Pass The Peas - Shibuya Kei (Green) T-Shirt

Shibuya Kei is more than just a genre. It has been a movement representing Japan for the last millennium years. Yasuharu Konishi, the lead of Pizzicato Five, once stated, "Shibuya in the '90s is just like Haight-Ashbury in the '60s". It was the epicenter of cool for young people in Japan.

The largely independent bands and singers these trendsetters favored soon found themselves grouped in a genre known as "Shibuya-kei" – translated as Shibuya style. Whereas most American and British bands of the era were monolithic in pursuing a nearly singular mode of expression, Shibuya-kei acts were willfully impure and eclectic.

Pioneers like Pizzicato Five and Flipper's Guitar flitted from jazz to pop, soul to rock, bossa nova, and noise. Their all-embracing ways filtered down to their similarly diverse followers. The scene soon went international: Cornelius, Buffalo Daughter, Fantastic Plastic Machine, Kahimi Karie, Takako Minekawa, and their Japanese-American kin Cibo Matto and Deee-Lite's Tōwa Tei all scored US releases.

This is the wonderful hues of Shibuya Kei ✨