listening aesthetics and urban imagery. The research further indicates that the global revival of City Pop in the digital age is not merely a nostalgic resurgence. Instead, it represents the value circulation and re-creation of its intrinsic properties as high-fidelity "sonic capital" within the new media ecology constituted by streaming and digital sampling, while also serving as contemporary material for Japan's "Cool Japan" cultural strategy. This study provides an analytical model rich in both theoretical depth and empirical density for understanding the dynamic, non-deterministic constructive relationships between the economic base, technological media, and cultural forms.