ABSTRACT
In 1990 novelist Ashihara Sunao won the Bungei Literature Prize for Jangling Strings of Youth, the story of a group of electric guitar fans in Kagawa, Shikoku who form a Ventures cover band in their high school. The ereki bumu and the intense interest in the electric guitar that it triggered among young Japanese males deserves attention as a cultural phenomenon shaping life for high school and university age boys, and one which continues to resonate within the nation's popular culture. While a student at Meiji University in Tokyo, Terauchi Takeshi was swept along by the rockabilly boom, and, by his early twenties, he already earned a good living playing at American military bases and dance halls. While electronic instruments of all kinds have already displaced it as the primary instrument of pop music creation, its iconic status within entire range of rock and pop music production and its ability to electrify the new generations of Japanese teenagers remains unchallenged.
