Hip Hop’s suspicion of institutions

From its inception in New York’s South Bronx as a street-based creative youth culture, hip hop has gone through countless developments and evolutions. To varying degrees, all of hip hop’s traditional ‘four elements’ – rap, breaking, aerosol art, and turntablism – were commercialized as they gained popularity in the 80s. This was a two-way process. As crews showcased their skills at public jams and battles in clubs and on street corners, the arts and entertainment industries soon found ways to capitalize on this famously ‘fresh’ set of urban art forms (Chang Reference Chang2007; Charnas Reference Charnas2011). As one notable example, early impresarios like Michael Holman helped dancers professionalize, thinking broadly about the possibilities of how breakers could utilize their skills to get paid. This expanded the potential for dancers to gain work from their skillsets in a time where opportunities for many practitioners were slim – a reality captured in the aphorism that hip hop created ‘something from nothing.’ Over the course of the 1980s and 1990s, this would lead to hip hop’s first global movements and its professional prospects across the fields of dance, music, art, film, fashion, graphic design, and beyond. Despite these positive aspects, due to entrenched histories of misappropriation, misrepresentation, and unfair business practices, commercialization and industrialization have continued to be contentious topics within hip hop communities across the globe – especially as the capitalistic strands of hip hop culture continue to accelerate.

Given the transactional nature of commercial interventions into hip hop culture many from these communities have expressed concern and suspicion, fearing misrepresentation and exploitation. Many practitioners looked to these important commercial expansions in the same way many music scenes have typically viewed ‘selling out’ and contributing to the mainstreaming of their traditions, codes, and aesthetics (see Hall and Jefferson Reference Hall and Jefferson1975). These divergences from hip hop’s communitarian grassroots base, however, also provided professional opportunities for dancers, event managers, musicians, and artists to make careers out of the practices to which they had committed their lives. Indeed, the ‘hip hop hustle’ has become central to hip hop communities, keeping the culture alive and thriving in a globalized society (Gosa and Fields Reference Gosa, Fields, Porfilio and Viola2012).Footnote ⁴ Today, careers in hip hop have become distinctly more visible but remain competitive and precarious, especially for breakers who have typically had no product to trade. As a result, many opportunities still rely on community-generated funding, often bolstered by state or corporate intervention.

More recent commercial activity in breaking’s industrialization has been its increasing entanglement with global commercial organizations. Today, community-run breaking jams and events continue entirely separately to larger battles that are now common across the world, demonstrating how events have scaled alongside increasing commodification and interactions with commercial sponsors. This development has been underway for decades that began with fashion labels like Tribal Gear and Echo United, as well as energy drink companies such as Red Bull and Monster – the former perhaps most well known for their international events. In many ways, these organizations have simultaneously pollinated and extorted the cultural value in hip hop communities across the globe driving a complex tension that remains divisive in many scenes.

In many places there are fears of misconstruing hip hop’s traditions, communitarian ethos, and history by commercial collaborators and equally business-savvy dancers who aim to economically benefit from breaking culture. The importance of reflecting on hip hop’s origins and history has been central to defining specific notions of authenticity and is not exclusive to dance. In Australia, this has been the case in hip hop music as many practitioners have been ‘suspicious of others who knew little about this history or who did not afford it the same importance’ (Rodger Reference Rodger2019, p. 229). In a similar fashion, hip hop practitioners have been suspicious of academics that extract information from communities that is often locked behind a paywall or otherwise made inaccessible to them (Jansen Reference Jansen2023).

While similar struggles exist between the commercial and the communitarian in the Japanese context, there has been an appreciation for how organizations can also pollinate their scenes in community-focussed ways – often providing employment, funding, and other forms of state-endorsement. As one of the early adopters of hip hop culture via pathways of globalization set out by early pioneers – such as Fab Five Freddy and the Rocksteady Crew in the 1980s during their Japan tour to promote the feature film Wild Style (Ahearn Reference Ahearn1983) – Japan has long been wrestling with its own hip hop culture and approach to creative industrialization.

On the flip side, hip hop’s popularity hasn’t been without turbulence given Japan’s widely noted history of mistrust of external (especially United States) popular culture over the last century – albeit oft overstated and stereotyped. Most famously, Black cultural forms such as jazz were banned during the Spiritual Mobilization Campaign of the 1930s to deter Japanese citizens from engaging with what the state then perceived as a dangerous and immoral cultural form. This perspective was in part connected to jazz encouraging more intimate forms of couples dancing which were not typical in Japan (Atkins Reference Atkins2001) – leading to legislation that placed bans on dancehalls and public dancing (a law only recently revised in the lead up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games). Hip hop, as a more recent import, inherits this fraught legacy of resistance and adaptation, yet, as we will see, stands as a powerful symbol of how global cultural forms can be reinterpreted to reflect local identities and help revise these historical tensions. In this sense, Kawasaki has led the way in undermining century-old stereotypes about Japanese ‘insularity’ and providing a model for best practice around culturally sustainable urban planning (Condry Reference Condry2006; Fehrenbach and Poiger Reference Fehrenbach and Ute2000).

Recent history shows us how Japanese approaches to the cultural and creative industries have provided sustainable and equitable pathways for professional artists and culture bearers. Today, the scale and diversity of Japanese hip hop creative industries dwarfs those in most countries (an irony given this history of conservatism). Across the nation today there are distinctly different scales of sustainability that dancers, artists, and musicians are celebrating at this very moment. This is in part due to the legacy of communitarian-commercial cultural and social entrepreneurship that has developed and sustained the scenes in cities across Japan. In the foundational case of hip hop dance, this positive track record has been bolstered by the formalization of breaking into state curriculums for dance and its institutionalization as an Olympic sport (see Ng Reference Ng2023; Ng Reference Ng2019). Indeed, this robust infrastructure is no small part of Japan’s B-Girl Ami winning the first gold medal for breaking at the Paris Olympics. While at different points the Japanese scene has been both weary and cautious of these commercial and institutional interventions, there are notable advances in the way that the state has responded to hip hop arts from a culturally conservative constituency.Footnote ⁵

One such way we see state organizations engage with hip hop is for their own city-building initiatives – broadening their integration into education and cultural tourism. While this appropriation into new contexts can appear threatening in many places, there are examples of how this showcasing of hip hop reaffirms its value by the state as positive and responsible. In Kawasaki, this appreciation of hip hop dance by the government has therefore impacted how practitioners, their ideas, and creative contributions to the city are understood, supported by, or called on by the state to be representatives of their scenes and its culture. Before we detail how Kawasaki became known as a ‘hip hop city’, it is first important to preface the city’s recent developments against its challenging history and embrace of progressive politics.

