For decades, Japan had one of the strangest advantages in the global music business: it was so successful at home that its artists did not particularly need the rest of us.
Japan built the world’s second-largest recorded music market, developed an extraordinarily durable physical music business and created its own ecosystem of labels, television programs, magazines, concerts, fan clubs, merchandise and celebrity culture. Japanese artists could become enormous stars while remaining relatively unknown to the average American listener.
Meanwhile, international fans sometimes had to work surprisingly hard just to legally listen to them.
Songs could be unavailable on global streaming services. Music videos were sometimes shortened or region-restricted. Albums had to be imported. Japanese entertainment companies could be extremely protective of their intellectual property. International promotion often felt less like an industry priority and more like something that happened when particularly determined foreign fans found a way through the walls.
Japan simply had very little economic reason to try.
That is beginning to change.
One of the clearest signs arrived this month when Tokyo entertainment company ASOBISYSTEM announced that it had established its first permanent American headquarters in Culver City, California. ASOBISYSTEM U.S.A. will handle marketing, publicity, partnerships, business development and artist support across North America. The company describes it as its largest North American investment to date.
A year earlier, ASOBISYSTEM had partnered with Singapore-based music investment company blackx specifically to expand J-pop internationally. That partnership included international fan development, new revenue opportunities and expansion of intellectual property beyond conventional music releases.
Put those two announcements together and something much larger becomes visible.
J-pop isn’t merely finding listeners outside Japan anymore. Parts of the Japanese music business are beginning to build the infrastructure necessary to actively pursue them.
Japan Had the “Luxury” of Ignoring America
To understand why this feels significant, you first have to understand just how unusual Japan’s music economy has been. Japan remains the second-largest recorded music market in the world, behind only the United States. That changes the economic calculation for Japanese artists dramatically.
Artists from smaller domestic markets eventually encounter a ceiling. If they want substantially more listeners, ticket buyers and revenue, international expansion becomes increasingly important. South Korea is perhaps the most successful Asian example. K-pop companies learned to treat overseas markets not as a bonus but as a fundamental part of the business.
Japan could afford to behave differently.
If you could sell enormous quantities of CDs, fill arenas and domes, secure lucrative endorsements and build a large fan club without leaving Japan, why reorganize your entire business for people 5,000 miles away?
There were Japanese artists with international careers, of course. Utada Hikaru attempted the American market. Puffy AmiYumi developed recognition through American television. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu toured internationally. BABYMETAL became a genuine global touring act. Japanese rock, metal, electronic music, city pop and anime-related music all developed audiences abroad.
But these successes did not transform the entire Japanese music industry into an export machine. For years, Japan essentially possessed one of the world’s greatest collections of music behind a door that international audiences occasionally discovered was locked.
ONE OK ROCK Was Doing This Before It Became Fashionable
One of the artists that demonstrated what a sustained international strategy could look like was One Ok Rock.
ONE OK ROCK formed in 2005 and debuted in 2007, eventually graduating from Japanese live houses to Budokan, arenas, stadiums and domes. But instead of treating overseas concerts as occasional prestige events, the band began building an actual touring presence abroad.
By 2015, ONE OK ROCK was announcing North American headline dates in Chicago, Toronto, New York and Maryland before joining All Time Low and Sleeping With Sirens on tour.
There is “we performed in America.” Then there is touring America repeatedly until America becomes part of your normal business. ONE OK ROCK chose the second route.
The group eventually signed a worldwide record deal and continued touring across the United States, Europe and Asia. By 2024, it was playing Los Angeles’ Kia Forum. In 2025, its North American tour included Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco and additional major markets.
They built their US audience.
That model is becoming increasingly relevant as more Japanese artists decide that international touring should be a normal extension of their careers rather than an exotic side quest.
Then the Streaming Walls Started Coming Down
Technology eventually began undermining the logic that had kept Japanese music so domestically oriented.
Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, TikTok and other global platforms removed much of the geographic friction between a Japanese song and an American listener. Anime helped enormously. So did gaming. So did TikTok.
And something else happened that Japan’s music industry could not manufacture on its own: global audiences became much more comfortable consuming entertainment in languages they did not speak.
K-pop deserves considerable credit for helping normalize that behavior in Western pop markets. BTS did not need Americans to suddenly become fluent in Korean. BLACKPINK did not need every lyric translated into English. Eventually, the language itself stopped being an automatic barrier to participation.
Anime had already spent decades performing similar cultural work for Japan. Pokémon, Dragon Ball, Naruto, One Piece, Studio Ghibli and countless other properties created generations of consumers who no longer regarded Japanese entertainment as particularly exotic.
Anime conquered a large part of the cultural territory before J-pop seriously arrived to claim it. Now the music has a much easier road.
Japanese-language music’s share of the world’s Top 10,000 streaming tracks increased from 1.3% in 2022 to 2.1% in 2023, according to Luminate data cited by Music Business Worldwide.
More recent Luminate analysis published by Billboard Japan found that J-pop streams across major international markets continued growing in 2025. In the United States alone, J-pop added roughly 600 million streams year over year across the period studied.
Those are no longer simply anecdotes about anime fans finding Japanese songs. There is measurable demand.
Fujii Kaze Showed What the New Route Can Look Like
Then there is Fujii Kaze. His international development provides an interesting contrast with the highly engineered global expansion strategies associated with idol groups.
Fujii Kaze’s music sounds unmistakably Japanese while simultaneously drawing from R&B, jazz, soul and pop. His melodic choices, phrasing and songwriting do not feel like someone sat in a boardroom and asked, “What would Americans accept?”
And Americans came anyway.
His 2025 North American schedule included Lollapalooza in Chicago, Outside Lands in San Francisco, the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles and the Balboa Theatre in San Diego, followed by additional dates in Mexico City, Atlanta and Houston and an appearance at Austin City Limits.
That followed his earlier Fujii Kaze and the piano U.S. Tour. This is where the next phase of J-pop becomes much more interesting. The question is no longer simply whether Japanese artists can attract American audiences. It is whether they can do so without sanding away the musical characteristics that made Japanese pop interesting in the first place.
Because J-Pop Really Does Sound Different
“J-pop” is an absurdly broad label. It can encompass idol music, rock, electronic music, singer-songwriters, dance groups, city pop, anime songs and music that would probably be classified completely differently if it originated somewhere else.
Still, Japanese popular music has developed recognizable musical tendencies.
J-pop frequently embraces busy arrangements, dramatic melodic movement and chord progressions that can feel unusually elaborate compared with contemporary American mainstream pop. Songs may move through several melodic ideas instead of building everything around one immediately repeatable hook. Rock instrumentation remains unusually comfortable inside mainstream Japanese pop. Jazz, funk, electronic music and orchestral arrangements can appear without anyone apparently worrying that the Spotify algorithm might become confused.
Sometimes a Japanese pop song seems to contain enough musical ideas for three American singles.
That is part of the fun.
K-pop’s international expansion often involved deliberately learning the grammar of Western pop. Korean companies hired American, British, Swedish and Norwegian songwriters, increased the use of English, collaborated with Western artists and increasingly built songs capable of moving between Seoul, Spotify and American radio.
J-pop now faces a slightly different decision.
Does it adapt itself to America? Or has America changed enough to meet J-pop somewhere in the middle? The second possibility is much more interesting.
JO1 Is Making a Serious American Move
JO1 is one of the acts testing that question from the idol side. JO1 already made an important exploratory move in 2025, when its JO1DER SHOW 2025 ‘WHEREVER WE ARE’ world tour included performances in Los Angeles and New York.
Now the experiment is becoming a strategy. JO1 has announced an official U.S. debut alongside its first U.S. EP and a five-city North American tour scheduled for October 2026. The group will perform in Toronto, New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, including Terminal 5, The Warfield and The Novo.
