title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: When the Avengers returned, they were abducted by Morgan le Fay and later they fought the Squadron Supreme. Then Hawkeye aids Avenger trainees Justice and Firestar to defeat the Taskmaster and Albino. but he later resigns the team to assume leadership of the first generation of the Thunderbolts, who had broken away from the influence of Helmut Zemo. Disguised as Dreadknight he contacted the team and later he trained them in the fashion of former teammate Captain America, to try to shaped them into a cohesive fighting unit. The Thunderbolts take on threats like the Masters of Evil, Graviton, and the Scourge of the Underworld. Hawkeye begins a romantic relationship with fellow Thunderbolts member Moonstone who Hawkeye is proving to be a good influence on. Later, Hawkeye and the Thunderbolts travel to Hell to save the soul of Mockingbird. They defeat the demonic Mephisto, but Hawkeye is unable to find his wife. To ensure that his Thunderbolts are given full pardons, Hawkeye allows himself to be arrested in their place. The Thunderbolts' past crimes are erased on the condition that they retire from costumed heroics. The team reluctantly agrees. Later, when Hawkeye had gotten out of prison, the team comes back together to defeat Graviton once again. Convinced that they are ready to be heroes in their own right, Hawkeye hands leadership of the Thunderbolts to Citizen V (whose mind was actually under the control of Baron Zemo) and leaves the team.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye joins the Avengers once more, and begins a brief romantic relationship with team member the Wasp. He also embarks on some solo adventures where he uncovers a plot to steal an ancient artifact in Laos, and investigates the murder of a former Soviet colonel. The Scarlet Witch, driven mad by her powers, causes a Kree warship to appear over the skies of New York. The Avengers, surprised by the appearance of the spacecraft, spring into battle. During the battle, Hawkeye's quiver of arrows is set on fire. Knowing that the explosive arrows were going to blow up faster than he could remove them, Hawkeye flies into the engines of the Kree warship, destroying the spacecraft and sacrificing himself to save his teammates. A past version of Hawkeye is also plucked from time by the Time Variance Authority to serve as a juror in a case involving former Avengers teammate She-Hulk. She-Hulk tries unsuccessfully to warn Hawkeye as to his future.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: When the Scarlet Witch inadvertently alters reality, Hawkeye is resurrected with no memory of previous events. When young mutant Layla Miller gives several heroes (including Hawkeye) the ability to remember, he is horrified at the Scarlet Witch's actions. Hawkeye shoots Wanda in the back with an arrow. In retaliation, one of her recreated children wipes Hawkeye from existence, killing him once more. When the Scarlet Witch's reality is eventually undone, Hawkeye is still presumed dead. However, the recently formed New Avengers find his bow and arrows on the site of the old Avengers Mansion, pinning up an article about his death.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Unknown to the New Avengers, Hawkeye is resurrected once reality was restored. He seeks out Doctor Strange who offers Hawkeye shelter while he comes to terms with his new life. Against the advice of Dr. Strange, Hawkeye eventually travels to Wundagore Mountain and finds the Scarlet Witch living a normal life with no memory of her past and apparently without mutant abilities. The two become intimate and Hawkeye then leaves Wanda to her normal life. Returning to the United States, Hawkeye learns about the assassination of Captain America. He confronts Tony Stark, who then offers Hawkeye the Captain America shield and costume to continue the legacy. Hawkeye is later inspired by the words of Kate Bishop, whom he met while hiding his identity, and rejects Stark's offer.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye returns to see Dr. Strange and meets the New Avengers. The team invites Hawkeye to join the team. Hawkeye accepts, and accompanies the team on a mission to Japan to rescue Echo. However, leaving behind his Hawkeye identity, Clint Barton takes on the disguise of Ronin. Echo, the original Ronin, later gives Barton her blessing to adopt her old identity. Clint later meets Kate Bishop again, but this time reveals his true identity, much to Kate's surprise. Impressed with Kate's skill with a bow, and the fact she reminds him of himself at her age, Clint blesses Kate to continue using the Hawkeye codename.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Clint (as Ronin) was part of the New Avengers team that head to the Savage Land after a tip from Spider-Woman that a Skrull ship had crash landed there. Emerging from the crashed ship was a selection of heroes claiming to have been abducted, one of which was Mockingbird. Clint believes that she is the real Mockingbird until Mister Fantastic's invention proves that the heroes from the Skrull ship were all imposters. Later, after the war for Earth was won, Clint is reunited with the real Mockingbird, who was revealed to have been held captive by the Skrulls for years.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Clint attempts to help Mockingbird as she tries to adapt to life back on Earth. He accompanies her to Zaragoza, Spain, to battle Monica Rappaccini and the hordes of A.I.M. in an effort to deactivate a "dirty bomb" designed by the evil scientific group. Despite their years apart, Clint and Mockingbird battle with comfort and understanding. They manage to defeat A.I.M. and foil their evil plot.