Progressive politics in Kawasaki’s recent history

Because of its ethnic and class diversity, Kawasaki has a history of progressivism dating back to the 1970s. The city has historically seen one of the largest concentrations of Korean-Japanese migrant (derogatorily ‘zainichi’) residents in Japan.Footnote ⁶ The Sakuramoto, Ikegami, and Hamachō districts, which are located along the coastal industrial areas in the southern part of Kawasaki City, first housed the many Korean labourers who were conscripted into the war effort – relegated to mining or factory work – across the Keihin industrial belt during their period of indentured servitude throughout Japan’s occupation of Korea. Post-war these migrants underwent a number of struggles regarding Korean-Japanese discrimination by the state and Japanese citizens during Japan’s recovery and political reformation period. During the 1970s, however, the Kawasaki city government supported Korean-Japanese activists in reconciling their welfare rights and helped them ‘contest narrow definitions of citizenship’ defined by the central government (Tsuchiya Reference Tsuchiya2014, p. 145). While this also satisfied the Kawasaki city council’s own ends by establishing it as a ‘progressive’ city council in the region amidst the vastly conservative nation, it also brought real changes for Korean-Japanese people by recognizing their right to state welfare services.

Indeed, Kawasaki’s recognition of local diversity extends further since these early advances set out by ethnic-minority activist groups, urging the city to consider more deliberate planning efforts centred on multiculturalism. In the 1990s, Foreigners’ Assemblies were established in the city to give foreign residents ‘a forum for political participation’ in lieu of the voting rights as ‘local municipalities have limited discretion over national-level policy’ (Umemoto and Igarashi Reference Umemoto and Igarashi2009, p. 43). These occurred at a similar time that Kawasaki city developed its plan for ‘tabunka kyosei or “multicultural coexistence” as Japan’s version of multiculturalism’ (Guarné and Yamashita Reference Guarné and Yamashita2015, p. 58). This move towards progressive policy was first recognized in the early 2000s by the central government and shortly after incorporated into the 2010 projected city policy aimed at restructuring a broader national approach to multicultural engagement. The Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) considered this intra-ethnic coexistence as: ‘People of different nationalities and ethnicities, recognizing each other’s cultural differences, cultivating a relationship of equality, while living together as members of a local community’ (cited in Guarné and Yamashita Reference Guarné and Yamashita2015). While this policy has offered a language to manage foreign relations within Japan, scholar Koichi Iwabuchi has also noted some of its shortcomings, noting that ethnic groups are still marginalized within the central ethnically-Japanese monoculture, calling such policy a ‘multicultural coexistence without multiculturalism’ (Reference Iwabuchi and Iwabuchi2010, p. 19).

In spite of this, these developments also speak to Kawasaki’s relative steadfast progressiveness that has enabled some notable advances around diversity that speak to the need to address ‘internationalization, local empowerment, and the development of civil society in Japan’ (Han Reference Han2004, p. 41). For example, in 1997 Kawasaki became the first municipality to permit foreign residents to take up civil servant roles within the city government – a trend which other municipalities have since followed. Given that the federal government remains firm in its ethno-nationalistic propensities, we argue that this tendency towards left-leaning progressive matters has been critical to Kawasaki’s development and its subsequent appreciation of popular arts, music, and cultural forms from outside of Japan – foremost among them, hip hop.

From eco-city to youth cultural city

Given Kawasaki’s centrality to war effort and site of progressive politics, it is unsurprising that its city governance has seen an increasing appreciation for the arts since its industrial post-war overturn. Its recent city policy ‘Colors Future!’ (2023) incorporates a number of key actions to remediate and reconcile with the consequences of its previous industrial era focus.

More obvious objectives tend to environmental issues given the complex history of immense industrial waste and pollution following its rapid industrialization. Since the 1990s, Kawasaki pioneered an approach to sustainability by minimizing emissions and waste across industries, becoming a hub for environmental technology, research, and environmentally conscious civil society engagement (Low Reference Low2013). In addition, Colors, Future! makes a concerted effort to provide support for foreign residents in their integration as a continued effort to support diversity – offering Japanese language courses and foreign employment services. But perhaps most impressive in the city’s policy is the attempt to engage with the arts and youth cultural activities as a means of attracting younger residents and families in lieu of fast-aging and rapidly declining population. Jackson et al. (Reference Jackson, Howe and Nakashima2010) consider this one of the greatest challenges to the economy in Japan considering that by 2030 there would be more people in Japan older than the retirement age than in their 20s – putting strain on both state and industry alike. While Kawasaki’s ambitions tend to their own strategic agenda, their support comes at a critical time for hip hop communities as many within the scene wrestle with their own issues of precarity.

Support for hip hop culture – and breaking in particular – is predicated on decades of local cultural community activity and hip hop creative industry development headed up by hip hop social and cultural entrepreneurs. Kawasaki earned its local and national rep as a breaking scene on the dedication of the B-Boys and B-Girls who showed up at the station for the love of the art without compensation for years. Over the decades, the city became a globally connected hub for a scene of breakers that is still increasing in size, as a select few cultural entrepreneurs within the scene have helped scale opportunities. Building on this scene fostered by the artists themselves, the city government’s support has benefitted the expanding scene in a number of ways over the past decade.

Typically, the Kawasaki City government had been sympathetic towards breakers despite the history of national restrictions placed on public dance in formal spaces. Community leaders like B-boy Katsu-1 had long worked with the council to find creative solutions to provide social infrastructure for dancers in Kawasaki – advocating at large for the preservation of hip hop’s ‘sacred place’: the city’s Musashi-Mizonokuchi Station (Ng Reference Ng2023; Reference Ng, Raine, Blackman, McPherson and Taylor2025) (see Fig. 1). Over the years, these calls have been met with varying degrees of support, from investment in programs such as youth camps to small bursaries for events. Recognizing the large cohort of dancers residing in the region and breaking’s local popularity, the dance was recently formally integrated into city policy to support ‘street culture’ activities which also include BMX, skateboarding, and double-dutch performative jump rope (which also has a large overlap with hip hop dance and Afrodiasporic arts). The support for such official recognition was further catalyzed by the announcement that breaking was to be a new official category in the 2019 Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games – expanding the opportunities for dancers as intermediaries like Katsu negotiated its form into new framing that bridged this hip hop art into a new sporting domain (which the state finds easier to rationalize and fund).

