My first exposure to modern Japanese music occurred about 20 years ago. I was introduced to a neo-punk, Ramones inspired, all female trio from Osaka called "Shonen Knife" by a friend of mine. He was a mathematician and a reliable and constant source of sub-culture info.
Back then most were still using cassette tapes over CDs, and an MP3 was nothing more than a 3 digit alphanumeric code. Though I had heard that some places in the East Village sold imported Shonen Knife tapes at the time, my guess is they were really just selling knock-offs. Most of their U.S. based fans would listen to them via just such bootleg tapes. Their jump to the "main stream" (and I use that term liberally) occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s when a group of non-Japanese independent artists recorded a tribute album called, "Every Band Has A Shonen Knife Who Loves Them" and Shonen Knife was asked to open for Nirvana during their U.K. tour.
When I finally got to Japan myself, in 1993, I was surprised to find that Shonen Knife was virtually unknown in Japan... even in Osaka... their home base. This was particularly surprising to me, as Shonen Knife was one of the reasons that my interest in Japan began to grow during my early college years. I was never into anime or manga. Never into the martial arts. Shonen knife, however, they peaked my interest, and said interest continued to push me, ever so gently, towards the Pacific. Had my first exposure to Japanese music been J-pop, who knows if I would have ever boarded that Northwest Airlines flight to Osaka back in 93.
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