[Graduating From Partying?] The Real Reason Japan's Clubs Are Behind Europe and the US [A Conspiracy in Education]

I came across this article.

New research has been published suggesting that more than 3.7 million people aged 45 and over living in the UK may be visiting a club at least once a week.

(omitted)

When the survey asked 170 people, 60% of them reportedly answered that nothing would stop them from going to a rave, and 40% said they feel they have more stamina now than when they were half their age. In addition, 24% of them reportedly said they started going to clubs more after turning 40 than when they were young.

Source: "Survey reveals many people aged 45 and over in the UK go clubbing at least once a week" (MNE JAPAN)

I have been to many clubs overseas, including in London, Ibiza, Amsterdam, and Hong Kong, and in contrast to Japan's club scene, where people tend to fade out as they get older, I have seen middle-aged men and women overflowing with vitality (no, so full of it that calling them "middle-aged" doesn't even fit lol).

What is this difference?
And why doesn't Japan's club scene turn out like this?

That is what I want to take up once again, "packed with my personal opinions" and "sometimes without mincing my words".

The baffling "It's about time I settled down..."

At a club, the stars are always the cute, fun-loving girls.

No matter how serious a music event is, if there are few or no cute, fun-loving girls, a fun atmosphere won't emerge.

Well, that's obvious. After all, it's entertainment, so it needs glamour.

It is the cute, fun-loving girls who keep that night, that space, going. This holds true all over the world, in every genre.

People who shun clubs and stiff-headed PTA types diss them as "flaky" or "bitches" (you could also call that sour grapes).

Naturally, the cute, fun-loving girls get pretty angry when they are called that, but one day, out of the blue,

"I think it's about time I settled down too..."

is what they start saying, and they announce their retirement from clubbing.

By the way, it is not only the "cute, fun-loving girls" — customers who aren't there for the music (so-called party people) mostly fade out in this same way too.

Fading out after starting a family

There are also many cases of people fading out when they get married or have children. It is especially noticeable after childbirth.

Most of these people are ordinary company employees, and they cannot avoid the following:

In the end, I think understanding of music is the big cause...

This becomes a bit of a big-picture topic, but frankly, in Japan there is a lack of respect for, or no understanding of, learning, playing, and pursuing music in depth.

For example:

And so on. All of these are things I've actually experienced, lol.

To dig even deeper, I'd say it's this:

Music classes in nursery school and compulsory education are so damn boring that ordinary people start growing up without any interest in music.

Once you graduate from junior high school, there are no more music classes, so the music culture you come into contact with after that is basically limited to commercial J-POP put out by the mass media.

On top of that, karaoke is everywhere in Japan, so ordinary people get nothing but J-POP imprinted in their heads.

It is also not unusual for people to go to karaoke in the name of stress relief or socializing with colleagues. Even more J-POP gets imprinted in their heads. Music is positioned as just one more pastime.

And then, as working adults go through the life events of marriage, childbirth, and child-rearing, they have less and less room in their lives, so the pastime called music gets pushed further and further to the side.

As a result, they justify themselves with the words "I'm not young anymore... so I'm graduating!" (and they even go as far as meddling with people who haven't graduated, saying "Isn't it about time you graduated?" lol).

By the way, curious girls (mostly the cute, fun-loving ones, lol) do go to clubs during this process, so they appear to enjoy club music, but their actual driving force is "wanting to stretch themselves and step into the slightly grown-up world of party people," so they are not there for the music.

That's why, even though they say they enjoy club music, they only know the trendy stuff, and after they fade out of clubbing they go back to a music life of nothing but J-POP.

Raising the level of Japanese audiences' music taste is a game you can't win in the first place

In this way, a brainwashing scheme that keeps music culture and intellectual curiosity from rising has been operating on the masses since they were small children, so I think raising the level of Japanese audiences as a whole is impossible, and it is better to give up on it.

On top of that, with the declining birthrate and aging population, the consumption tax hike (a major economic chill is inevitable), and other economic crises hitting one after another, attracting customers with music as the main dish is a pretty much unwinnable game.

The solution is to hold events targeting foreign visitors to Japan and immigrants, but you need communication skills good enough to make lots of foreign friends.

In Japan, where many people can barely speak English, how many people can actually pull that off?

What's more, if you are targeting foreigners, you don't have to do it in Japan in the first place.

For example, I now live in Southeast Asia, and in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Cebu in the Philippines there are lots of street musicians and a culture of everyone nurturing them together. They play loud music until late at night, too.

Honestly, their club music trends are slow and uncool, but there are lots of young customers (and of course plenty of cute, fun-loving girls), and there is more than enough room to grow.

Frankly, Japan — and the Japanese music and club industries — have a strong sense of stagnation and exclusivity, so in that case it would be far more creative to dive overseas yourself or make full use of the latest technology (AR, VR, etc.) to deliver content to the whole world.

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