Figure 1.

Image shows young breakers performing a showcase with the heads of industry, local city council, and general public in attendance. The banner in the background reads: ‘MIZONOKUCHI/Breakin’ Art Completion Commemoration Ceremony/Takatsu Monument Production Committee’.

Figure 1. Long description

At the center, several young breakers are mid-performance on a tiled floor. Around them, a semicircle of seated individuals includes industry leaders, city council members, and the public, some wearing suits and ribbons. In the foreground, audience members stand and record the event with smartphones. The background features large windows, potted plants, and a wooden wall. A horizontal banner above the seated officials reads exactly: ‘MIZONOKUCHI/Breakin’ Art Completion Commemoration Ceremony/Takatsu Monument Production Committee’. The event takes place indoors with evening light visible outside.

While Japan’s history is peppered with insular periods of apprehension towards external cultural forms – such as the jazz in the 1930s – the country has become particularly receptive to popular music cultures from outside of its own borders in recent times. Local adoption, however, has been met with different challenges related to localization in a fairly monocultural landscape. Ian Condry’s distinguished work on hip hop cultures in the 1990s emerged as a key text to document some of the conditions of this early hip hop localization in Japan. Indeed, Japan was one of the few receptive nations in Asia that quickly reconstituted this street-cultural form into its own contexts. Hip hop’s grassroots communities have been talked about elsewhere (Condry Reference Condry2006) as have their robust creative industries (Manabe Reference Manabe2008; Ng Reference Ng2023). Aside from the local Japanese hip hop music industry, hip hop dance –namely breaking – has immense popularity in Japan. With a history of practice that dates back to the early 1980s, Japan has established strong networks among its hip hop communities that echo into the present through new generations who take over the mantle of community leaders as they age. Interestingly, many practitioners from across the Greater Tokyo Region and the nation continue to frequent Kawasaki now for its centrality to hip hop culture, as it is both sustained by community and now celebrated by the government. The city government’s recent endorsements and supports have further enabled breaking to be both visible to both society and the broader central government.

During the course of our research on Kawasaki, we also travelled to the city to meet representatives from Kawasaki City Hall. We met with Shigeyuki Narusawa, the Manager of the Kawasaki City Hall Citizens’ Sports Office, who discussed recent integrations of hip hop into the city planning initiatives, highlighting a number of strategic goals that the co-operation has been useful in achieving. Nominally to recognize Kawasaki’s youth as a critical resource in challenging the declining age population. Over the course of our hour-long formal interview and subsequent tour of adjacent sites, Narusawa was proud of what the city had achieved, referring to Kawasaki as the ‘Mecca of street culture’ (interview Reference Narusawa, Ng and Rollefson2023, translation added) in Japan when presenting the city’s latest policy directions. Indeed, the city government had recently recognized the importance of a number of key cultural sites for hip hop communities in the city such as Musashi-Mizonokuchi Station and Club Citta – the 1,300-capacity live music venue that has hosted international artists, from B.B. King, to the Beastie Boys and Wu-Tang Clan, in addition to club nights and local MCs, DJs, and breakers.

Such government recognition contributes to a type of officiation of spaces especially important to urban geographies like Musashi-Mizonokuchi Station’s legendary breaking scene. This hard-won legitimization comes after years of breakers working to occupy such spaces that at times have elicited complaints from local residents and ended in police intervention. In our interview, Narusawa reflected on how this has developed over the last decade:

Interestingly, the state was well aware of the breakers and their creative careers having established a relationship with many dancers within their borders. Notable mentions included Katsu-1, head of the Japan DanceSport Federation’s (JDSF, hereafter) Breaking Division, Ram and Shigekix as Youth Olympians and other elite dancers, such as the world-renowned crew The Flooriorz and B-Girl Ami, who recently became the first Gold-medallist in Breaking in the 2024 Paris Olympics. When asked about the reason for celebrating these dancers, Narusawa indicated there was a civic pride around these famous dancers that was adopted by the city government.

Bad Hop: From ‘Kawasaki Ghetto City’ to ‘Youth Culture City’

While Kawasaki has not historically been a mecca of hip hop music to the degree that it has been for hip hop dance, the work of one local crew, Bad Hop, is evocative of how the city’s history connects to its contemporary hip hop image. The eight-member crew – who held their farewell gig at the city’s famed Club Citta in 2023 – gained notoriety as one of Japan’s most popular trap acts over the past decade. Notably, they did so playing on post-industrial stereotypes about Kawasaki City in order to paint a picture of their own hip hop ‘ghetto’ and home. First, the crew’s name – while ostensibly a reference to an unexpected bounce in baseball (a ‘bad hop’) – centres a negative, ‘bad boy’ image. But more to the point, tracks like their 2018 hit, ‘Kawasaki Drift,’ articulate urban tropes of criminality and deviant cool by bringing a number of salient and localizing figures to mind.

Evoking the high-octane energy and street-racing culture popularized through Japanese anime Initial D (1998–2014) and films like the 2006 Fast and the Furious installment Tokyo Drift, the track channels its own local identity to spotlight the city’s most famous global icon: the Kawasaki Ninja motorcycle. With a driving and bass-heavy trap beat, performed revving sounds, organized crime references, and lyrics such as ‘A muffler that breathes fire, a woman who admires it,’ ‘Kawasaki Drift’ (Bad Hop, 2018) connects the city’s famed motor industry to a modern film franchise that celebrates life on the edge – and Japan’s motorsports and drift culture at large. Indeed, local landmarks like the Daishi Bridge – the borderland between Tokyo and Kawasaki City – figure prominently in Bad Hop’s construction of self, connecting these oft-stereotyped local signifiers to what E. Gabriel Dattatreyan (Reference Dattatreyan2020) calls hip hop’s ‘globally familiar’ in his work on hip hop subjectivization in India.

As just one example, the band’s logo is a mash-up of the Daishi Bridge against an industrial skyline, all framed by the stitches of a baseball with the band name (in English) arcing across in block letters (see Fig. 2).

Figure 2.

Bad Hop’s baseball-shaped logo – featuring the Daishi Bridge.

On the track’s first verse, MC Vingo is already spelling it out for us. With the line ‘The speed of a Kawasaki Ninja H.2.R / Makes me look like a tough boy’ they draw a direct line to the street cool of the city’s famed motorcycle. And on the lyric ‘Ridin’ on such a cool sound’ they liken the Kawasaki beats they flow over to the ‘vroom, vroom, vroom, vroom’ of the locally made bikes they ride.

