Americans and Japanese mingled very well in the second war leading to merging of culture in both sides. These affected the two types of food they ate and how the food was prepared. Japanese eating styles changed by the introduction of MacDonald. The company introduced a lot of food stuffs that was in Japan previously (Watson, 167). This led to the change in menus in restaurants and other social laces. The introduction of fast foods the Asia was a new thing that changed the style of preparing food from their traditional way of cooking. This led to hamburger becoming a Japanese traditional food. MacDonald targeted restaurants and schools to influence the eating habits of Japanese and this turned to be very much fruitful as this influenced the rest of the population to adopt the their foods. The Japanese improved on the hamburger to make them taste better than the American one but this made the spread of American food to penetrate into the interior parts of Japan not only Tokyo.
Macdonald food was incorporated into the Japanese system to be able penetrate areas that were still trusting their traditional foods. The tradition of the Japanese to have rice as their stable food was cut short by the introduction of MacDonald products. These companies used a lot of means to make sure they succeed in marketing their products (Watson, 169). The MacDonald restaurants were positioned in secure places with beautiful designs to attract the visitors most of them Japanese who could become long term customers. Since the MacDonald Company is known world wide it quickly gained the entrance into the Japanese market. Most of elite groups who studied in the western countries adopted it very fast.
The penetration into the market of Japanese market was not that’s simple. There was a lot of opposition from the preservatives. These people believed in their traditional food such as rice among others. It was very hard for MacDonald to convince the public hat food was not full of chemicals. MacDonald was forced to use a lot of funds to educate the public and prove to them that its products were fit for human consumption. The company was able to sell their products in Japan and this led to other neighboring countries. Most of the foods sold were the fast foods; this seemed to be good to the customers especially the teenage groups. Most of the foods were to be incorporated wit the traditional stuffs for it to gain the local market.
Japanese Hip-Hop & Jazz
Hip-hop was introduced in Japan in 1970s after the influence of African-American citizens. After the impact in Japan the impact spread to the rest of the world. After every young person was interested in dancing to the tunes of the hip-hop music it forced the Japanese to adopt that type of music from the west. The impact of the music forced the change of Japanese culture. It became so massive because of the young people who wanted to imitate the African –American music style. It was after the Japanese could witness the rapping of music in clubs and the spinning styles from the African-American.
The dancing styles from the America to Japan included the break dance among the hip hop lovers and the square dancing among the jazz people. This was incorporated in the traditional folk dances and the young people could go through training for them to be able to enjoy it as it is done in the west (Napier, 254). There were a lot of these dancing styles in the media something that led for it to spread very fast in Japan. Influence was mostly from the west cost hip hop group from United States of America. These led to Japanese loving the hip-hop culture even lose fitting clothes, dancing style called break dancing. The writing style was also copied and the style of writing called the graffiti. The youth could even darken their skins to resemble the black musicians in both hip hop and jazz music. The Japanese could copy the hair styles including afros and dreadlocks. The Africans styles of big buggy jeans are common in the street of Tokyo. The blackface make up style was in Japan, to make them resemble a black man; they even went to change the color of the skin to black. It was here that he group known as Gosperats emerged and was famous for that type of makeup.
Japanese love for jazz was mixed with the love of hip hop music. Japan has many lovers of hip hop today as it was before. The young Japanese are always trying to rap like their counterparts in the US. The impact is so massive to the radio stations in Japan. Many radio stations play hip hop music if they are targeted the young and the educated group. Most of the lifestyles among the youth are imitating how the rappers from the west live. The dressing code and the walking style changed to the American walking style. In Japan rappers have adopted the rapping in their language to keep the local audience on the move. Lovers of hip hop from Japan have gone as far as going to be trained in the United States of America on how to rap and sing jazz music. Most of the recordings are done in the west for them to get the international recognition (Napier, 234). The jazz music and hip hop has changed the type of music Japan used to listen. Most of the entertaining joints have switched to listening to hip hop music. Professionals predict that young people could forget their original music due to the massive impact from he western countries. Gender factor does not exist in hip hop as it was in Japanese music and this has really helped the talented ladies ho can rap to take up the music. This has made it possible for many artists to come up and show their talents.
Works Cited
Watson L. James. Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia .Stanford: Stanford University
Press. 2006.
Napier J. Susan. Impressionism to anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the
West. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2007.