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: At the conclusion of the Skrull war, S.H.I.E.L.D. is dissolved and Norman Osborn is placed in power of national security. Osborn creates his own team of villainous Avengers by stealing the costumed identities of previous Avengers. The supervillain assassin Bullseye joins the team and takes on the Hawkeye mantle. Watching the Avengers news coverage on television with the rest of the New Avengers, Clint is stunned to see the events taking place. Clint unmasked himself on network television and publicly denounces Osborn's regime. He is later elected as the leader of the New Avengers and makes toppling Osborn and the Hood from power his number one priority. Clint argues that the only way to beat Osborn is to kill him, although the rest of the team disagrees. Clint attempts to storm Avengers Tower single-handedly to achieve his goal. He defeats the Dark Avengers, but is captured and arrested when, after failing to kill Osborn, he is attacked from behind by Ares. Clint was imprisoned and tortured at the hands of Mentallo. He was later freed by his teammates, and apologized for his actions.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Clint aids Captain America, Falcon and Black Widow as they battle the Red Skull and his henchmen to rescue Sharon Carter and the time-displaced Steve Rogers. Captain America later leads the New Avengers (including Clint) against Osborn's forces as they attempted to lay siege to Asgard.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: After the events of Siege, Steve Rogers puts together a new team of Avengers. Clint joins the team and returns to his Hawkeye identity (although he encourages Kate Bishop to keep the Hawkeye identity as well). He and Mockingbird are also members of the New Avengers, although Hawkeye later leaves the New Avengers when he receives an Avengers priority call from the main team, claiming that he was only there to spend time with his wife.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye aids Mockingbird and her anti-terrorist organization, the World Counter-terrorism Agency. Together, they thwart Crossfire's illegal arms operation, and encounter Lincoln Slade's descendant, Jaime Slade, who later goes onto become the new Phantom Rider. Crossfire and the new Phantom Rider team-up to battle the heroes. This feud has its casualties with Mockingbird's mother being severely wounded and the death of Hamilton Slade, both at the hands of Crossfire. Hawkeye leaves the W.C.A. after it becomes clear that his relationship with Mockingbird has become too strained. However, he quickly rejoins after being informed by Steve Rogers that a kill list of international spies includes Mockingbird.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye and Mockingbird team up with the Black Widow to take on the mysterious new Ronin and the Dark Ocean Society. The new Ronin is later revealed to be Alexei Shostakov, the former Red Guardian and ex-husband of the Black Widow. During the final battle with the new Ronin, Hawkeye receives a strong blow to the head. When the battle is won, he assures Mockingbird and Black Widow that he suffered no ill effects from the blow. The blow to the head that Hawkeye received proves to be more serious than first thought. While battling the Lethal Legion with the Avengers, Hawkeye's aim is shown to be faltering. After the battle, Tony Stark, Donald Blake and Steve Rogers examine Hawkeye to discover what is causing it. Their diagnosis is that Hawkeye is steadily losing his sight and will soon go blind. Iron Man provides Hawkeye with technology that should stall the blindness. Later, Trick Shot arrives at Avengers Tower on the brink of death. Trick Shot tells Hawkeye that he was forced to train another archer, one who was as good as Hawkeye, before dying in his arms. Hawkeye was later ambushed by his brother (who was revealed to have been the one trained by Trick Shot) who now goes by the name Trickshot. Barney manages to subdue Hawkeye and bring him to Baron Zemo. Baron Zemo had the brothers duel to the death. Hawkeye (despite going blind from a previous injury with the third Ronin) managed to best Trickshot in battle. Before teleporting away, Baron Zemo transferred Trickshot's criminal funds over to the "victor" Hawkeye, then taunted the hero for turning his brother against him. In custody, Trickshot agreed to a bone marrow transplant to save his brother's sight, but only so he could battle Hawkeye again in the future.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Following the "Fear Itself" storyline, the Avengers Academy is reopened in Palos Verdes at the former West Coast Avengers headquarters, where Barton accepts an offer to become a teacher. The character receives a new costume in "Avengers" vol. 4 #19 (Nov. 2011). Cullen Bunn, writer of "Captain America & Hawkeye", stated the costume was influenced slightly by "The Avengers" film. In 2012, Hawkeye becomes the leader of the Secret Avengers. The 2012 critically acclaimed "Hawkeye" vol. 4 solo series focuses on Hawkeye defending an apartment building from the Tracksuit Mafia with the assistance of Kate and his brother Barney. This series also reintroduces Hawkeye as a deaf character after a mercenary known as Kazi the Clown jammed two of Hawkeye's arrows into his ears.