But perhaps most telling about how the group wants to establish its hardcore hip hop bona fides, G-k.i.d’s second verse ends with the punchline:

In this way, Bad Hop leverages Kawasaki’s diverse and industrial working-class rep to authenticate their own hardcore hip hop ‘ghetto’ image, like a Japanese South Bronx, Compton, or better, Detroit.

Indeed, as Bad Hop’s T-Pablow puts it, reflecting on one of the crews’ favourite rhymes inspired by their upbringing in Kawasaki’s industrial neighbourhoods: ‘at 14 you smoke weed, at 15 you get a tattoo, and at 16 you join the yakuza’ (VICE 2015: 18:31–18:39, translation added). The above couplet thus connects the city’s local rep to the globally familiar image of Kawasaki’s badass motorcycle – the Ninja – which itself is an always already trope of Japanese attitude that has been incorporated into hip hop’s African American ethos on tracks by Heavy D, Lil Kim, Nas, Biggie, Nicki Minaj, Nelly, The Game, Timbaland, and countless others. A recent search for ‘Kawasaki’ on the Cipher Team’s new 3rdAI Hip Hop Research Engine (https://globalcipher.org/3rdai/) yielded 244 results, from London’s Dizzee Rascal and Marseille’s Le 3ème Oeil to Nueva León’s Cartel de Santa and others spread across the globe.

Like other appropriated images that have become part of hip hop’s ‘globally familiar’ polycultural lexicon – from Japanese samurai and Italian mobsters to Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese philosophy – the Kawasaki Ninja is one such gem that has gained such wide traction across the global hip hop nation that it has become a sign of hip hop’s inherent Japaneseness. In Bad Hop’s usage on ‘Kawasaki Drift,’ the Kawasaki Ninja is thus a ‘gem’ of hip hop knowledge that we might call a ‘full-circle authenticator’ – its appropriations and hip hop significations in NYC and other global centres validates the art back at home. And as we will see, this gem works on a number of levels as it connects an ancient Japanese martial arts tradition to the modern industrial heritage of Kawasaki city.

Of course, while the music industry has no problem promoting Bad Hop’s form of deviant cool, Kawasaki’s city government has a different set of aims and methods built around normalizing hip hop arts and culture as a productive set of activities. Seeing music scarcely mentioned in official city policy, however, the Kawasaki City Government is aware of Bad Hop’s popularity and locality. As a result, the city finds alternative ways to incorporate them into city building, such as featuring members Tpablow, Yellow Pato, Bark, and Tiji Jojo in Mayor Fukuda’s community relations campaigns to garner support from citizens for his ‘happiest city’ approach to municipal governance – which co-opts notable residents into its industrial, educational, and cultural development projects (see Fukuda Reference Fukuda2025 for more). One example involves Bad Hop’s endorsement of Mayor Fukuda’s approach, marked by Fukuda’s declaration to ‘put your K’s up’ while gesturing a K with his hand. Echoing gang signs commonly used to signify regional or group belonging, the moment repurposes Bad Hop’s deviant cool as a resource for positive city-building and branding.

As Narusawa detailed, the state’s specific approach was split into four key objectives to support the development of hip hop and street culture in the city, while tending to its broader dissemination. Firstly, investing in youth cultural events that raise awareness and foster social participation such as the workshops, lessons, and opportunities for young practitioners to meet mentors and community leaders. Secondly, supporting organizations who wish to run events that align with their strategic position in enriching street culture in the city and stimulating movement within and across its borders, such as the International Street Festival Kawasaki (ISFK, hereafter). Thirdly, attracting international creative-athletic competitions to the region, such as the Red Bull BC One Kawasaki Cypher 2021, with the hopes of hosting the global finals event. And lastly, the investment in everyday facilities for community use such as the Kawasaki Cultural Hall. With this four-pronged plan, they hope to create a greater awareness within the Kawasaki community to help develop into a ‘Youth Culture City’. Ultimately, the city’s position is that ‘if the youth have a dream, we want to give them support. Not specifically to their dance but via developing a supportive community’ (interview with Narusawa Reference Narusawa, Ng and Rollefson2023, translation added). This is often done by securing venues for events and contests which can often be difficult – especially for less well-known dancers and crews – given the scarcity of spaces and need for official partners. Here we turn to examine a few key initiatives that the city government supports more closely.

Harnessing the Olympic trajectory for an International Street Culture Festival

One of the most prominent investments into street culture in Kawasaki city is in the annual International Street Festival – held in November each year. This project built off of the increasing visibility and institutional legitimation lent to breaking during its adoption into the Olympic Games. This was partly facilitated by Kastu-1, a long-time resident of Kawasaki, globally recognized hip hop practitioner, and community leader also involved in the Olympic project. Given this legacy of involvement in local and global hip hop Katsu is a renowned figure in Kawasaki – as a community leader, cultural entrepreneur, and cultural intermediary between hip hop communities, commercial organizations, and the state (Ng Reference Ng2023). His role as an Olympic Coach and work with the World DanceSport Federation also saw to a fruitful collaboration with the Kawasaki city council, giving way to one of the first youth Olympic Games regional qualifying events for breaking held in Kawasaki in 2018.

This intersected with the city council’s plans to develop more infrastructure and support for youth-targeted cultural activities such as breaking, BMX, skateboarding, double-dutch jump rope, and street ball (basketball), among others. One way this was made manifest was in an interdisciplinary forum for many of these elements as part of the ISFK in 2019. To run the event, the Kawasaki City government invests around $100,000 USD each year to continue its operation and service a number of creative and alternative creative and sport communities locally. The role of corporate sponsorship in this event is also paramount to its sustainability. Admittedly the Kawasaki City Council also face some pressure to reduce spending, and corporate partnerships are one way they hope to reduce the liability on the city’s funding so they might redistribute these resources to other events outside of their current purview. However, the city government also demonstrated some caution in taking on sponsors as well, suggesting ‘it is nice to have a lot of sponsors, but at the end of the day we want to focus on the sports and the culture itself’, noting that commercial partnership can also impact how hip hop is represented (interview with Narusawa Reference Narusawa, Ng and Rollefson2023, translation added).

