Inside Japan’s ’90s gabber and hardcore underground

Between 2003 and 2005, Yuta Umegatani was a regular at a party called Nightmare Land in Tokyo’s electronic music underground. As its name suggested, the night’s soundtrack was usually dark, heavy and twisted, playing a mix of UK and European hardcore, from millennium hardcore to freeform and trancecore. With abrasive kickdrums that pounded from at least 160 bpm, topped by distorted synths and samples, the hardcore night attracted a small, but dedicated crowd searching for the sharper edge of rave music (not to be confused with the punk genre of the same name).

But strip away the sound, and it would be a shock to discover what the crowds were listening to. ​“To be honest, I think the crowd was usually only around 30 to 50 people,” Umegatani recalls. ​“Rather than going wild and dancing intensely on the floor, most people just stood and listened to the music calmly.”

It was characteristic of Japan’s underground hardcore and gabber scene at the time, which had really begun to take on its own distinct sonic and cultural tendencies. Since the early ​’90s, when copies of legendary gabber outfit Euromasters’ 1992 debut EP Alles Naar De Kl – te made its way east to Japan, a small but devoted following had begun to emerge in Tokyo and Osaka’s underground. By the mid ​’00s, Japanese artists were creating music that blended the Dutch influence with local tastes, in sound but also visual representation through its flyers and posters, solidifying what has come to be known as J‑core.

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Umegatani’s love for the music ultimately led him to begin his own party and label, MURDER CHANNEL, in 2004. In a small scene, he and other devotees had to create their own spaces to express their love for the music. And since then, over the past two decades, he has been one of its key proponents.

“One of my friends had released an amazing album, but there was no release party for it and I felt really frustrated about that,” he says. ​“At the time, there were almost no events in Tokyo focusing on breakcore, so another motivation was to introduce and support the genre. The label officially started in 2007, for a similar reason – no one else was going to do it, so I decided to do it for myself.”

Now, Umegatani has teamed up with Italian hardcore artist Gabber Eleganza on a new book, Manga Corps, as well as Dutch photographer and hardcore archivist Boris Postma, with Umegatani and Postma contributing texts to the final publication. Released via Eleganza’s Never Sleep record label and publishing house, Manga Corps explores and archives the budding proto J‑core scene of the ​’90s through to the turn of the millennium, via rave ephemera, flyers, fanzines and more.

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With cyborg illustrations, manga-influenced cartoons and Japanese font and typography, it shows the development of the scene’s visual language, as the scene became more embedded. ​“Especially during the ​’90s, manga had a bad reputation in Japan, because of a serial killer who was caught during the late ​’80s, who had a huge manga and animé collection,” Postma explains. ​“Anything otaku [a Japanese subculture characterised by obsession with manga, animé and video games] was connected to the serial killer and considered bad taste. So during the first half of the ​’90s, they looked to Rotterdam and Dutch flyers, and the manga part only enters during the second half of the ​’90s.”

Rotterdam has long been considered the spiritual home of gabber, much like Detroit for techno, or Chicago for house music. Industrial and gritty, the city shared similar characteristics with Osaka, where the genre first took off in Japan. ​“Osaka as a city was very working class, and it also had a huge art university scene,” says Eleganza. ​“So there were a lot of teenagers and people in their early 20s who were just hanging out, and ready to make as much hell and mayhem as they could – it was never about the money or ego, it was very much about experimenting and community.”

Both Postma and Eleganza are longtime collectors of hardcore and gabber ephemera, and in Umegatani they found a kindred spirit thousands of miles away. Since first getting into publishing, Eleganza’s Never Sleep has released another collection of rave-related record store ads and paper ephemera from the early ​’90s, Archivio #1, while Postma first began collecting flyers that were sold in his Dutch school. ​“Some boys in my class had bigger brothers who brought flyers to the school yard and would sell them,” he remembers. ​“They showed bootleg imagery of fantasy art and horror movies, and that kind of stuff. For me as a little kid renting VHS videos, they felt connected, and I was collecting them secretly because my parents thought they were too violent and too sexy – especially for a 10-year-old. They would feature naked women, guns, explosions and animé images of warriors.”’

With its deliberately confrontational aggression, working class and otaku associations, as well as unpretentious stylings, the sound has naturally appealed to those situated more on the margins of Japan and Western Europe – outsiders who tend to gravitate towards sonics with bite and grit. ​“The music I’m drawn to is often layered and has a rebellious spirit, and hardcore fits that perfectly,” says Umegatani. ​“I think that gabber and hardcore listeners in Japan, across all generations, often share a geeky or otaku-like mindset. By that, I mean a certain introverted personality. They tend to be mild-mannered yet seem to crave something aggressive or even violent underneath. I believe there was a strong connection between the geeky and otaku spirit in Japan and the energy of gabber and hardcore – the two had a lot in common.”

As the ​’90s rolled into the ​’00s, J‑core’s identity grew to be more distinct, leaning into its otaku roots as a global boom in video games saw Japanese cultural influence extend across the West.  ​“As video games started to pop up, with the first PlayStation and PS2, you had games like Dance Dance Revolution and Beatmania,” says Eleganza. ​“Music producers for the games came from the Japanese hardcore and gabber scene, so they basically became worldwide DJs. And that’s the starting point of J‑core – it’s essentially fast, bouncy music, influenced by happy hardcore from the UK, people like The Speed Freak in Germany, and video game music.”

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And that influence has continued to grow into the modern day. Hyperpop has become one of the present decade’s most pervasive sounds, as A.G. Cook’s PC Music label has been key in pushing pop towards clean-cut, high energy maximalism. Last summer, Charli xcx’s Brat came to define 2024, built upon the very foundations laid by those few throwing hefty beats down in the Tokyo and Osaka subterraneans. ​“J‑core was a huge influence for a lot of EDM producers, and even PC Music and SOPHIE,” says Eleganza. ​“So the path and legacy is extremely huge, in terms of what they achieved, even though it was a small scene in terms of active members.”

Even in Japan, the scene is no longer underground, and Manga Corps immortalises its very roots in print form. ​“The number of listeners has grown dramatically – there are hardcore events happening in clubs every month now,” says Umegatani. ​“When I first got involved in the hardcore scene, it felt like a kind of ice age. But compared to those days, the level of acceptance and popularity now is almost unbelievable.”

Having been involved for so long in the movement, it has given the Japanese underground hero, and the wider scene, something to celebrate. ​“To be honest, I was in a pretty tough place while working on Manga Corps,” he continues. ​“But now, I truly feel honoured to have been part of this book. It wouldn’t have been possible without Gabber Eleganza’s passion, and I believe many pioneers of the Japanese hardcore scene are deeply grateful to him.”

Manga Corps — An archive of Japanese rave artifacts is published by Never Sleep.

Follow Gabber Eleganza and Yuta Umegatani / MURDER CHANNEL on Instagram.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s digital editor. Follow him on Bluesky.

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