Speakers
Akitsugu Kawamoto
Aki received BA and MA from Keio University in Tokyo and PhD from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His doctoral dissertation analyzes the music of Keith Emerson in detail. Aki is the author of Making J-POP (Tokyo: Artes, 2013, written in Japanese). Currently teaching music theory and popular music at Ferris University in Yokohama (Japan), he is researching the history of Japanese progressive rock and trying to reassess it within the history of popular music in the country.
Art of Life and Progressive Metal in Japan
​
Akitsugu Kawamoto
Art of Life was the 1993 album by X Japan, one of the best selling Japanese rock bands. It includes only the title track of 29 minutes. Recorded with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, the work consists of three movements, with the middle movement featuring piano improvisation and the outer movements playing heavy metal. Having topped the Japanese hit chart, “Art of Life” certainly helped make them known as one of the representative Japanese progressive metal bands.
Since “Art of Lie” is neither the first progressive metal work in the world nor in Japan, it seems to be created under the influence of both foreign and domestic precursors. On the one hand, Yoshiki, the primary composer of the group, in fact cites foreign bands such as Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Iron Maiden, and the Beatles, as the source of influence. On the other hand, “Art of Life” seems to be adapted to conventional Japanese metal styles. Earlier Japanese heavy metal groups such as Loudness, Anthem, and Vow Wow had already incorporated progressive-rock elements, and X Japan’s work alludes to their melodic, harmonic, and textural construction. Perhaps “Art of Life” sold well in Japan because the band did not ignore conventional Japanese rock styles when they imported the foreign style.
In order to understand exactly what musical styles are mixed into “Art of Life,” the paper will analyze the piece in detail and identify the various stylistic references to Western art music, British and American progressive metal, and Japanese heavy metal music. Also analyzing some other songs by X Japan as well as the other Japanese metal bands, the paper concludes with an observation that Japanese progressive metal seems to deal with both British-American influences on the one hand and Japanese influences on the other.
​
Keywords: Japanese prog metal, X Japan, musical structure, influence