The ISFK has also been critical in further establishing the recognition of hip hop’s presence in the city to its residents. This was done in part by utilizing hip hop’s entanglement in the region’s urban geographies which are described by both breakers and now the state as ‘sacred places’ for hip hop cultural practice (Ng Reference Ng, Raine, Blackman, McPherson and Taylor2025). Preceding the ISFK mayor Norihiko Fukuda had already celebrated this very fact publicly, stating:

Likewise, the ISFK promotes breaking’s strong legacy in the city noting:

While these claims also serve the city council’s own tourism and city building initiatives, they also lend mainstream visibility and recognition of what has at times been controversial among some of Japan’s more conservative citizenry, as even in progressive cities like Kawasaki, Narusawa noted ‘dancing on the streets was not something [the government] usually encouraged’ (Reference Narusawa, Ng and Rollefson2023, translation added). Kawasaki’s mutual beneficence, however, often does so with respect to the breaking scene’s own autonomy, enabling creators to host and curate their own events in partnership with the state.

Around 2010 ‘it was recognized as an official sport within the city’ because of the increasing number of dancers attending this location, expanding the support for local breaking events (interview with Narusawa Reference Narusawa, Ng and Rollefson2023, translation added). One such event is Katsu-1’s Super Break event that is one of the major international events under ISFK’s annual roster that attracts dancers and spectators from across the country and the globe to Kawasaki – reinforcing its status as a hub for hip hop connectivity. Other city-engaged activities also saw to hip hop’s other elements realized in live graffiti exhibitions, where patrons could participate in the creation of new works with Japanese graffiti writers WOOD, GOSPEL, and DRAGON76 and learn more about their craft. With the Many DJs, MCs, beatboxers, and dancers who frequent the event, it is hard not to see hip hop’s influence on the ISFK and as a result the broader Kawasaki region’s creative industries. This is largely part of the state’s role in communicating hip hop to residents many of whom ‘are still not familiar with hip hop’ and through these events ‘can experience it themselves’ (interview with Narusawa Reference Narusawa, Ng and Rollefson2023, translation added). While the ISFK is perhaps the largest effort that sees hip hop realized locally, the city has other important initiatives to support youth practitioners – such as a youth centre.

Kawasaki Cultural Hall – a youth centre approach

Japan’s consideration of youth throughout the years has been consistent with much of the world – at times being a major concern of the state – due to the perils of so-called delinquency and other associated social issues that arise from a lack of programs for young people and other positive social infrastructure. One way state governments across the globe have tended to these gaps has been through the production of youth-related services and spaces. These often satisfy other state policy goals by empowering youth via education, employment, leisure activities, and other forms of social capital building (Lombard Reference Lombard2012). In 2021 Kawasaki City partnered with infrastructural developer Keihin Electric Express Railway Company, investing in the creation of a youth centre named the Kawasaki Bunka Kaikan (trans. ‘Kawasaki Cultural Hall’) to provide social infrastructure that similarly tends to these gaps. Their ‘Basic Plan for Environmental Improvement for Urban Development through the Dissemination of Youth Culture’ (KC 2018) upends the idea of music and dance as nuisance in public spaces, instead recognizing youth cultural practices as positive contributions to the city’s culture which is useful in promoting the city across the country and globe, stimulating new flows of cultural tourism.

The KCH supports youth culture by providing space for the practice, education, and community development related to hip hop dance, skateboarding, basketball, e-sports, BMX, and other youth activities. The large establishment on prime real estate – just outside the City Hall’s Keikyu-Kawasaki train station – has three levels, with dance studios, e-sports centre, basketball courts (which also double as a convertible skate park), and a café where youth can congregate and socialize. The youth centre also acts as a place for education and communication across generations and cultures, where both youth and parents are able to find resources on street cultural practices – in remarkably well-conceived and thoughtful ways.

On arriving in the lobby of the Centre as Narusawa gave us a tour, we were met by a kiosk full of pamphlets reading ‘What is Breaking?’ (see Fig. 3). The resource here was a short document produced by the JDSF in association with public broadcaster the NHK for the 2023 All Japan Breaking Championships, which explores breaking as an artform, its cultural origins in the south Bronx and its emerging practice in the Olympics.

Figure 3.

Japan DanceSport Federation educational pamphlet detailing the history and common practices in breaking and battles (cover and two inside panels).

Figure 3. Long description

The leftmost panel is the cover, featuring a photo of a breaker balancing on one hand with legs extended, set against a dark background. Large white text at the top reads ‘WHAT’S BREAKING?’ with smaller Japanese text below. The bottom section displays ‘BREAKING X N H K’ and additional Japanese text. The center panel, titled ‘BREAKING X N H K,’ contains two sections: ‘HISTORY OF BREAKING’ at the top with a group photo of dancers, and ‘FASHION’ in a yellow circle below, with Japanese and English text describing the evolution of breaking and its style. The rightmost panel is divided into two sections. The upper section, labeled ‘HAND SIGN’ in a yellow circle, explains the use of hand signs in breaking battles, with Japanese and English text. Below, two illustrated dancers demonstrate the ‘Bite’ and ‘Twice’ hand signs, each with a description in both languages. The layout uses black backgrounds, yellow highlights, and a mix of photographs and illustrations to convey information.

The ‘History of Breaking’ section begins:

While the short introduction simplifies much of the detail about the history of the culture and genesis story of Afrika Bambaataa’s (that ‘gang leader’) battles, it respectfully conveys some core histories of the culture and its provenance, featuring old photos of early Black and Latinx crews. The document also successfully conveys the message of legitimization and inclusion that the JDSF and Kawasaki city government wanted to stress: 1) this art form comes from working-class people, 2) it is a positive outlet for youth energies, and 3) it curates public spaces for enjoyment. Further, a short sentence above the ‘History’ section declares: ‘Dance, be yourself’ – a slogan that riffs on a core hip hop ‘gem of knowledge’: ‘knowledge of self’ (KoS) (Rollefson et al. Reference Rollefson, Moses, Ng, Gamble, Marks and McCabe2023). Indeed, the line echoes the classic Bambaataa track ‘Planet Rock’ (1982) and its entreaty to: ‘Be what you be / Be!’

