Visual-Kei: Japan's Androgynous Rock Genre and Its Appeal

Introduction to Visual-Kei

Music has long held great significance in Japanese culture — not simply music with high artistic aspirations, but Japanese popular music as well. One genre unique to Japan is visual-kei, a style of music featuring heavily made-up and elaborately costumed male performers who cater to a largely female audience. The male performers appear feminine and youthful and offer a romantic yet safe fantasy for their female followers. Band members are said to embody the androgynous princes of comic books aimed at young girls and are "notorious for their gravity-defying hairstyles, flamboyant clothes and outrageous make-up — which could be interpreted as both warrior-like and hyper-feminine" (Bissoux).

Unlike traditional boy bands, the gothic appearance and hard rock sound of visual-kei make performers in this genre vehicles of youthful defiance, even while their sexuality remains sufficiently ambiguous to be non-threatening.

Origins and Aesthetic Characteristics

The band X Japan is considered the first visual-kei band and is still releasing singles today. Its surface aesthetic recalls that of stadium and glam rock in the United States. As noted by Bissoux (2015), when observing a visual-kei band: "It would be easy to presume at least one of these band members we're describing is a woman, or that they're playing at a Halloween hair metal concert in 1987 — or even that this is some kind of performance art show."

Unlike American hair rock bands, Japanese visual-kei is distinctive in the extreme androgyny and femininity of its band members' appearances. Indeed, more so than the music itself, the visual presentation of visual-kei bands is considered critical to the genre's appeal. "Visual-kei goes one step further in blurring the genders through cross-dressing and androgyny," compared to American bands with a similarly gothic appearance, "and it's a theme that works for many of the bands' story concepts, and also supports the Japanese appetite for idols and appreciation of male beauty and youth" (Bissoux).

Visual-Kei Versus Western Androgyny

Some Western musicians — such as David Bowie and Prince — also cultivated androgynous images, but visual-kei employs a particularly feminine, theatrical aesthetic that lacks the overt sexual edge of those artists. Where Western glam and rock androgyny often carried an air of provocation and adult sexuality, visual-kei's androgyny is more decorative and romantic, calibrated to the sensibilities of a young female audience steeped in Japanese idol culture.

Conclusion: Freedom, Fantasy, and Female Fandom

The final scene of the video depicts a masquerade ball in which the lead singer wears a long, black bejeweled Restoration-style coat and a crucifix necklace as he looks deeply into the eyes of a blonde woman dressed in a similar style. The video associates Western foreignness — embodied by the woman and the cars — with freedom, alongside the gender-defying appearance of the band. As the lyrics suggest, the song celebrates freedom from conventional dictates, yet does so in a relatively non-threatening fashion given the highly feminized appearance of the performers.

Visual-kei thus offers a safe space for female fans to experiment with identity and defiance without the threat of overt, overpowering masculine sexuality. It combines the appeal of Japanese boy bands with that of traditional American rock: unlike boy bands, it is not sanitized or wholesome, yet it lacks the more mature sexuality found in much of mainstream rock and roll.

Works Cited

Bissoux, Bunny. "The Appeal of Visual Kei." Time Out Japan. 11 Jun 2015. Web. 20 Oct 2016.

"Born to be Free." X Japan. Youtube. 16 Oct 2016. Web. 20 Oct 2016.