"Renewing Awareness of Music Culture and Lifestyle. Punk Rock in Kyoto"

Mahon Murphy (Kyoto University) gives a lecture on « Renewing Awareness of Music Culture and Lifestyle. Punk Rock in Kyoto », as part of the Kyoto lectures, organised by the EFEO, the ISEAS and the Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University.

This hybrid lecture will be held on site and via Zoom.

The punk scene in Kyoto developed in the late 1970s as local musicians keyed into the liberating ideas of early punk’s DIY ethos. Building on Kyoto’s counter-culture, punk thrived and produced new sounds and styles. This talk will discuss the local punk scene and how it developed in relation to other music scenes and political movements in Kyoto, Kansai and beyond. Punk claimed to be anti-hippie, apolitical and anti-intellectual but it was also capitalized upon by a music industry eager to use its outsider chic. By rejecting the increasing commercialism of the genre, local punks developed extreme music that operated in the same spaces as extreme politics within Kyoto city.

Mahon Murphy is an associate professor of international history at the Graduate School of Law, Kyoto University. His main research focuses on the global impact of the First World War. Along with Ran Zwigenberg he has also published on the history of hardcore punk in Kyoto.