The majority of Japanese youth are less interested in hip-hop music compared to youths of the 1990s. Hip-hop music is often categorised as being anti-authority or anti-injustice, thus it might be seen as the most fitting genre of music in the uncertain Japanese economic and post-3.11 situation. Indeed, since the 2010s several musicians have rapped about being poor or about anti-nuclear. However, it is uncommon for ordinary Japanese people to voice their political views publicly. Thus, in post 3.11 people might feel intimacy with idols who support victims by organising free live concerts and charity events to collect donations, but do not endorse hip-hop musicians who have expressed strong political beliefs.

However, unlike the underground situation of J-rap, the current popularity of hip-hop dance is increasing. Breakdancing has been popular among Japanese youth since the 1980s, and people showed off their dancing abilities in the pedestrian zones or on TV programmes. The most significant change in people’s perceptions of hip-hop dance, however, came in 2008 when hip-hop dance was included by the government as one of the genres of the nation’s new compulsory school subject of dance. Since then hip-hop dancing has almost lost its rebellious spirit, but it gained new meaning as a form of somewhat familiar or even state-controlled institutional dance. Therefore, this paper explores how young Japanese enjoy this once anti-authority but now familiar form of dance to feel intimacy with others.