As we step into the KCH we see a well-equipped basketball court to the left, a café (featuring clips of the local Kawasaki Brave Thunders basketball team on the TV) to the right, and windows to a state-of-the-art dance studio front and centre. Within the practice room, b-boys Y-Hi and Thomas practice avidly. Y-Hi is an emerging professional breaker while Thomas has long been part of the already esteemed and globally competitive crew, Flooriorz. Without surprise Thomas and other locally championed dancers like Kensaku have become MCs to host official dance events in Kawasaki, offering new pathways for professionalization. This aligns perhaps most notably with the city’s policy around promoting youth culture through utilizing its citizenship:

This centre wouldn’t be complete without the support of the city’s notable hip hop partnerships, such as with Katsu-1 who states: ‘We are truly delighted to have such a facility in Kawasaki to further boost Breakin’ in Kawasaki amongst a ‘thriving street and youth culture’ (KCH 2024, translation added). When talking with the Kawasaki City Council, they noted that while local government has long recognized breaking, these official facilities alongside the Olympic incorporation have been important for helping the residents gain more of an understanding of its positive influence on the city and its culture beyond what they see on the street.

Kawasaki Mural Art Project (KMAP)

Committed to making hip hop arts a visible part of the city fabric, Kawasaki City Council commissioned an aerosol (graffiti) art mural that celebrates the city’s history through localizing gems of many globally reaching practices. In 2019 the council granted 15 metres of wall space for the Kawasaki Mural Art Project (KMAP) across the street from Kawasaki City Hall – just over a hundred meters from the KCH. In the following year the city expanded the commission to 56 metres – almost the length of a city block – all funded by the Kawasaki government. Premised upon its location near Kawasaki’s Edo-era Inage Shrine, the mural’s official brief was to explore the past, present, and future of the city: starting at the end of the Edo-period in the late 1860s and projecting forward into imagined futures. The inclusion of hip hop and breaking wasn’t a requirement of the city; however, they recognized its centrality to Kawasaki’s recent history as did the artists. As we will see, the KMAP mural explores cultural practices recontextualized throughout history, drawing parallels and making connections between hip hop and older Japanese artforms – including kabuki – as it moves across time in a binary-collapsing, retro-futuristic reimagining of the city (see Fig. 4). As lead KMAP artist Dragon76, explained: ‘when I imagined the future when I was a child, I wanted to create a future that was a little retro’ (Artist Files 2021, 20:22).

Figure 4.

The full KMAP mural with overlapping detail of the four continuous The full KMAP mural with overlapping detail of the various scenes integrating the work of artists Kensuke Takahashi, Tokio Aoyama, Wood, Cook and Dragon76. Note the frayed edges of the ‘scroll’ and the centre at bottom right with artist tags.

Source: For more on the KMAP project, please see the Kawasaki City ‘Colors Future!’ Magazine (KC 2023).

Figure 4. Long description

The top panel features a traditional Japanese festival procession with ornate floats, costumed figures, and temple architecture, blending into a dynamic black-and-white calligraphic graffiti section on the right. The second panel depicts a mid-20th-century Japanese street scene with vintage cars, shopfronts labeled in Japanese, and groups of people in period attire, transitioning rightward to a jazz club sign and a large mechanical figure. The third panel shifts to a contemporary urban setting with a barcode, the word ‘COEXIST’, and a central orange robotic creature surrounded by people, graffiti, and a convenience store labeled ‘24 OPEN’. The bottom panel presents a futuristic city at night, dominated by a large mechanical figure labeled ‘OUROBOROS’, neon signage, and a blend of cartoonish graffiti and cyborg characters. The frayed scroll edges and artist tags are visible at the bottom right.

In the context of our work with the European Research Council-funded hip hop project, CIPHER: Hip Hop Interpellation, the mural proved precisely the kind of artefact we knew would offer insights into hip hop’s glocalization—‘gems’ of hip hop knowledge that connect the global and the local. For here, across from Kawasaki City Hall was a major art installation that tracked the nation’s history, just as it told the story of hip hop’s localization in Japan. Indeed, this city-block-long graffiti piece was both a placeholder for and realization of the city’s stated vision, bordering the north side of what would soon be the new city hall skyscraper and serving as the conceptual and material foundation for this emergent hip hop city (see also cover art for KC 2023). What’s more, the glocal story that KMAP tells incorporates a range of time-collapsing hip hop constructions and authenticators organized across the traditional ‘four elements’ of hip hop: breaking, graffiti, rapping, and DJing.

The mural unfolds in four acts – 1) Japan’s feudal Edo period past (1603–1868), 2) its modernizing early 20th-century period, 3) its contemporary early 21st-century reality, and 4) a technological vision of its near future.

In our interview with Narusawa, he recounted the beginnings of the planning for the mural by celebrated graffiti artist Dragon76. As he explained, Dragon was contacted by Katsu1 on behalf of the city and agreed to lead the commission. After some planning, he brought on the other artists to create the major aerosol art piece that would be painted on the North side of the temporary barrier surrounding the construction site of the new City Hall.Footnote ⁷ As Narusawa proudly explained, the first scene (top panel above) ‘draws inspiration from kabuki performance, with ninjas and so forth’, continuing ‘there’s no direct relationship, but it’s about culture through the times. Back then it was kabuki, now it’s breaking. An illustration of changes and growth’ (2023, translation added). The kabuki scene is rich in Edo-period detail, from costuming to architecture, and is even rendered in a traditional woodblock print style – etched lines emulating the cuts of traditional chokokuto (woodcutting tools). But while Narusawa’s point that the first panel draws inspiration from the classical Japanese theatre tradition is clearly apropos of the scene, the claim that ‘there’s no direct relationship’ demands a closer look. Undeniably, the mural’s hip hop gems – including a number of easter eggs – point to a logic of cyclicity that gestures towards a direct relationship between past, present, and future.

Indeed, there is a remarkable hip hop logic at play in Dragon76 and the contributing artists’ conceptualization of the mural that draws direct, if fantastic, continuities between hip hop and kabuki as multi-art forms. In the mural’s Edo panel, Dragon reimagines kabuki’s constitutive art forms through a hip hop lens. As we will see, the mural depicts these multi-art continuities in the realms of music, dance, and visual art. Indeed, the individual characters of the word kabuki 歌舞伎 translate roughly as ‘sing’ (歌), ‘dance’ (舞), and ‘skill’ (伎).Footnote ⁸ What’s more, the term kabuki comes from a verb meaning ‘offbeat’ that was used to describe the young samurai patrons of these performances – in many ways a fitting continuity with practitioners at the heart of hip hop’s urban polyculture.Footnote ⁹ For these reasons and those we detail below, it seems that Dragon76’s history scroll tells a more direct, detailed, and profound story than a general ‘illustration of changes.’

