Hatsune Miku and the Magic of Make-Believe

The history of Hatsune Miku begins in 18th-century Hetalia Italy.

There’s this famous Italian dude, see, called Bartolomeo Cristofori, whose main area of skill was in making instruments. And not just any instruments—keyboards, which at the time were these horribly tinkly little things where doinky featherquills plucked at an array of strings to create a metallic jingle-jangle effect. This is known as “Baroque music.” What Cristofori did, as part acoustician and part mechanical engineer, was to develop a hammer system that could strike strings at different forces, allowing the performer to play soft (piano) or loud (forte). So everyone called it a pianoforte, in Italianese. Of course, you and I and everyone else now know Cristofori’s invention as the piano.

When Italia invented the piano, they opened the door to Japan inventing Hatsune Miku.

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What does 2010 hold in store for J-music? (IN AMERICA)

If you answered Hikaru Utada, HAHAHA VERY FUNNY Mr. or Mrs. Smart Person, we already knew that, since her tour was scheduled for January 2010 obviously.

If you had told me, a year ago, that within the next 12 months I would get to see Morning Musume and AKB48 live in concert without setting foot in Japan, I would have laughed in your face.

Then the Summer of Idols happened, and like a certain basketball player on the Boston Celtics, I now believe that “anything’s possibllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeee.”

There was a time, maybe, when Japan was this wondrous alternate universe with their own made-up entertainment industry that did strange and amazing things that you’d only get snippets of IN AMERICA. Like you’d see what crazy-ass cartoons they made up. And their music sounded a lot like Western popular music ONLY DIFFERENT. And they would have books and TV shows and movies and everything except it was in this crazy moon language and we’d all be on the outside looking in, marveling at the sheer alternate-ness of this universe.

But one by one, the barriers have come down, and beings from the alternate universe keep sneaking over IN AMERICA to reveal that they, in fact, exist in the same dimension as other human beings.

And that’s where things get mysterious. It’s easy to predict where J-pop is headed in the context of J-pop itself, because it’s such a highly regimented industry controlled by an oligarchy of record labels (and INBOU). But in assessing Japanese-American relations as far as popular music goes, there’s always a bit of a wild card factor, because the whole “Which famous J-pop artist will visit America this year” business tends to happen on the whim of record labels, managers, promoters, convention staff, and how many teenage and twentysomething girls you can fit on a plane. So, what can American fans look forward to in J-music in 2010?

Are Momusu/H!P or AKB coming back this year?