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye became a member of the New Avengers led by Sunspot at the request of S.H.I.E.L.D., who are suspicious of Sunspot's activities and want Clint to spy on them. However, during a conflict, Hawkeye is fired from S.H.I.E.L.D. due to deciding to side with the New Avengers against them and following Songbird's betrayal of the team as a S.H.I.E.L.D. double agent.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: During the "Civil War II" storyline, Hawkeye shoots Bruce Banner in the head with an arrow in light of Ulysses' vision of a rampaging Hulk standing over the corpses of the dead superheroes. During the Avengers-presided trial, Hawkeye stated that Bruce Banner approached him and asked for Hawkeye to kill him if he ever became Hulk again. He is acquitted of all charges and his actions heavily divided the superhero community in the Ulysses conflict.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: After Civil War II, Clint starts traveling the country and focuses his efforts towards helping the underprivileged with community based problems in an effort to redeem his actions from the event, beginning with the water supply in Santa Rosa. He eventually gains the aid of the Red Wolf of Earth-51920 to help him fight for those who cannot defend themselves.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: After Captain America leads Hydra's takeover of the United States as part of the "Secret Empire" storyline, Hawkeye becomes the leader of the few free heroes left in the country (the others are either trapped outside Earth's atmosphere, trapped in New York behind a Darkforce shield, or working with Hydra). After Rick Jones is able to send information to the heroes revealing that Captain America has been "brainwashed" by the Cosmic Cube Kobik to believe that he has been a Hydra agent since childhood, Hawkeye is one of the heroes favoring the idea that they can recover the fragmented cube and use it to restore Rogers to normal, in opposition to the Black Widow's plan to just kill Rogers and stop him. Despite their opposing viewpoints, Hawkeye falls back in love with Black Widow and is devastated by her supposed death at the hands of the evil Steve Rogers.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Shortly after Natasha's supposed death, a number of her enemies have been killed off. Hawkeye and Winter Soldier start investigating the trail of bodies left behind to uncover the mysterious assassin and determine if Black Widow is still alive. They eventually discover that she was cloned by the Black Widow Ops Program following her death. When Winter Soldier and Hawkeye arrived at the Red Room, the Black Widow clone dropped her cover where she began to kill her superiors, liberate the recruits, and destroy all the clones and Epsilon Red. When the authorities arrived, Black Widow left the Red Room where she left a note for Hawkeye to stop following her and for Winter Soldier to join her in ending the Red Room.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: During the Fresh Start relaunch, Clint and Kate decided to revive the West Coast Avengers following an attack by land sharks in Santa Monica. For that, they recruited America Chavez and Kate's boyfriend Johnny "Fuse" Watts, who helped in the mission, and were eventually joined by Gwenpool and Kid Omega. Given their lack of funds, the newly formed team tried to get financiers by starring in a reality show following their exploits.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: After successfully arresting the Hood, Clint is outraged to learn that the court let Parker walk free while sending his underlings to jail. During this time, he is also dating Linda Carter. Shortly afterwards, someone dressed as Ronin begins attacking and robbing the Hood's facilities around New York. Hawkeye's allies initially believe he's taken up the Ronin identity again, but Clint convinces them otherwise when he fights Ronin in person and attends a F.E.A.S.T. charity gala that he donated to around the same time Ronin fought Hood's men and Spider-Man. Hood's tech support Bryce Bandau is able to deduce that Clint is Ronin. Clint takes Bryce to his apartment and reveals he pulled off being in two places at once with a small time machine that sent him forward in time for one hour. He uses Hood's money to hire Bryce as his own tech support and to keep him silent for his activities as Ronin while enacting social change as Hawkeye. Since the time machine broke during his fight with Spider-Man, Clint steals a robotic replica of himself from S.H.I.E.L.D. and hires a Skrull to impersonate him to keep up the ruse.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: As Hood continues to slaughter criminals to find Ronin, Clint struggles to maintain his relationship with Linda and continuing to lie to the other heroes. This comes to a head when Hood hires Bullseye, who murders the Skrull and Bryce before stealing Clint's Ronin costume to frame him for murdering police officers and attacking Captain America. Clint puts on Bullseye's costume and defeats him in the Hudson Rail Yards where he finds out that Hood has put a bounty of $3 million on him and plans on revealing Ronin's true identity to the public. Clint puts on his classic Hawkeye costume and steals Hood's bounty money to prevent the other criminals from interfering in his battle with Parker. He defeats Hood by robbing Parker of his powers with Count Nefaria's help. As the police arrive, the criminals watching the fight consider killing the wounded Hawkeye, but Fancy Dan convinces them to let Clint go claiming "He's one of us now. Even if he doesn't know it yet."


