Songs for a Japan Trip: A Playlist

A Japan trip can have its own soundtrack, and mine was never going to be purist. This playlist moves from Bond drama and 80s pop to ambient Japanese artists and a few pieces that simply felt right for our Japan Cruise.

My Japan playlist came together before and during our cruise around Japan, and it reflects that mix of anticipation, mood and place. It is not a strict guide to Japanese music, nor a playlist built around one genre. It moves between songs that reference Japan directly, songs that carry a sense of atmosphere, and a few Japanese artists I was glad to spend more time with while travelling.

It opens, naturally enough, with Nancy Sinatra’s ‘You Only Live Twice’, the title song from the 1967 Bond film set in Japan, with John Barry’s sweeping orchestration doing much of the heavy lifting in my imagination long before the trip began.

I had this in mind as we departed Kobe docks at the start of our cruise.

‘Kyoto Song’ by The Cure follows, taken from The Head on the Door, while Alphaville’s ‘Big in Japan’ earns its place simply because the title works and because it is still such a strong 80s record. We’ll skip the Vapors hit ‘Turning Japanese’ as I don’t think that was about the evolution of man…

I had this sweeping soundtrack in mind for our visit to Sakurajima Volcano, though the weather offered a different vibe.

Japan’s ‘Methods of Dance’ is in there too, from Gentlemen Take Polaroids. The band’s name was not chosen for any deep cultural reason, at least not from the account most often repeated. David Sylvian later said it came from a travel brochure found on the way to an early gig, which feels suitably accidental for a playlist like this. Even so, the group’s elegant, stylised sound suits the mood of travel beautifully.

We’ll skip ‘Japanese Boy’ from Scottish singer Aneka. The Killin based artist sold over half a million copies of this 1981 single but struggled to escape the association for the rest of her career.

From there the playlist drifts into another side of Japan altogether. Artists such as Yasuaki Shimizu, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Toshi Tsuchitori and Akira Ito bring a quieter, more spacious feel, the kind of music that works well with bullet train windows, early mornings and the slightly unreal rhythm of moving from one port to the next. Air’s ‘Cherry Blossom Girl’ joins them for obvious Sakura Season reasons, while Passengers’ ‘Ito Okashi’ is less literal but still feels at home here, more a matter of tone than direct reference.

That is probably the best way to understand this playlist. It is not trying to define Japan. It simply captures some of the excitement, elegance and strangeness I associated with the trip, along with a few artists I was pleased to get to know better along the way.