Pasadena, Calif – The central question hanging over the J-pop festival Zipangu was whether Japanese music alone could attract a large audience in North America.
The answer arrived well before the gates at Brookside at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, opened on May 16. Thousands of fans lined up more than an hour before the first performer took the stage, stretching back to the stadium’s farthest parking lots. Vendors hawked bacon-wrapped hot dogs and cans of Modelo to fans baking in the sun ahead of the first-of-its-kind event.
Over the next seven hours, a new angle on J-pop’s global potential emerged. While organizers Goldenvoice and Cloud Nine didn’t share official attendance numbers — offering only “thousands upon thousands” — it felt like close to 20,000 people crowded Brookside for a day of performances capturing the full range of modern Japanese music.