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: While Clint Barton has no superhuman powers (with the exception of the period when using Pym particles as Goliath), he is at the very peak of human conditioning. He is an exceptional fencer, acrobat and marksman, having been trained from childhood in the circus and by the criminals Trick Shot and Swordsman. This includes considerable strength, as an employee of Cross Technological Enterprises found out when he tried to use the superhero's draw-weight bow and found that he could not draw back the string to launch an arrow.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye has also been thoroughly trained by Captain America in tactics, martial arts, and hand-to-hand combat. Hawkeye excels in the use of ranged weapons, especially the bow and arrow and carries a quiver containing a number of customized "trick arrows". As Ronin, he shows great proficiency with the katana and other melee weapons. He has gained a reputation for being able to "turn any object into a weapon", and has been seen using items such as tin plates, coins, sticks, and other debris to great effect against his enemies.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye is also known to use a "Sky-Cycle" as his mode of transportation. The Sky-Cycle is modeled after a commercial snowmobile and is fitted with anti-gravitational technology. It is voice-operated and has an auto-pilot steering system. The original Sky-Cycle was custom-made for Hawkeye by Jorge Latham while employed by Cross Technological Enterprises. Latham was later employed by the West Coast Avengers and built several more.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: In the "Age of Apocalypse" timeline, Hawkeye moved to Europe and was a pilot for the Human High Council, piloting Tony Stark when he went to collect Don Blake after a mission in Wakanda.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Attributes of Hawkeye and the DC Comics archer Green Arrow were combined into two new characters in the Amalgam Comics universe. Hawkeye is Clint Archer, who developed extraordinary archery skills through ardent study at a monastery in Tibet and earned membership in the Judgment League Avengers. His mask and costume colors are from Green Arrow, and his Tibetan monastery origins are similar to that of the Connor Hawke version.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Oliver Queen in the Amalgam universe is Goliath (Clint's second superhero identity), who developed a growth serum with Hank Pym. The two of them are also in a love triangle with Dinah Barton, alias Canary, a fellow Judgment League Avenger. Canary is a combination of DC Comics' Black Canary and Marvel's Mockingbird, the respective love interests of the two archers in their main universes.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: In "All-New Hawkeye", Clint and Kate give up Project Communion (Inhuman orphans with powerful and dangerous psyonic abilities) to Hydra after failing to protect them. An alternate future is shown where Clint and Kate split up for twenty years. An older Clint has retired from heroics and just spends time with his new dog, Lucky 2, until the middle aged Kate arrives and forces Clint to help with a mission. Kate at this point has made an entire organization stemmed from the Hawkeye name, and is generally recognized as the Hawkeye by other heroes and villains due to Clint's absence. She and Clint attempt to rescue the Project Communion children from the Mandarin and Maria Hill while utilizing Kate's connections to other superheroes like Marvel Boy and Captain America Chavez. However, Hill has them cornered and kills one of the subjects, leading them to regret splitting up twenty years ago. This future was averted in the main story as they successfully rescued the children in the past. The older Hawkeye still uses hearing aids, and objects to Kate's suggestion of wearing Pym-Plants due to his experience with Ultron.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: During the events of "Infinity Wars," Gamora used the Infinity Stones to fold the universe in half, resulting in the creation of Warp World, where characters and histories were merged. Hawkeye merged with Hellcat to become Cat's Eye, who became partners with the Green Widow (an amalgamation of Black Widow and She-Hulk).