That progression is worth watching. First you establish that fans exist. Then you perform for them. Then you return with a larger tour. Then you release music specifically into the market.
That is how an international audience becomes a business rather than a collection of enthusiastic comments asking, “WHEN ARE YOU COMING TO AMERICA?”
JO1 is particularly interesting because the group already represents some of the increasing cross-pollination between Japanese and Korean idol systems. It was formed through Produce 101 Japan, the Japanese version of the Korean survival-show franchise, and is managed by LAPONE Entertainment, the joint venture involving Yoshimoto Kogyo and CJ ENM.
So Japan’s next generation of pop exports does not necessarily have to follow the older Japanese model or simply copy K-pop. It can take lessons from both.
Zipangu May Be an Even Bigger Symbol
Then came Zipangu 2026.
Held at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena in May, the festival brought Japanese artists directly into Southern California rather than waiting for American festivals to invite them individually. The lineup included artists such as ATARASHII GAKKO! and Yuki Chiba, among others.
That represents another evolution in strategy. An individual Japanese artist touring America is one export. A festival presenting Japanese music as a destination is something closer to exporting the ecosystem. K-pop eventually reached this stage too. Once audiences became familiar enough with Korean music, the selling point no longer had to be one specific artist. “K-pop” itself became commercially meaningful enough to support conventions, festivals, award shows, pop-up stores and multi-artist events overseas.
Zipangu asks whether Japanese music can begin doing something similar.
The name itself is wonderfully appropriate. “Zipangu” comes from an old European rendering of Japan—the distant, almost mythical land described to Western audiences centuries ago.
Now Japan is apparently bringing Zipangu to Pasadena. Marco Polo would have needed Ticketmaster.
ASOBISYSTEM Is Building the Bridge Permanently
This brings us back to ASOBISYSTEM.
The company is particularly well positioned for this moment because it has never really sold music alone. It has spent almost two decades packaging a broader version of contemporary Japanese culture.
Its roster includes Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, ATARASHII GAKKO!, FRUITS ZIPPER and producer Yasutaka Nakata. Kyary Pamyu Pamyu has completed five world tours. ATARASHII GAKKO! made its worldwide debut through American Asian-culture company 88rising, performed at Coachella in 2024 and completed a 26-city world tour.
ASOBISYSTEM also grew from Harajuku culture. Founder Yusuke Nakagawa is credited with helping popularize the aomoji-kei fashion movement and sits on the Japanese government’s Cool Japan Public-Private Partnership Platform.
That background matters because the global opportunity surrounding Japanese music extends far beyond streams. Japan possesses an extraordinary cultural ecosystem around music: fashion, anime, manga, character IP, gaming, food, design, merchandise and highly developed fan experiences.
ASOBISYSTEM and blackx explicitly said their partnership would explore IP development and cross-industry collaborations rather than limiting itself to traditional music activities.
In other words, they are not simply asking Americans to listen to Japanese songs. They are looking at how to monetize the entire culture surrounding them.
Culver City is not a random place to attempt it. ASOBISYSTEM’s new headquarters sits in an entertainment cluster that includes Sony Pictures, Apple, Amazon MGM Studios, TikTok and HBO, while Apple Music operates a studio in the city.
If you want collaborations, brand partnerships, streaming relationships, publicity and entertainment-industry connections, being physically present makes conversations considerably easier.
Apparently Zoom meetings from Tokyo eventually have their limits.
Japan Is Beginning to Treat Music as an Export Industry
There is also a larger economic story developing behind these individual companies.
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has begun measuring the overseas performance of the country’s music industry much more systematically. Its recently published study estimated that Japanese music generated ¥123.95 billion in overseas sales in 2024, excluding spending by foreign visitors inside Japan. Include inbound tourist spending and the figure rises to ¥151.67 billion.
