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Sure, I think Boredoms have a lot to do with it. I also think John Zorn's label has a lot to do with it (Zorn is pretty mainstream, afterall; he won the genius grant!).
Japan really is the best, I don't want to sound like a Japanophile because I don't love shit JUST BECAUSE it's Japanese.... but pretty much the only music, movies, art, cartoons, comics, video games, electronics, television shows, books, etc etc etc come from Japan or Japanese people. I don't know why....
On the other hand, there is a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE amount of just straight-up awful shit there. More so than we have here, probably. I mean, their society is extremely fucked up... what the majority of people like over there is just awful, awful J-Pop (not good J-Pop) and .. Britney Spears. Japanese people LOVE Britney Spears and our American actors and stuff. Their whole CULTURE is fucked up but respectable. Their views on honor and tradition and respect.. I think we could learn a lot from Japanese people...... but yeah.. the so-called "underground" shit there is amazing. In fact, I often wonder if bands like Boredoms are actually more popular here than over there (obviously, they're more popular over there just because of the higher population, but I dunno... they certainly have toured outside of Japan a lot more than in Japan, for example, no doubt because of the costs of touring there but still..). I also have noticed that Japanese music is SO fucking .. tight. Or tightly loose, but.. it's always so, so ... maybe not technical but.. it always really seems to achieve its goal. Regular "rock" bands over there are what we refer to as "math rock" over here, for example. I think the word I'm looking for is "dedication".
..........Miike said that all extreme Japanese art made in the last few decades are in response to the nuke dropping. I always found that interesting.
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