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye appears as a member of the Avengers. He is said to be an expert marksman and wears some sort of design collaboration between his new costume and his Ultimate incarnation. When Doctor Doom attacked an international conference Doom kills Hawkeye off panel and he is seen with half of his body obliterated. Captain America and the Vision were also killed.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: In "Marvel Zombies" Hawkeye was one of the first heroes zombified by Sentry, and goes on a rampage with the other zombified Avengers. During the fight against Magneto, he manages to hit him with an arrow, but Magneto severs Clint's head with Colonel America's shield. 40 years later his head is discovered by T'Challa's grandson and given the Wasp's robotic body as it appears his hunger has diminished. He is killed by a rampaging Hulk and given a funeral with the other fallen heroes.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: In the MC2 universe, Hawkeye is retired due to his blindness, but he continues to serve as a combat trainer for new heroes.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Set fifty years in the future, an old and blind Hawkeye hires Logan to help him deliver a secret package to New Babylon (formerly Washington D.C.). He's had three ex-wives, the third of which was Peter Parker's youngest daughter Tonya. He had a daughter with her named Ashley; after learning that Ashley has been captured by the Kingpin after attempting to overthrow him as a new Spider-Woman, alongside a new Daredevil and Punisher, Clint convinces Logan to take a detour with him to rescue her. However, upon doing so, Ashley immediately decapitates the Kingpin and reveals that she too is a supervillain, known as Spider-Bitch, having had herself captured and lured her father there to allow her the opportunity to take over as the new Kingpin. After Ashley subsequently attempts to kill him, Clint is rescued by Logan and they resume their quest, briefly lamenting his failed relationship with Ashley while drinking at a bar. As it turns out, Clint was delivering a batch of Super Soldier Serums to a supposed underground league planning to form a group similar to the Avengers, but it turns out it was a set-up by the Red Skull, which results in Clint's death.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: This version of Hawkeye received his own miniseries titled "Old Man Hawkeye", which explores Hawkeye's life five years before the events of "Old Man Logan" as he is losing his vision and decides to use what remains of his eyesight to hunt down the Thunderbolts and Baron Zemo in revenge for their aligning with the Red Skull to kill the other Avengers. In this effort, he is aided by Kate Bishop and hunted by Marshall Bullseye.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: In one Avengers storyline titled "Queen's Vengeance," Morgan Le Fay caused a reality distortion wave that set the time period in a medieval setting and the Avengers to be brainwashed into an elite guard known as the Queen's Vengeance, who protected Morgan. Hawkeye was renamed Longbow and his design is an amalgam of his classic costume and a medieval hooded, bearded archer (bearing a strong resemblance to Robin Hood). He was the second Avenger to break free from the illusion with interference from the first one, Captain America, who ambushed Clint because Clint's strong feelings towards the Avengers was enough to break him free from Morgan's curse.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Warbow was later seen with Captain Carter and War Widow when they find Moon Knight and Vision at the Center of Infinity and recruit them into Avenger Prime's army.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: The Ultimate Marvel imprint title the "Ultimates" features a version of Hawkeye who uses a cover story of being a former Olympic archer to hide his conviction of an unexplained murder charge when he was recruited by Nick Fury into the Ultimates program, a government sponsored program made up of humans with extraordinary abilities and super-human operatives. During his time with the Ultimates, most, if not all, of his missions were of the Black Ops variety in which he partnered with the Black Widow, who turned out to be a traitor to the group and killed Barton's wife and children.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Seeking revenge, Hawkeye tracked down the Black Widow, passing herself off as a wounded civilian after the invasion, and executed her. As addressed in "Ultimates 3", it was shown that the events during the invasion left him brooding and emotionally devastated, seeming almost to have a "death wish", and his brash, morally ambiguous and borderline sadomasochistic behavior became even more of an issue.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: While Hawkeye is traditionally just a normal human trained to a high level of skill, Ultimate Hawkeye was altered via some type of experimental optical surgery. His superhuman accuracy also extends beyond archery, to anything he can throw like 616 Bullseye, to the extent that he once escapes captivity by pulling out his own fingernails to use as weapons. Whether or not his teammates know of his augmentations is unknown, with the exception of Nick Fury, who has confirmed his knowledge, but it would appear that, in Hawkeye's favor, they remain unaware of his full abilities. It has also been remarked that before the "Ultimate Hawkeye" miniseries, he claimed to need to wear corrective goggles to see properly, but it appears that that too may have been a ruse.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: In "What if? Dark Reign" #1, Clint Barton succeeds in killing Norman Osborn. The superhero community then hunts him down for his crimes, while the public and the government turn completely against superheroes. While Mockingbird gives him what he needs to escape, he ends up being shot and killed by a mentally unstable man who wants to prove a point against superheroes, leaving Victoria Hand completely in charge of H.A.M.M.E.R.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye was a member of the Avengers when they went after the X-Men in response to accusations that they had been involved in the deaths of Tony Stark and Beast, nearly being killed by Sabretooth before Shadowcat convinced him to spare the archer. He subsequently witnessed the destruction of Avengers Mansion and the apparent death of the Avengers.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Jeremy Renner portrays Clint Barton / Hawkeye in the live-action Marvel Cinematic Universe films "Thor", "The Avengers", "", "", and "", as well as the live-action Disney+ series "Hawkeye". Additionally, Renner voices alternate timeline versions of the character in the animated Disney+ series "What If...?".


