ABSTRACT
The year 2013 proved a record-setting year in Japanese popular music. Guinness World Records, in its announcement of Johnny Hiromu Kitagawa's world records, referred to him as a Los Angeles native. And Hikaru Utada was also a Japanese-American, having been born and raised in New York City. A study of the U. S.-Japan music connection discloses that, because much Japanese popular music was part of a larger global web of world music, labels of national origin like "Japanese" or "American" hide the true transnational nature of popular music. Kitagawa's sojourn to Japan as a U. S. official shows the role of the American military in postwar Japanese popular music. Utada Hikaru represents another case of the "Pop Pacific" at work, hybridizing and domesticating American influences, and shows how popular music reflects general changes in Japan's worldviews. Her success, like that of Kitagawa, also shows the process of hybridization and cultural concealment.
