CITY POPulism

CITY POPulism

Work created in 2025/9/27

'CITY POPulism' is both an audiovisual work that reconstructs the city pop culture of 1980s Japan through digital media and a critical reflection on contemporary Japanese political populism. The title's play on words, 'POPulism,' fuses 'POP' as a musical genre with 'populism' as a political phenomenon, suggesting a resonance between mass culture and mass politics.
At the visual climax of the work, the color scheme—vivid pink and orange duotones—on the surface references the neon aesthetics of the 1980s, but at the same time, it alludes to the contemporary Japanese political spectrum. Pink evokes the corporate color of Reiwa Shinsengumi, while orange recalls that of the Sanseito.
These parties share an 'anti-system' character rooted in dissatisfaction with existing political frameworks. The left-wing populism of Reiwa Shinsengumi and the right-wing populism of Sanseito, though ideologically opposed, are visualized in the work as a contrast of colors. What is crucial is that this contrast 'merges' on screen, creating a unified aesthetic experience.
City pop of the 1980s has often been positioned as 'sophisticated urban lifestyle' music that excluded overt political content. Yet this work reconsiders city pop’s political unconscious—its optimism during the bubble economy, embrace of consumerism, and longing for Western culture—within a contemporary context. Was that seemingly 'apolitical' culture, in fact, deeply political? The uncritical acceptance of global capitalism, the pursuit of personal pleasure, the deliberate evasion of social issues—these constituted the very ideological foundation of neoliberalism.
Contemporary populism likewise tends to reduce complex political realities to 'aesthetic experiences.' Dissemination through social media, emotional mobilization, propaganda crafted for visual impact—all are symptoms of 'aestheticized politics.'
The real-time visual system of the work critically mirrors this phenomenon. Visual changes perfectly synchronized with the music’s emotional surges emulate how political messages trigger emotional responses. The audience experiences the piece less through rational judgment than through sensory immersion.
The technical system of the work—constant monitoring of device performance and real-time adjustment—also functions as a metaphor for surveillance capitalism. While monitoring viewers’ device capacities to provide an optimized experience, the system simultaneously exposes the surveillance process itself by rendering console logs visible.
This parallels how populist politicians constantly track voter 'performance'—approval ratings, engagement metrics—in order to optimize their messaging. The contradiction between the performance of transparency (the disclosure of logs) and the reality of control (algorithmic adjustment) sharpens the fundamental dilemma of contemporary democracy.
At its core, 'CITY POPulism' poses the problem of nostalgia as a tool for political mobilization. The current fascination with city pop is not merely a musical taste but can be read as a yearning for a 'lost golden age.'
Yet the work deconstructs this nostalgia. In the process of digitally recreating the 'beautiful memories' of the 1980s, it exposes the fact that those memories were already mediated by technology. Longing for the past is revealed as nothing more than an illusion constructed under present technological conditions.
Unfolding on the everyday platform of the web browser, the piece also addresses the problematic role of the internet as a conduit for political messages. Access to the work presents itself as an 'accidental encounter,' but in reality it is an experience shaped by algorithms.
This structure is identical to the circulation of political content on social media—an algorithmically filtered orchestration of 'natural' encounters. The viewer feels as though they experience the work through free will, yet the range of responses is already narrowed down within preprogrammed limits.
'CITY POPulism' serves as a critical apparatus that exposes the aesthetic dimension of populism. It does not declare a political stance but rather interrogates the contemporary condition where politics becomes aestheticized, and aesthetics becomes politicized. The merging of pink and orange demonstrates that even opposing ideologies share the same sensory foundations—nostalgia, aesthetic pleasure, and technological spectacle.
The true critical task is to question this very shared sensory foundation itself.