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Old Man Hawkeye appears as in the podcast "Marvel's Wastelanders: Old Man Hawkeye", voiced by Stephen Lang.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: Hawkeye was ranked as the 45th Greatest Comic Book Character of All Time by "Wizard" magazine. IGN also ranked Hawkeye as the 44th Greatest Comic Book Hero of All Time opining that only it takes a special kind of hero to parade around in blue and purple and battle deadly villains with nothing more than a satchel of arrows and only Hawkeye can successfully pull it off, and as #9 on their list of "The Top 50 Avengers" in 2012. In 2013, ComicsAlliance ranked Hawkeye as #27 on their list of the "50 Sexiest Male Characters in Comics".


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: The fourth volume of "Hawkeye" has received favorable reviews for its focus on what Hawkeye does when he's not an Avenger, playing up his status as the "everyman" on the team. Praising the series in an article titled, "How did Hawkeye become Marvel's best comic?", "The A.V. Club" wrote, "Spider-Man has long been considered Marvel's superhero everyman, but Hawkeye has stolen that title with this series." Comics Alliance's Chris Sims summarized it as, "For (Hawkeye), everything that happens in the book is a pain, but it's something he deals with because he wants to help the people around him, to the degree that he's driven to do so even on his days off from literally saving the world." In 2013, "Hawkeye" was nominated for five Eisner Awards, winning two: Best Cover Artist and Best Penciler/Inker, and nominated for seven Harvey Awards, winning one. In 2014, "Hawkeye" was nominated for five Eisner Awards, winning two, and nominated for five Harvey Awards, winning one.


