City pop wasn’t really a genre. Until it was.

Masayoshi Takanaka performs on his signature surfboard-shaped guitar during City Pop Waves at London’s Crystal Palace Bowl on Aug. 7. | JAMIE MACMILLAN/ VIA PR TIMES

Sep 17, 2026

Japan’s bubble era ended more than 30 years ago. The soundtrack for those heady times is still going strong.

On Aug. 7, nearly 15,000 people gathered at London’s Crystal Palace Bowl for City Pop Waves, a festival headlined by 73-year-old fusion-jazz legend Masayoshi Takanaka and featuring singer Junko Yagami and keyboardist Himiko Kikuchi. The crowd was strikingly youthful, waving along to Takanaka’s instrumental tracks played on his surfboard-shaped guitar.

It was a striking demonstration of how a once-nebulous label for Japanese music has mutated into a full-fledged genre — and one of the most popular styles associated with the country today. City pop now is broadly understood as Japanese music influenced by funk, disco, R&B and other Western sounds, particularly from the late 1970s and early ’80s, with an emphasis on an urban, sophisticated aesthetic. Call it yacht rock’s Japanese cousin.

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