CS Monitor – Big in Japan: a custom- tailored cowboy culture
It is quintessentially Japanese to pick up styles, then adopt and recreate them, experts say. That’s what happened with country music here in the wake of World War II, when American GIs popularized it by playing Hank Williams on the radio. Add to that the appeal of America’s wide-open West and lonely cowboys in a nation of crowded cities and group dynamics, and it’s not hard to understand country music’s secure – and custom tailored – place in Japan’s heart.