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: One of the series' most well received issues was the "Pizza Dog" issue (No. 11), which is told from the perspective of Barton's dog, Lucky. "Wired Magazine" said of the issue, "The conceit is a high-concept, high-wire act for a comic to carry off, but Fraction and Aja stick the landing with a poise and grace that deserves full marks ... It manages to be both a functional murder mystery loaded with noir sensibilities – from the bloody paw prints that blot across the cover to a rooftop gun scuffle with neighborhood thugs – and a book that is as entertaining as it is experimental and worth reading a time or ten."


title: Hawkeye (Clint Barton)

text: In 2012, the mother of 4-year-old Anthony Smith contacted Marvel because her son would not wear his hearing aid, as superheroes do not have to. Marvel responded with a custom comic book of the superhero Blue Ear for Anthony, and also pointed out that for years Hawkeye was deaf and used hearing aids.


title: Materialism

text: Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds matter to be the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materialism, mind and consciousness are by-products or epiphenomena of material processes (such as the biochemistry of the human brain and nervous system), without which they cannot exist. This concept directly contrasts with idealism, where mind and consciousness are first-order realities to which matter is dependent while material interactions are secondary.


title: Materialism

text: Materialism is closely related to physicalism—the view that all that exists is ultimately physical. Philosophical physicalism has evolved from materialism with the theories of the physical sciences to incorporate more sophisticated notions of physicality than mere ordinary matter (e.g. spacetime, physical energies and forces, and dark matter). Thus, the term "physicalism" is preferred over "materialism" by some, while others use the terms as if they were synonymous.


title: Materialism

text: Philosophies traditionally opposed or largely historically unreconciled to the scientific theories of materialism or physicalism include idealism, pluralism, dualism, panpsychism, and other forms of monism.


title: Materialism

text: From classical antiquity, Epicureanism is an ancient philosophy of materialism as a major forerunner to modern science. Epicurus, although ostensibly a deist, affirmed both the literal existence of the Greek gods in either some type of celestial "heaven" cognate from which they ruled the Universe (if not on a literal Mount Olympus) and his philosophy promulgated atomism, while Platonism taught roughly the opposite, despite Plato's teaching of Zeus as God.


title: Materialism

text: Materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology, and is thus different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism, neutral monism, and spiritualism. It can also contrast with phenomenalism, vitalism, and dual-aspect monism. Its materiality can, in some ways, be linked to the concept of determinism, as espoused by Enlightenment thinkers.


title: Materialism

text: Despite the large number of philosophical schools and subtle nuances between many, all philosophies are said to fall into one of two primary categories, defined in contrast to each other: "idealism" and "materialism". The basic proposition of these two categories pertains to the nature of reality—the primary distinction between them is the way they answer two fundamental questions: what reality consists of, and how it originated. To idealists, spirit or mind or the objects of mind ("ideas") are primary, and matter secondary. To materialists, matter is primary, and mind or spirit or ideas are secondary—the product of matter acting upon matter.


