Kanye's (2007) video for "Stronger" is full of Japan and relatively non-sensical Japanese. The full video is here.

Hanzi Smatter -- a blog that says it is dedicated to the "misuse" of Chinese characters in Western cultures -- has a fantastic breakdown of the Japanese text printed on the screen here.

Matt Kaufman pointed out that there is a lot going on in this video. Daft Punk released an album, “Discovery” with a DVD movie “Intersellar 5555” that was a long anime. He says,“The whole DVD tells a story about an alien rock band that gets captured and brought to Earth, where the are enslaved to win Grammy type awards. Pretty trippy stuff, but the animation is pretty "cool," as we talked about in class today.”

Here are a couple clips from it, including the song that gets sampled in “Stronger.”








Here are a couple clips from it, including the song that gets sampled in “Stronger.”

Meanwhile, Kanye West has also been dropping Japaniness by using Murakami Takeshi’s art for his album covers, among other things.



Here’s an article about their relationship.