One of my favourite bands is ONE OK ROCK, but they’ve basically been an American/California band for about a decade now. They’re all Japanese citizens and they’re from Japan, but they’ve lived here for 10 years and their last few albums have been all/mostly in English. Still counts as Japanese rock and they’re largely ignored here, it feels like. They have their fans though and we love them. Clock Strikes is my favourite of their old-style songs. The opening and chorus is English, the verses are Japanese. Dystopia is an easy recommendation off the newest album. This is all in English. Or at least the publicly available version is. This is a special version made for Japanese audiences. If you listen to the song on streaming, the Japanese parts will be in English. They do that sometimes. Anyway, it’s only a couple lines and it sounds cool. This is a good song, but it also highlights their shift from hard rock to pop rock.

A similar example that is “more Japanese” is Survive Said the Prophet. And apparently there might be some bad blood between the two? Any time someone suggests it would be awesome if they co-headlined a show, the “real fans” are right there to say it’ll never happen, but they won’t elaborate. Right and Left is a song they did in English. This one’s a lot of fun. Kinda has a late 90s/early 00s “get up and dance” kinda rock sound. Conversely, here’s a heavier song they do that is almost all in Japanese (but it has English subtitles if you wanna know what he’s saying). This one is called MUKANJYO and it was actually the opening theme for the anime Vinland Saga, which is partly “Japan’s answer to the TV show VIKINGS” but I think it’s also more historically accurate? I heard that somewhere. Like it’s based more on history, less editorialised/westernised. No anime tropes to speak of and it went hard when it came to the violence (as anything relating to Vikings should).

Lastly, I’ll also recommend MAN WITH A MISSION. These guys are not furries, but you’ll never see them without their wolf costumes. They’re actually way weirder than furries. Their band has a (fictional!) back story: they are aliens who were discovered by Jimi Hendrix, frozen in Antarctica, and discovered by explorers. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. It doesn’t really need to. They make hard rock that is fun, sometimes a little serious, sometimes nostalgic. They’ve also done softer songs, e.g. with Japanese pop star milet, for the Demon Slayer season 3 opening and ending. (Anime is the big hit maker for Japan now, what MTV used to be in the West in the 80s and 90s, it guarantees bands in Japan an immediate international audience. Anything I haven’t declared as from anime, isn’t — I’ll tell you if it is.) My Hero was the opening theme for the anime Inuyashiki: Last Hero, and the music video has a superhero theme. (Note that I said Inuyashiki not Inuyasha — the latter is a kids show about a dog-like ninja warrior (I think he’s also a demon, but a good one?) and the former is an extremely violent miniseries.) Memories is another song that sounds like it’s from the 90s. This one is in Japanese without subtitles, but I feel like I can understand what they’re talking about. Not really, it just has a vibe to it.

And that’s just the guys… plenty of girls who rock from Japan, too.