Japan matters to this music more than its numbers suggest. A Japanese artist makes only a small part of the Frekvenci archive, 309 listed releases by 87 artists with Japan on file, and 225 of those releases are in the vaporwave family against 61 in the synthwave family. The larger effect is not made in Japan at all. Producers in many countries sample 1980s Japanese pop to make vaporwave and future funk, so the useful question is who makes the records, and where.
City pop: from the boom years to a recommendation algorithm
City pop is the sound that was borrowed. An AFP report from 2022 describes it as retro Japanese pop from the 1980s boom: upbeat, synth-driven, shaped by soft rock, boogie and soul.[1] Open Culture puts it as music for a "new, shiny, modern Japan" blending new wave, synth-pop, disco and jazz, and says YouTube's recommendations carried Mariya Takeuchi's "Plastic Love", first issued in 1985, to more than 20 million views by October 2018.[4] AFP adds that "Plastic Love" and Tomoko Aran's "Midnight Pretenders" were reissued on vinyl in 2021, and that The Weeknd's "Out of Time" samples Aran's track.[1]
That revival gave samplers a huge, half-forgotten library. Future funk is the branch of vaporwave that took the most from it: Bandcamp Daily calls it "the extroverted cousin of vaporwave", built from disco, funk, soul and retro Japanese pop, with bright vintage-anime visuals.[2] Vaporwave as a whole sits in a family the same outlet maps into ten branches, among them mallsoft and future funk.[3]
Who actually makes the sampling?
Often not Japanese artists. Yung Bae, the producer the Bandcamp Daily feature profiles, is Dallas Cotton, based in Portland and Los Angeles, and his early mixtapes were built from snippets of disco, funk, soul and retro Japanese pop that other producers had not "flipped" yet.[2] Night Tempo was born in South Korea in 1986 and is based in Seoul; his Showa Groove series, which began in 2019, gives official re-edits to songs by Wink, Anri and others.[5] He says "a different perspective comes from being far away".[5] Our If you like Night Tempo: artists to try next page maps his neighbours, and Future funk: vaporwave's dance floor, explained explains the branch.
The archive's country field records the artist's country, so a record that samples Japanese pop is not counted here unless the artist has Japan on file. This page covers Japanese artists, not the sampling done elsewhere.
The numbers, and what they miss
Japan is about 2.2% of the releases that carry a country. The figure is a floor, since country is unknown for roughly two in five releases overall. The 309 releases come from 83 labels, and 66 are self-released.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2013 | 2 |
| 2014 | 16 |
| 2015 | 11 |
| 2016 | 27 |
| 2017 | 38 |
| 2018 | 28 |
| 2019 | 33 |
| 2020 | 29 |
| 2021 | 18 |
| 2022 | 28 |
| 2023 | 38 |
| 2024 | 21 |
| 2025 | 17 |
- The scene appears in 2014, with 16 listed releases after 2 in 2013.
- A plateau from 2016. 27 in 2016, then 38 (2017), 28, 33 and 29 through 2020.
- A dip to 18 in 2021, then two highs: 2017 and 2023, both with 38. The 2023 figure is shaped by one artist: GORE has 17 of its 38 listings in 2023.
- A decline since to 21 in 2024 and 17 in 2025. 2026 shows 2 and is a part year.
Cities on file: Tokyo has 17 artists, Osaka 4, Sapporo and Saitama 3 each. A further 33 give only "Japan".
Future funk, barber beats and vaporwave
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Family | Releases |
|---|---|
| Vaporwave | 10,473 |
| Synthwave | 8,105 |
| Popwave | 2,678 |
| Darksynth | 1,803 |
| Dreamwave | 833 |
| Cyberpunk | 6 |
The family split is 225 vaporwave, 61 synthwave, 11 popwave, 7 darksynth and 5 dreamwave. The tags are more telling than the families: 70 releases carry future funk, 58 barber beats, 52 synthwave, 41 vaporwave, 16 signalwave and 15 eccojams. Our tags are community tags, so a barber beats label means that listeners and taggers put it there, not that we checked the sound. For the genres themselves, see What is barber beats? The vaporwave micro-genre named after one prolific artist and What are eccojams? The looped, slowed edits that started vaporwave.
By listed releases the busiest artists are Gore (38), VHS Glitch (20, 15 of them self-released), star printer and ミカヅキBIGWAVE (16 each), kissmenerdygirl (14, with 8 in 2020), Satellite Young (12, with 6 in 2014), The Less Dead and MOROSE (8 each). Two further Japanese entries with 10 and 9 releases have only auto-generated ids and are not linked.
Labels
The biggest labels for Japanese artists are Celadon Plaza (11 of 45 listings), No Problema Tapes (8 of 103), Geometric Lullaby (5 of 60), Lightsurf (5 of 16) and Doki Doki Beats (5 of 34). Counts are by artist country, so these labels also release music from elsewhere.
Records to start with
Ten records from 2010 to 2026, picked to run from the earliest Japanese release to the newest barber beats, one per act.
- Itaru · 2010 · Swedish Columbia · LPA 2010 synthwave album, the earliest Japanese release on file.
- ΔKTR · 2014 · No Problema Tapes · LPA 2014 vaporwave split LP on No Problema Tapes.
- Kamakura Girls Collective · 2025 · Aloe City Wrld · LPA 2025 barber beats album on Aloe City Wrld.
For the sound of future funk, try the Future Funk list, or the Dreams station (88.1 FM) on the radio. The parent genre is explained in What is vaporwave? A guide to the internet's slowed-down mall music, and the plain-English comparison with synthwave is in Synthwave vs vaporwave: same neon, different music. If you are new to the whole field, start with What is synthwave? A plain guide, with the numbers.
Sources
- City Pop: the soundtrack to Japan's boom years goes viral · AFP via The Korea Times, 22 Feb 2022
- Yung Bae: Meet the Introvert Producer Taking Future Funk Mainstream · Bandcamp Daily, 24 Apr 2019
- Genre As Method: The Vaporwave Family Tree, From Eccojams to Hardvapour · Bandcamp Daily, 21 Nov 2016
- How YouTube's Algorithm Turned an Obscure 1980s Japanese Song Into an Enormously Popular Hit · Open Culture, Colin Marshall, 3 Oct 2018
- 「時音」Vol.8 Night Tempo unravels the appeal towards retro culture in this fast-paced society · Tokion, 28 Dec 2020