Streaming and user-generated video accounted for ¥53.06 billion in overseas sales under the study’s methodology, while international live activity and related streaming generated ¥51.51 billion.
Perhaps the most revealing part of the government report is that Japan acknowledged it previously lacked industry-wide statistical data capable of properly measuring international expansion.
Think about that for a moment. One of the world’s largest music industries is only now building better systems to understand how much money its music makes overseas.
That tells you something about where the industry’s attention historically lived.
At home.
Japan Already Exported the Culture. Now It Is Exporting the Musicians
This may ultimately be J-pop’s greatest advantage. Japan does not need to introduce Japanese culture to America from zero. It has spent decades doing that accidentally.
American children watched Pokémon before they knew what J-pop was. Teenagers discovered Japanese songs through anime openings. Gamers heard Japanese composers for hundreds of hours. Fashion audiences learned Harajuku. Internet communities rediscovered city pop. TikTok introduced old Japanese songs to people who had not been alive when those songs were originally released.
Anime, Manga, and Japanese games went mainstream. Japanese food became ordinary in American cities, and Japanese fashion became influential.
The musicians are arriving in a market where enormous amounts of cultural groundwork have already been completed for them. The missing piece was often not demand. It was access and infrastructure.
That is what makes ASOBISYSTEM opening an office in California more interesting than the opening of an office normally deserves to be. The office itself is boring. What it represents isn’t.
J-Pop Should Be Careful What It Learns From K-Pop
There will inevitably be comparisons with K-pop, and there should be. South Korea built perhaps the most sophisticated Asian music-export system the modern industry has ever seen.
Japan would be foolish not to study it. But copying it too closely could also erase one of Japan’s strongest competitive advantages. J-pop does not need to become K-pop with Japanese lyrics.
The Japanese music ecosystem has its own sound, performance traditions, idol culture, rock history, visual language and relationship between artists and fans. The eccentricity that sometimes made Japanese entertainment difficult to export is also part of what makes it interesting once people discover it.
ATARASHII GAKKO! is a perfect example. Their international appeal does not come from looking or behaving exactly like an American pop group. Quite the opposite.
Fujii Kaze doesn’t need to become Bruno Mars.
ONE OK ROCK did not build an international career by pretending Tokyo was Los Angeles.
And JO1’s most interesting future in America probably isn’t becoming indistinguishable from the Korean groups that helped make Asian boy bands commercially viable there.
The real test is whether American audiences are ready to accept Japanese pop on Japanese terms.
America May Finally Be Ready for the Creative Weirdness
For most of modern pop history, breaking America generally required artists to move toward American tastes.
Streaming has complicated that relationship.
Listeners now discover music individually rather than waiting for American radio programmers, television executives or record stores to decide which foreign artists deserve access. TikTok does not particularly care what language the chorus uses. Spotify does not require a passport. YouTube can turn a Japanese performance into someone’s obsession in Ohio at three in the morning.
That environment rewards music that is distinctive enough to interrupt the endless stream of everything else.
And Japanese music has distinctive covered.
The same qualities that once made J-pop seem difficult to translate internationally—its dense compositions, theatricality, eccentric presentation, genre mixing and willingness to be aggressively Japanese—may now become advantages.
ASOBISYSTEM establishing a permanent American headquarters, JO1 preparing an official U.S. debut, Zipangu bringing Japanese artists together in California, Fujii Kaze moving through major American festivals and venues, and veterans such as ONE OK ROCK continuing to tour North America are not isolated stories.
They look increasingly like pieces of the same transition.
Japan spent decades building one of the world’s biggest music industries without needing America.
Now it wants America too.
The fascinating part will not be discovering whether J-pop can sound enough like American pop to succeed here. We already have an almost unlimited supply of American pop. The experiment worth watching is whether something unmistakably Japanese can enter the American mainstream without first becoming less Japanese.
Because after decades of making international fans come looking for Japanese music, Japan finally appears ready to bring the music to them.
And America may finally be weird enough to say yes.
