In 1969, pop artist Andy Warhol founded Interview magazine. The New York-based publication was initially distributed among the city¡¯s ¡°in crowd,¡± later finding a wider audience in those seeking more than the usual mainstream fare.

Interview has been called the ¡°crystal ball of pop¡± and has profiled movers and shakers in the worlds of culture and entertainment, and in June 2005 it traveled to Japan. The issue was dubbed ¡°Interview Goes To Tokyo¡± and the front and back covers featured two cultural forces of the time: pop star Hikaru Utada and fashion designer Nigo of A Bathing Ape. The music portion highlighted electronic producer Cornelius, singer-songwriter Chara, R&B vocalist Toshinobu Kubota and party rappers Rip Slyme among others, but its centerpiece was the Utada interview. She was promoting her album ¡°Exodus,¡± which had been released the previous fall.

Coming across this issue of Interview recently, I think it did a great job of showcasing acts who represented different elements of Japan¡¯s music scene. A number of genres were represented, and in a way that presented them as viable contemporaries to their Western counterparts, as opposed to the ¡°weird Japan¡± oddities that signal clickbait gold for overseas media nowadays.