"Popular Music, Gender and High School Pupils in Japan: Personal Music in School and Leisure Sites"
I was fooling around on JSTOR (an academic journal database) today and found this article, which talks a little bit about visual kei. X Japan, Malice Mizer, Glay, Luna Sea, L'Arc-en-ciel and Seikima II are all mentioned by name. It's an interesting read, so I thought I would share it for the rest of you who don’t have access to this database.
Koizumi, K. (2002). Popular music, gender and high school pupils in Japan: Personal music in school and leisure sites. Popular Music 21 (1). 107-125.
"'Visual pop/rock' originally meant rock bands which attach great importance to visual as well as musical aspects. However, this term has been used recently to refer to a genre of Japanese popular music in which male band members put on theatrical makeup and dress. X Japan, Luna Sea, Malice Mizer, Glay and L'Arc~en~Ciel (the latter two have now changed to become 'non-visual' rock bands) represent typical visual bands" (110).
[...]
"The two greatest influences on male band members were X Japan and the Beatles, whose music was the 'common music' that led them to join and continue band activities, as distinct from the personal music to which now they felt deeply committed" (119).
[...]
"Compared to indie band fans who show a good balance of numbers between girls and boys, visual band costume players are dominated by female fans. Hence, here I wish to analyse the relationship between female costume players as listeners and popular music in the informal site. It was only since 1998 that costume players of popular visual bands such as Malice Mizer, Luna Sea or Glay have made an appearance in public. However, this trend of band costume players dates back to around 1990 when enthusiasts of X Japan started to imitate band members' gaudy costumes, make-up and hairstyles because of their worship for this cult rock band" (120-121).
http://www.mediafire.com/?lx40nimysbn for a PDF of the entire article.
Koizumi, K. (2002). Popular music, gender and high school pupils in Japan: Personal music in school and leisure sites. Popular Music 21 (1). 107-125.
"'Visual pop/rock' originally meant rock bands which attach great importance to visual as well as musical aspects. However, this term has been used recently to refer to a genre of Japanese popular music in which male band members put on theatrical makeup and dress. X Japan, Luna Sea, Malice Mizer, Glay and L'Arc~en~Ciel (the latter two have now changed to become 'non-visual' rock bands) represent typical visual bands" (110).
[...]
"The two greatest influences on male band members were X Japan and the Beatles, whose music was the 'common music' that led them to join and continue band activities, as distinct from the personal music to which now they felt deeply committed" (119).
[...]
"Compared to indie band fans who show a good balance of numbers between girls and boys, visual band costume players are dominated by female fans. Hence, here I wish to analyse the relationship between female costume players as listeners and popular music in the informal site. It was only since 1998 that costume players of popular visual bands such as Malice Mizer, Luna Sea or Glay have made an appearance in public. However, this trend of band costume players dates back to around 1990 when enthusiasts of X Japan started to imitate band members' gaudy costumes, make-up and hairstyles because of their worship for this cult rock band" (120-121).
http://www.mediafire.com/?lx40nimysbn for a PDF of the entire article.