Kiyoshi Matsuo on How Music Expanded His Views, Promoting Affirmative Action in Japan’s Music Industry & More

Billboard Japan’s Women in Music initiative began in 2022 to celebrate artists, producers and executives who have made significant contributions to music and inspired other women through their work. The WIM interview series has highlighted female players in the Japanese entertainment industry, with the first 30 conversations released in book form as a Billboard Japan Presents collection by writer Rio Hirai.

As the project strives to shed light on the status quo of the Japanese entertainment industry and to explore ways the working environment can be improved for women and everyone involved, it welcomes views from people of diverse backgrounds. For the latest installment, Hirai interviewed Kiyoshi Matsuo, an award-winning music producer who began his career as a music writer from his university days and switched to producing in the late 1990s.

A prominent figure in the industry as one of the driving forces behind the R&B and soul music movements in J-pop, Matsuo has contributed to numerous hits including those by MISIA, Hikaru Utada, SPEED, and more. Also known for his opinions on politics and other topics often avoided by the majority in the business, the outspoken music producer and writer shared his views on some of the issues he sees in the Japanese entertainment industry while opening up about the journey of how he formed his current stance on the topics he feels strongly about.

You speak out on various social issues inside and outside the entertainment industry while working as a music producer. When did you first become aware of such issues? 

Until the late 1990s, I used to work mainly as a writer and journalist introducing Western music to Japan. I’d spend a third of the year in the U.S. and U.K. doing interviews and then bring the material I collected back to Japan to write articles. I used to incorporate almost all of what I covered in my writing, but it was hard to find media that would carry articles with political and social content.

When I was doing those interviews, the most exciting discussions I had with artists were about politics and social topics. For example, even when I made the appointment to talk about a new album, if the U.S. presidential election was coming up, the topic of conversation would be all about the election. The music I was fascinated with — R&B and soul — is the music of African Americans. For them, the matter of who would become the leader of the country was very important, and they probably always felt the connection between politics and society and their own lives.

Not being able to write about what those artists felt was important back in my own country was frustrating, but I gradually became busy with my career as a producer and stepped back from doing interviews. Ever since then until now, I’ve felt at various times that something was wrong with society, and now that I’m at this age, it’s like I finally feel it’s about time I said something about it.

You hail from the southern island of Kyushu, which is one of the regions in Japan that’s said to have a wide gender imbalance. Why did you become interested in gender gap issues even though you were born and raised as a privileged, healthy male in such an environment?

Vessels like the family you were born in or the company you work for aren’t the only things that nurture a person’s spirituality. Regardless of the environment you were raised in, I’m sure you encounter many people who bring you awareness even after you reach adulthood.

In my case, I got into soul music through jazz, which my father liked, and then encountered hip-hop, considered to be the newest music at the time, and became interested in African-American music in general. Eventually it became my job, and as I engaged in dialogue with people from various walks of life, I began to learn and think about the history and thoughts in people’s backgrounds. I’m a Japanese man living in Japan, married with children, and sometimes people say I’m living the life, but through music, I’ve always tried to imagine the views of the oppressed and those being controlled.

I see, so your perspective on society changed through music.

In my case, yes. But Japan today might not be too different from those days when I couldn’t write about artists’ political views as a journalist. Writer and philosophy scholar Ataru Sasaki tweeted on X the other day about how “after repeated calls to ‘not bring politics into music,’ we’ve brought the worst kind of politics into music.” Instances where Japanese acts come under fire for creating music videos using historical figures that instigated invasions and massacres are precisely the result of having eliminated social perspectives from music. I’m an optimist at heart, but I think the notion to “not bring politics into music” is probably connected to the country’s loss of international competitiveness.

From the late 1990s you shifted your focus to producing music, and it feels like the artists you helped launch their careers — SPEED, MISIA, Hikaru Utada, etc. — sang about themselves as self-reliant individuals, which was a clear departure from the trend of the “idol” singers that had been the mainstream up to that point.

Songs by idol singers at the time were mass products aimed to become mega-hits, so they reflected the largest common denominator of the public’s preference. So it could be said that those songs were heavily tinged with the thinking around gender roles in Japan at the time.

On the other hand, if the female R&B singers I helped as part of the team had one thing in common, you could say they all seemed to be walking on their own two feet. R&B itself is of course a genre that’s been around for a long time, and in the late 1990s when it was first gaining momentum in Japan, the top 10 songs on the U.S. pop charts were almost entirely dominated by R&B. Japanese artists were also looking up Janet Jackson, Lauryn Hill, and TLC in their heyday. And those new J-pop artists weren’t being made to sing songs that other people wrote, and that probably led to that sense of being self-reliant.

I wonder if one of the reasons why the gender imbalance in the Japanese entertainment industry continues to exist is that the public doesn’t seem to be very interested in mature female artists, meaning it’s a matter of capacity and literacy on the side of consumers.

People who grow up watching Japanese idol singers in their adolescent years, being taught that “this is how girls are supposed to be,” most likely aren’t going to start listening to mature female artists after they outgrow those idols. I feel that nowadays, people prefer songs that are easy to understand rather than those with a mature perspective. I like lyrics written by Rokusuke Ei (“Ue wo muite aruko,” aka “Sukiyaki” etc.) and Michio Yamagami (“Tsubasa wo kudasai” etc.), and they often depict profound emotions that make you feel like you’re watching a movie in a three-minute song. Sometimes I want to try that kind of approach, but don’t get the kind of reaction I’m hoping for when I do, perhaps because people aren’t looking for perspectives with depth and delicates gradation in new songs.

There’s also the long-standing reality of management positions in the Japanese music and entertainment industry being dominated by men. What do you think is necessary for women to thrive in the business?

I think it’d be better to institutionalize a system to guarantee a certain percentage of women, like the French Parité Law (that mandates the equal inclusion of men and women on lists of candidates). When I was interviewing artists in the U.S. in the ‘80s and ‘90s, I sometimes heard from African Americans in their 30s and 40s that they were the first among their relatives to be admitted to college through affirmative action, even though they came from families that had been forced into slave labor long ago. They told me passionately that their mission was to write songs about what they’d seen as someone living in such an era. Affirmative action means taking positive steps to eliminate discrimination, and in Japan where the gender gap index is so low, I think that’s necessary.

Yes. Like the way music opened your eyes to the distortions of society, it can be a very effective approach in changing people’s minds. That’s why the structure of the industry that produces it must change.

During the pandemic, we often heard the phrase “fuyou fukyuu” (unnecessary and non-urgent). It’s true that music and entertainment can be considered unnecessary and non-urgent. But if politics and economics are the major arteries, music gives flexibility to people, like capillaries. A society that lacks flexibility and openness is cramped and suffocating, don’t you think?

—This interview by Rio Hirai (SOW SWEET PUBLISHING) first appeared on Billboard Japan