From a hip hop perspective, the most striking thing about the kabuki panel is the pair of figures at the centre of the scene’s diegetic attention. For here, framed by musicians, a royal procession, and an onlooking crowd, are a ninja clad in red and a shaved-head figure dressed in blue. Remarkably, the two figures who at first glance seem to be fighting are, in fact, in the midst of a hip hop dance battle, holding their breaking ‘freezes’ to evidence their artistic skill and athletic prowess. While the costumes of these figures might not stick out in this feudal Japanese context, their actions – which we might define as anachronistic – certainly do.

The scene is a perfect example of the hip hop logic of ‘full-circle authentication’ described above, wherein signifiers of one’s own locality, once appreciated by and appropriated into hip hop culture, create a route of authentication into that Black American-centred culture. Again, hip hop’s incorporation of Italian ‘cosa nostra’ lingo or South Asian ‘third eye’ imagery are exemplary fruits of this logic for, respectively, Italian and South Asian rappers.Footnote ¹⁰ And in the case of these ninja/B-Boys, we have an extended, additional, and related logic that seems to push back against accusations of anachronism, as if to say: we were hip hop before hip hop. Notably, this is a logic that is well-documented in the literature on hip hop glocalization, as artists around the world have found practices and principles of ‘their own’ cultures in the artistic elements and lifeways of hip hop culture (Pennycook and Mitchell Reference Pennycook and Mitchell2009; Rollefson Reference Rollefson, Mangaoang, O’Flynn and Briain2020). Indeed, it is a logic based on hip hop’s own claims to global traditional lifeways and hip hop’s non-linear, holistic, even mystical epistemological framework: the gem of ‘knowledge of self’ (KoS) noted above.Footnote ¹¹ By this logic – captured in the artistic rhetoric of the Edo panel – hip hop expressed in its Japanese form as a reimagining of kabuki.

Continuing this line of full-circle authentication, to the right of the hip hop dance battle is a figure with a comically large calligraphy brush engaged in another hip hop element: graffiti. If the martial-artist-breakers don’t make the project’s artistic lineage rhetoric clear, this fantastic figure of what we might rightly call a calligraffiti artist tagging an Edo-period shrine wall should bring the logic into focus: we are them, they are us. Extending this time-collapsing artistic logic, we might say that the scene’s basket-helmeted Komusō (虚無僧 / ‘monks of nothingness’) providing the music for the ninja-samurai dance battle are the MC and DJ, respectively – the shakuhachi player perhaps taking the role of the rapper and the off-kilter taiko player with his leg up serving in the role of the ‘funky drummer’.Footnote ¹² To be sure, from mystical KoS enlightenment discourses in the 1980s to Wu-Tang Clan’s ‘Buddha Monk’ references in the 1990s, hip hop artists have a long and storied poetic and musical tradition of valorizing the figure of the monk and looking to their model of the questing spirituality for guidance.

While less literal in connecting hip hop art forms and their cognate forebears from the past, the balance of the mural continues in this vein, featuring Westernizations such as bowler hats, flapper costumes, and other jazz-era imagery in the early 20th-century panel (second panel above). Most notable here is a billboard featuring a fedora-clad jazz trumpeter – a moustachioed Black man performing on a steampunk-looking four-belled instrument – overlapping a sign for a jazz club with a young woman playing double bass in the foreground. Continuing this acknowledgement of the African American roots of hip hop (as well as a subtle nod to Kawasaki’s own ethnic and class diversity), the second panel also features schoolkids performing acrobatic double-Dutch moves. The inclusion is not only a reference to the city government’s stated interest in such ‘street culture’ and its physical and mental health benefits but also indexes the embodied knowledge of hip hop dance – a relationship Kyra Gaunt examines through the intersectional and decolonial concept of ‘kinetic orality’ in her landmark The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop (Reference Gaunt2006).

Like so many hip hop cultural artifacts and performances the world over, the Kawasaki Mural Art Project is packed with intertextual references, hidden gems of hip hop knowledge, and other easter eggs for the seasoned hip hop ‘head’ and casual observer alike. The third and fourth panels – on contemporary and near-future Kawasaki, respectively – give us wonderfully anachronistic juxtapositions, from the retro-futuristic image of a spacesuit-clad chimp (a Planet of the Apes reference) to a massive closeup of Dragon’s trademark mecha samurai. Indeed, the latter figure is another full-circle authenticator insofar as the samurai helmet is the model for George Lucas’s signature and ‘globally familiar’ Star Wars stormtrooper and Darth Vader helmets.

While the mural’s timescape is clearly a playful and fantastic one – flattening space-time and reimagining cultural geographies – it also offers us a less linear, more cyclic image of history in keeping with traditional conceptions of time. Indeed, this point is made explicit by Dragon’s inclusion in the mural of one of his favourite tags: ‘ouroboros’. The term is hidden in the detail of t-shirts (see detail from KMAP in Fig. 5, panel 2), written in block letters on the road (Fig. 5, panel 1), and abbreviated as ‘OBS’ and visually abstracted as ‘0135’ on name tags, jacket (Fig. 5, panel 2), wall (Fig. 5, panel 1), and elsewhere.

Figure 5.

Ouroboros details of Kawasaki Mural Art Project and Dragon76. Panel 1: Dragon76’s trademark mecha samurai (centre top) and ‘ouroboros’ figure (bottom left) in futuristic scene with jet-booted B-Boy (far right). Panel 2: contemporary scene with breaking cipher in front of convenience store. Here, the ‘ouroboros’ figure appears as a detail on a pink t-shirt (centre left) on the t-shirt of the B-Boy in the centre of the cipher, on the shirt of the cyclist, and ‘0135’ on jacket of the space helmeted figure in the foreground. The figure is a visual abstraction of the letters of the ‘ouroboros’ figure: ‘0135’ or ‘OBS’ (i.e. a visual shortening of OuroBoroS – which also appears on helmet nametags as a sort of Rosetta Stone interpretive key). Panel 3: image from Dragon76’s Instagram Page which features his rendering of the Ouroboros snake/dragon with the OBS tag. https://www.instagram.com/dragon76art/p/C1qIQcHMkQj/?img_index=1.

