No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
Dengaryū (Tamura Takashi, b. 1982) is one of the breakout Japanese rappers of 2012. Several music journals, including Japan's longest-running popular music magazine, Music Magazine, as well as the web journal Ototoy, have anointed his second album, B kyū eiga no yōni 2, the best hip-hop album of the year. As the music critic Futatsugi Shin wrote in his year-end assessment in Music Magazine, “[Dengaryū] throws himself full-force, dealing with politics, society, the individual, music, hell-raising, and love—all with the same strong attitude and language. An impressive, moving work”; Urata Takeshi added, “Never wavering from his real-life stance, even with political messages, he speaks of the strength and the universal from the point of view of the have-nots, sublimated into highly entertaining hip-hop.” Fans are similarly moved by his “frank revelation and serious treatment of a flawed humankind and twisted society” with “passion and rawness,” making him “more real than American rappers today.” Not only has the rapper garnered accolades but also choice spots in hip-hop showcases by the hip-hop aggregation site Amebreak, club music record store Manhattan Records, and others. What is remarkable about this acclaim is not only the fact that his label, Mary Joy Recordings, is an independent label without ties to the major record companies, but also his origins: Dengaryū is based not in Tokyo or Osaka, but in his hometown in Yamanashi Prefecture, better known for Mt. Fuji than as a cradle of hip-hop culture. He has even fashioned his stage name—田我流—to recall an image of water flowing through a farm field.
1 Urata Takeshi and Futatsugi Shin, “[Tokushū] Besuto arubamu 2012: Rappu/Hippu Hoppu (Nihon),” Myūjikku Magajin (January 2013).
2 MPC0306, August 9, 2012, “2012 nen saikō no sakuhin,” comment on “B kyū eiga no yōni,” Amazon.co.jp.
3 Several rappers, like Zeebra and Seeda, currently record, or have previously recorded, under major labels. Other rap groups have recorded on subsidiary labels of major record companies; e.g., Scha Dara Parr and Rhymester came to prominence in the 1990s while recording for Ki-oon Records and File Records, both subsidiary labels of Sony. It is worth noting that four of Urata and Futatsugi's top five hip-hop albums were recorded on independent labels, while the fifth was recorded on P-Vine, a long-running small label wholly owned by the CATV/Satellite channel Space Shower Networks. Underground hip-hop records are typically discussed on blogs and web magazines, then audiophile magazines like Music Magazine; they are distributed over the Internet and in large record stores such as Tower Records Japan, which continues to be an important outlet for underground music in Japan.
4 This stage name is based on the sound of the Chinese-style reading of the artist's birth name, 田村隆(“Den-son-ryū”)
5 A trackmaker is a person who assembles the background musical track to a hip-hop song.
6 “Dengaryū: B kyū eiga no yōni 2,” interview by Yūtaman, Riddim Online, June 6, 2012.
7 They do not include quotes of local traditional melodies per se, but are meant to invoke their memory. (Young-G, interview)
8 Babylon is a Rastafari term describing an oppressive institution or system.
9 A reference to kaiten sushi-ya——a cheap restaurant where sushi is served on a revolving conveyor belt.
10 Discount store chain.
11 DVD/CD retail and rental chain.
12 There are also references to a Chinese migrant population in stillichimiya and Dengaryū's tracks. Dengaryū's “Ramen” (2008) features a Chinese-sounding musical track and the words, “Xie xie,” while stillichimiya's “Yabee ikiyoi de sugee moriagaru” (2012) contains the words, 我们漫游一官地区，你们一 起来吧。
13 MPC0306, op.cit.; see also DJ Homerun, “‘B kyū eiga no yōni 2’ o kiita,” April 11, 2012.
14 In Dark Knight, the Joker recounts that he scarred his own face into a permanent smile.
15 The population of Japan.
16 Shady is named in the first verse.
17 In Eminem's “‘97 Bonnie and Clyde” (1998), the protagonist loads the body of his murdered wife into the trunk of a car and dumps it into a lake, all the while talking to his toddler daughter; the track contains many car-related sounds. “Kim” (2000) is its prequel, in which he shouts verbal abuse to his wife and murders her. See Steen K. Nielsen, “Wife Murder as Child's Game,” Danish Yearbook of Musicology 34 (2007): 31-46, for an analysis of Eminem's songs.
18 The “/” is indicative of a measure bar, while each chord symbol or “-” is indicative of a quarter note.
19 In the rap, Dengaryū takes advantage of the multiple meanings of “manifesuto” in Japanese: a political party's platform as well as a declaration.
20 i.e., good.
You have
Access
Open access