Japan is currently undergoing a subtle but pervasive social upheaval, a period of broad structural reform and soul-searching triggered by the rigors of the collapse of the hyperinflated "Bubble Economy" of the late 1980s. As the nation confronts the irretrievable loss of that economic mass delusion, it is turning instead to the reclamation of a quality of life sacrificed for much of the 20 th century to national ambition for first military, and then economic pre-eminence. Historian Jeff Kingston has claimed that the ongoing changes, ranging from the reduction of working hours to the institution of freedom of information laws, have been equal in magnitude to those following the Meiji Restoration and Japan's defeat in World War II. Arguably, they represent the long-delayed fruition of postwar democratizing reforms. This dissertation examines the use to which Japanese have put American forms of popular music, particularly hip hop, in grappling with these changes. The influence of African-American music in Japan has been strong since the 1920s and 1930s, and came to full flower during and after Japan's surrender and subsequent occupation. African-American music-not just jazz, but rock, funk, and soul-eventually became a 'music of resistance,' connected to events such as the student protests that marked Japan in the 1960's, indicating the symbolic power of what black America represented for Japanese youth, over and above the political or military might of America as a nation. Hip hop, which reached Japan in the early 1980s and entered the mainstream by the mid-1990s, has shown the continued power of African-American sound and imagery in Japan. The uses and meanings of that power, though, are ambiguous. Hip hop in Japan today often means Japanese artists who imitate African-American styles and sounds. This imitation has been criticized by international commentators, condemned as contextless ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like all major undertakings, this one is the product of the effort of many people in addition to the author. Primarily, I owe thanks to the state of Iowa, whose hardworking citizens funded this research through both the University of Iowa Presidential Fellowship and various travel and research grants through the Center for Asian Pacific Studies, the Graduate College, and Student Government. More direct assistance came from the many faculty members of the University of Iowa who contributed feedback and advice. In addition to my committee members, this included Barbara Biesecker and Stephen Vlastos.

Hip hop has been a significant force in Japanese pop culture since the mid‐1990s, and now includes many esthetic and political divergences from its American origins. These include, perhaps most strikingly, a significant subgenre of right‐wing nationalist hip hop. This article examines Japan's right‐wing hip hop as an illustration of the mutability of ideology when it crosses cultural boundaries. It traces the strangeness of Japanese right‐wing hip hop to the “parallax” effect of two incommensurable views of Japan—on the one hand, as a powerful postimperial nation, and on the other, as a perennially oppressed postcolonial nation. The article traces these viewpoints' relationship to African American politics and to Western scholarship, which has significantly misrepresented Japanese hip hop.

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This article traces the technological and cultural transformation of car audio from its World War II–era status as an aid to middle-class information efficiency through a process of fragmentation, including the development of “boom cars.” These ultraloud sound systems, enabled by wartime innovations and postwar abundance, increasingly became indexes of opposition for those at the ethnic and economic margins of American life. Boom cars turned the perfected technology of hi-fi car audio outward into the streets, using sound to aggressively contest space and assert identity. These technological practices have been met with resistance from governments, continuing the centuries-long struggle for social power on the proxy battlefield of sound, and offering a template for understanding the possibilities and challenges of technological multiculturalism.

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