Japan’s New Wave of Protest Songs via The New York Times

TOKYO — Twenty-three years after the flamboyant rocker Kiyoshiro Imawano riled Japanese power companies and electronics conglomerates with a series of antinuclear songs in the wake of Chernobyl, the singer, who died in 2009, is still generating controversy.

Soon after the crisis began at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March, songs by Imawano, one of the country’s most famous rock musicians, and his band RC Succession began to receive thousands of views on YouTube.

His songs — and a fresh crop of Japanese antinuclear tracks — have been bypassing mainstream Japanese radio and television, which have appeared reluctant to play the songs, and finding a receptive audience on the Internet.

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