A rift within the Japanese reggae community, similar to the Gully/Gaza feud, has erupted. According to a Princeton professor who was hosted in Kingston last week, an artiste known as Minmi has allowed corporate Japan to use dancehall music in a TV advertisement with a popular transsexual, causing an outcry and a division among the fraternity.

The backlash resulted in Ryo the Skywalker — the equivalent of Vybz Kartel in Jamaica — splitting ways with Minmi, who is similar to Mavado. Both were longtime friends and collaborators prior to the incident.

“He won’t even perform with her at the same venue,” noted Dr Noriko Manabe, a professor in the Department of Music at the prestigious Princeton University in the US who spoke at the University of West Indies (UWI) in Kingston last Tuesday.

She focused on the growth of the local reggae scene in Japan which forms part of her new book on western musical forms in Japan.

Japan is the second largest music market following the US, and currently Minmi charts at number one on the Reggae Singles Chart whilst Skywalker is at number six based on iTunes chart data.

In the advertisement, Ikko who is a transsexual, promoted a make-up line with dancehall music in the background. “Ikko has 320,000 fans on Mixi, the Japanese equivalent of Facebook, making her the third most popular entertainer,” the professor stated.

Minmi sings on the track but the rhythm was done by a Jamaican producer, oblivious to the use of his track, she noted. The impact of the advertisement was mostly lost in translation even for Jamaicans living in Japan at the time, three years ago.

“Skywalker felt that Minmi sullied the aura of the dancehall scene,” she said of him. “He told Minmi that he would cut personal ties with her as well as professional ones.”

Minmi responded by criticising the dancehall community for not embracing reggae’s tenets of freedom and liberation. The advertisement was eventually pulled from air in late 2007 following criticism by reggae community but its effect is still felt today, she said.

“Many dancehall fans were outraged that Japanese singer Minmi had used a reggae track …and it signalled (to them) that some parts of the Japanese reggae scene were deteriorating into decadence.”

She added that many Japanese artistes feared that Jamaicans would see the video on Youtube and conclude that the Japanese did not understand the roots of the culture. Jamaica is perceived as being the most homophobic nation in the western hemisphere, partly due to the anti-gay lyrics in dancehall.

The professor’s dissertation discussed the process by which Western musical styles take root and evolve in Japan, it considered how notions of authenticity are redefined, how the Japanese language and aesthetic preferences affect musical style, and how Japanese artistes engage with artistes and audiences overseas. Her case studies involved hip hop, rock, rap, and reggae/dancehall.