Summer Concerts in Japan

Summer is the season for outdoor concerts. It's the same in Japan. But this summer, most of the concerts have been cancelled due to the coronavirus. A Japanese music festival is called Natsufesu. Young Japanese people combine the Japanese word Natsu (Summer) and shorten the English word Festival to Fesu.

When most people think of summer festivals, they think of rock, pop, hip-hop and other genres. Of course, this also includes classical and jazz concerts. More than 90% of young people in Japan refer to rock and other outdoor concerts as summer festivals.

Many fans look forward to hearing about summer events for more than six months before they take place.

But this year, from April to June, they were all announced to be cancelled. This was very much to everyone's chagrin. In previous years, the organizers would announce a very impressive lineup of performers, but this year, the organizers all have postponed or cancelled. This includes some very major summer concert series in Japan.

One of them is the Fuji Rock Festival. This was the first major outdoor concert held in Japan. You can imagine a something like Woodstock in 1969. That festival drew 400,000 people over three days. An event of that scale is impossible in Japan. But its history began in 1997.

Its venue is in the mountains of northern Japan. It has nothing to do with that famous Mount Fuji. The first line-up was already a historical wonder. The headliners were the Red Hot Chili Peppers on day one and the Green Day on day two! Other participating artists included Rage Against Machine, Beck, Weezer, Foo Fighters, Third Eye Blind, Massive Attack, Prodigy, and many more. In addition to them, many of Japan's top artists participated in the event.

Over 10,000 people turned out for this new endeavor. It was a huge success, and it was a big deal in Japan. Before the concert started, there was a pre-concert party, which was like a fun camp for fans to get to know each other. Since then, the event has grown in size every year with a very talented group of artists. More than 200 international artists have participated in the event so far. Some of the most talked about lineups are as follows:

Bjork, Iggy Pop, Elvis Costello, Sonic Youth, Primal Scream, Korn, Blur, Chemical Brothers, ZZ Top, Oasis, Neil Young, Eminem, New Order, Tool, Brian Eno, Patti Smith, George Clinton, Pet Shop Boys, Muse, Jane's Addiction, Coldplay, Steve Winwood, Sugar Ray, Underworld, Lou Leed, Pixies, The Killers, Jack Johnson, Franz Ferdinand, Dinosaur Jr., The Beach Boys, Cake, Madness, The Cure, Beastie Boys, Kings of Leon, Public Enemy, Neville Brothers, Roxy Music, Vampire Weekend, Arctic Monkeys, Wilco, The Stone Roses, Radiohead, Jack White, Ed Sheeran, Nine Inch Nails, Mumford and Sons, Cqurelix, Fun., Arcade Fire, Outcast, The Waterboys, Foster The People, Motorhead, Gorillaz, LCD Soundsystem, N.E.R.D., Kendrick Lamar, Post Malone,and Bob Dylan.

This year’s lineup includes The Strokes, Tame Impala, Jackson Browne and others. The cancellation of the concert series, which had been running for more than 20 years, is a big shame.

With the success of Fuji Rock, the tradition of summer festivals was opened up. Later, another organization organized a series called Summer Sonic. This was a pioneering example of urban outdoor concerts. Sports stadiums were used for the concerts, which took place simultaneously in two locations near Tokyo and in Osaka. The first concert, in 2000, drew 30,000 people. This has been increasing every year and nowadays the average attendance is over 100,000 people. Last year, MGMT, Fall Out Boy, Snow Patrol, Cheryl Lynn, Weezer, The Struts, and others participated in the event.

The third major summer festival is called Rock In Japan. This is a concert featuring Japanese rock artists; it started in 2000 and has been held every year since. The scale of the event is growing. Last year, 330,000 people gathered for five days. In addition to these, there are many other outdoor concerts in Japan. Most of them were cancelled in 2020, a historical first.

This summer, the Summer Sonic Series will be held at the Archive Festival. In other words, they’re putting the concert online. The project was made possible by crowdfunding. That's a pleasant surprise. The participating artists are Radiohead, Linkin Park, BTS, Arctic Monkeys, The 1975, Metallica, Underworld, and the Japanese representative Mr. Children. It's a very gorgeous line-up.

As such, this summer marks the beginning of the era of not going out and enjoying concerts. Perhaps this trend will continue even after the epidemic. The coronavirus may cause long-term changes to how people attend concerts in the future.