Figure 5. Long description

Top-left panel features a dynamic futuristic mural with a central armored space samurai wielding swords, surrounded by robotic and human figures in action poses. The background includes blue graffiti with ‘0135’ and ‘OUROBOROS’ in large letters, and a jet-booted B-Boy at the far right. Bottom-left panel depicts a contemporary urban street scene in front of a convenience store, with a group of dancers forming a cipher. The central B-Boy wears a pink shirt with the ouroboros motif, and the cyclist and a helmeted figure in the foreground also display the motif and ‘0135’ on their clothing. The store signage includes Japanese text and ‘24 OPEN.’ Right panel presents a graphic illustration of a mechanical ouroboros dragon forming a circle around bold, blocky letters spelling ‘OUROBOROS’ and ‘OBS.’ The dragon is composed of mechanical and organic elements, and a descriptive text block appears at the bottom, referencing the ouroboros as an ancient symbol. The recurring motifs ‘OBS’ and ‘0135’ visually connect all three panels.

The word is, of course, an icon of cyclicity. As Dragon explains in a flyer promotion for his Ouroboros t-shirts: ‘The ouroboros or uroborus is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. Originating in Ancient Egyptian iconography, the ouroboros entered Western tradition via Greek magical tradition and was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy’ (see Fig. 5, panel 3 below). As such, in light of this term appearing to frame the mural’s cyclical logics, let us here rename the conceptual tag ‘full-circle authentication’ as ‘ouroboros authentication’.

In these ways ‘ourobouros’ is the central conceit of KMAP as the artists’ collapse of local and global, past and future shines forth as we do the interpretive and cultural work of understanding these gems of glocal wisdom. Indeed, the acronym of the Kawasaki Mural Arts Project, ‘KMAP’ – which the artists also turn into an easter egg for us to find (see the helmet in panel 2 of Fig. 5) – signals for us another valence of this anachronizing piece’s ouroboros reality. In short, the glocal mash-up of ideas and images representing this hip hop city is providing us an historical ‘MAP’ of Kawasaki. The KMAP mural art project is a map of the city and its past, present, and future – a map of its hip hop spacetime (see if you can find the Back to the Future ‘DMC’ hip hop time machine in the full mural above – Fig. 5). In these hip hop artists’ KoS episteme, today’s B-Girls and B-Boys are yesterday’s jazz bassists and trumpeters, ninjas, samurais, and Komusō (Pennycook and Mitchell Reference Pennycook and Mitchell2009; Rollefson Reference Rollefson, Mangaoang, O’Flynn and Briain2020). And they are also tomorrow’s jetshoe B-Boys (see Fig. 5, panel 1). As our work on the ERC CIPHER project has shown, these types of connections are at the heart of hip hop’s interconnecting, glocalizing, and polycultural KoS metaphysics (Rollefson et al. Reference Rollefson, Moses, Ng, Gamble, Marks and McCabe2023).

Conclusion: Towards a hip hop city

In this article we have explored a recent account of hip hop’s history in Kawasaki and its more recent developments as part of the city’s strategy for development and civic engagement – how the city has leveraged its urban culture as a core part of its city planning. We examined cultural policy documents alongside interviews with both practitioners and city government officials to demonstrate how the city co-opts hip hop into its agenda for city building. This has enabled hip hop’s established spaces like Musashi-Mizonokuchi station to be officially recognized by the city who now aims to preserve and promote its cultural significance (see Fig. 6). In 2025, a ceremony was conducted to honour this recognition by the Kawasaki City Council in partnership with the Takatsu Ward Breaking Monument Production Committee headed up by Kawasaki City ambassadors b-boys, Katsu1, and Steez.Footnote ¹³

Figure 6.

Mural at the entrance to Mizonokuchi station by Dragon76 officially recognizing its cultural significance. On the futuristic samurai helmet, it states ‘Take Notice’ and ‘Good Foot’ which are two local breaking crews in regular attendance.

Figure 6. Long description

At the center is a large, detailed samurai helmet with metallic and cybernetic features, labeled ‘Take Notice’ and ‘Good Foot’ on the brow. The helmet is integrated with a blue boombox, with dials and speakers forming the sides. Below the helmet, the word ‘LEGEND’ is painted in block letters. To the left, a breakdancer in a maroon outfit labeled ‘VICTORY’ performs a freeze, legs raised and head near the helmet. To the right, another breakdancer in a similar maroon outfit is mid-kick, facing inward. Both dancers wear headbands and gloves. The background features stylized clouds, two large yellow stars, and graffiti-style text: ‘BREAK ’ on the left, ‘MIZONOKUCHI’ at the top center, and Japanese characters on the right. The mural is bordered by a white wall and red rope barrier at the bottom.

By the same measure the city has developed new spaces for hip hop dance such as the Kawasaki Cultural Hall, which also contribute to mutually beneficial ways that the local government can promote civic engagement and provide social infrastructure for youth development. This is further enhanced by situating Kawasaki as an important city for hip hop events, through programmes like the International Street Festival Kawasaki, in which breaking features prominently through the increasingly globally reaching Superbreak hosted by Katsu1.

These developments have seen many citizens also consider Kawasaki a ‘hip hop city’ which is celebrated in its urban development and regeneration. This is most notable in the KMAP graffiti art mural which captures historical engagements with forms from outside of Japan, while celebrating their transformative potential in shaping contemporary Japanese cultural expression. Not just because of its one-off commissioning, but through its performance of knowledge by established hip hop artists, KMAP helps lay Kawasaki’s claim to being a hip hop city. Because the city had established connections with its hip hop community and knew how and who to work with, the city managed to create an authentic piece of art that located Kawasaki’s special place in the hip hop world. The city’s longstanding and authentic relationship with its hip hop community shines through in the detail of the KMAP Team’s work.

Because Narusawa-san and his colleagues recognized Mizonokuchi Station as an important international hip hop site, built relationships with Katsu1 and other creative intermediaries, and saw the potential in the talented, committed, and globally connected young people who understood Kawasaki’s place on the global hip hop map, the Kawasaki city government was able to establish the city’s reputation as a hip hop hub. Not only that, but they have staked their claim as a youth cultural city by emphasizing a respect for hip hop as a global culture.

Surely this process was an uneven one, characterized by the policing and containment of hip hop arts in those early years. Surely, too, will this process continue to present challenges in balancing artistic self-expression, commercialization, and government interests. But in an historically conservative society like Japan, the case of Kawasaki is nothing less than extraordinary. Indeed, through community engagement, education, and investment, they have made leaps in advancing hip hop’s local status in Japan. In a national and international context of widespread political change and upheaval, we hope that the example of Kawasaki might become a transferable model of best practice for government relationships with hip hop arts and culture worldwide. As this case suggests, hip hop can be a channel of communication that breeds understanding between old and young, between centre and margin, between local and global.