Beginnings of Denpa Music

Under the assumption that the readers have already familiarized themselves with denpa before, let's put a short description of denpa music into words. Denpa music is a form of Japanese music stemming from otaku culture, both from its community and its industry. The two major elements of the music are "cuteness" and the "quirkiness", with each song providing a different balance of these elements. The songs are generally fast and upbeat as well, and incredibly catchy. That's denpa music in a nutshell, what now? At this point, other introductions would describe the moe quality of denpa, the role eroge played in popularizing denpa music, and "Fukugawa Street Stabbing Incident" as the root of the contemporary usage of "doku-denpa" referring to mentally deranged people. While these things are good to know, the matter of the fact is that the influence of these factors only manifested several years after the denpa first came to expression in music. With this in mind, let's go back in time to the grassroots of denpa.

The song "Kimi wa Hoehoe Musume" (きみはホエホエむすめ), from text-adventure game Idol Hakkenden (アイドル八犬伝), is widely considered to be the origin of denpa music. Released on the Family Computer in September of 1989, this game about an idol rising to stardom could not contain both graphic data and recorded sound due to storage limitations, and so could only feasibly include chiptune with lyrics on the bottom of the screen. The lyrics were written by filmmaker Minoru Kawasaki (河崎実), who was working on a series of quirky, short live-action films Earth Defense Girl Iko-chan (地球防衛少女イコちゃん), which according to Kawasaki were the source of inspiration for the lyrics. They incorporated themes of maidenly innocence and nonsense speech. This song was later adapted by Momoi Haruko and given full vocal cover.

Idol Hakkenden title screen

Earlier the same year, January 1989, amateur songwriter Ikuko Ebata (江幡育子) posted in ASCIInet's (BBS) music sig (special interest group - interest focused bulletin board) several of her lyrics. She was promptly contacted by songwriter Yoshihiko Fujii (藤井良彦), who suggested they join together to make the lyrics into songs. They then formed the unit Nekoya (with Ebata performing under the alias Nekoyo). Ebata did not intend to sing at first, but after several months of activity, decided that despite her total lack of singing experience, she would do the vocals for their songs. Until the end of 1989, they created a considerable number of songs, some of which were performed at offline gigs of the music sig. There are no recordings or lyrics of the songs, but some of the titles are known - for example, "The Quality of Being Loved" and "Leisurely Waiting for Him in Cat Cosplay... Not Quite Right". As far as can be told, it was a mixed bag of romantic songs and wacky otaku-themed songs. Their first CD appearances were alongside the omnibus works of early doujin circle SYNERGY MUSIC NETWORK. They provided the only vocals for 1990 and 1991 albums MCMLXC and MCMXCI. What set the path for Ikuko Ebata, however, was their appearance in the third SYNERGY album, 1992's MYSTERY CASE IN HI!SCHOOL!!, with song "BOKU HA HYOHON". Unlike their previous works, this was sung in high-pitched vocals and had nonsensical lyrics - it was, essentially, the first instance of a performed and recorded song with denpa attributes (with the previous appearances being the first and second instances of performed and recorded vocal doujin music).

SYNERGY MUSIC NETWORK's 1992 compilation album

Ikuko Ebata in 1997

Although visual novel Shizuku popularized doku-denpa use within the otaku community, and gave rise to denpa theming in manga and animation, it likely had very little direct influence over what we know today as denpa. Two months after Shizuku, in March 1996, Whoopee!records released album MEGUaMIx  which contained a track labeled "doku-denpa mix". In this case too, this use likely had very little influence. For several years more, people called it in different manners, until a point in the early 2000s in which denpa became the main form. In this time period, the terms moe and doujin music will also come into regular use.

These are the two distinct paths, of commercial denpa (within the otaku industry - games, anime, eroge, idols and bands) and of doujin denpa (within the otaku community - the starting point of vocal doujin music). The gist of the difference between this introduction and other introductions to denpa music, is that doujin denpa precedes commercial denpa by several months. For this reason, the next post is going to focus on doujin denpa.