Oz rock in Japan

In the 1980s, Japan offered international musicians something increasingly valuable: a visual world that audiences elsewhere could recognise as modern, mysterious and unmistakably different. For Aussie bands trying to establish themselves internationally, Japan was more than a place to tour or sell records. Its streets, temples, neon-lit cities and distinctive popular culture offered material for music videos that could make a familiar song look like something entirely new. Few examples illustrate this better than INXS, whose early-1980s videos used Japanese locations in strikingly different ways. A few years later, Crowded House would also bring a camera to Tokyo, producing a video whose location is still identifiable today. These productions reveal…