If this column is going to be about one thing in 2015, it will be politics in music.
That doesn¡¯t mean politics in the limited sense of old men sleeping in a building in Nagatacho; rather it means politics in the sense of the underlying power relationships that dictate how music happens.
The recent brouhaha over veteran rocker and Southern All Stars frontman Keisuke Kuwata¡¯s baiting of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe over the new year, and his subsequent climbdown, seems on the face of it to be a simple matter of left versus right, especially when contrasted with AKB48¡¯s Haruka Shimazaki, who last summer urged people to join the army with the full backing of the state.
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