title: Materialism

text: The materialist view is perhaps best understood in its opposition to the doctrines of immaterial substance applied to the mind historically by René Descartes; however, by itself materialism says nothing about how material substance should be characterized. In practice, it is frequently assimilated to one variety of physicalism or another.


title: Materialism

text: Modern philosophical materialists extend the definition of other scientifically observable entities such as energy, forces and the curvature of space; however, philosophers such as Mary Midgley suggest that the concept of "matter" is elusive and poorly defined.


title: Materialism

text: During the 19th century, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels extended the concept of materialism to elaborate a "materialist conception of history" centered on the roughly empirical world of human activity (practice, including labor) and the institutions created, reproduced or destroyed by that activity. They also developed dialectical materialism, by taking Hegelian dialectics, stripping them of their idealist aspects, and fusing them with materialism (see Modern philosophy).


title: Materialism

text: Materialism is often associated with reductionism, according to which the objects or phenomena individuated at one level of description, if they are genuine, must be explicable in terms of the objects or phenomena at some other level of description—typically, at a more reduced level.


title: Materialism

text: Non-reductive materialism explicitly rejects this notion, however, taking the material constitution of all particulars to be consistent with the existence of real objects, properties or phenomena not explicable in the terms canonically used for the basic material constituents. Jerry Fodor argues this view, according to which empirical laws and explanations in "special sciences" like psychology or geology are invisible from the perspective of basic physics.


title: Materialism

text: Materialism developed, possibly independently, in several geographically separated regions of Eurasia during what Karl Jaspers termed the Axial Age ( 800–200 BC).


title: Materialism

text: In ancient Indian philosophy, materialism developed around 600 BC with the works of Ajita Kesakambali, Payasi, Kanada and the proponents of the Cārvāka school of philosophy. Kanada became one of the early proponents of atomism. The Nyaya–Vaisesika school (c. 600–100 BC) developed one of the earliest forms of atomism (although their proofs of God and their positing that consciousness was not material precludes labelling them as materialists). Buddhist atomism and the Jaina school continued the atomic tradition.


title: Materialism

text: Ancient Greek atomists like Leucippus, Democritus and Epicurus prefigure later materialists. The Latin poem "De Rerum Natura" by Lucretius (99 – c. 55 BC) reflects the mechanistic philosophy of Democritus and Epicurus. According to this view, all that exists is matter and void, and all phenomena result from different motions and conglomerations of base material particles called "atoms" (literally 'indivisibles'). "De Rerum Natura" provides mechanistic explanations for phenomena such as erosion, evaporation, wind, and sound. Famous principles like "nothing can touch body but body" first appeared in the works of Lucretius. Democritus and Epicurus, however, did not hold to a monist ontology since they held to the ontological separation of matter and space (i.e. space being "another kind" of being) indicating that the definition of "materialism" is wider than the given scope of this article.


title: Materialism

text: Wang Chong (27 – c. 100 AD) was a Chinese thinker of the early Common Era said to be a materialist. Later Indian materialist Jayaraashi Bhatta (6th century) in his work "Tattvopaplavasimha" ('The upsetting of all principles') refuted the Nyāya Sūtra epistemology. The materialistic Cārvāka philosophy appears to have died out some time after 1400; when Madhavacharya compiled "Sarva-darśana-samgraha" ('a digest of all philosophies') in the 14th century, he had no Cārvāka (or Lokāyata) text to quote from or refer to.


title: Materialism

text: In early 12th-century al-Andalus, Arabian philosopher Ibn Tufail ( Abubacer) wrote discussions on materialism in his philosophical novel, "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" ("Philosophus Autodidactus"), while vaguely foreshadowing the idea of a historical materialism.


title: Materialism

text: Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and Pierre Gassendi (1592–1665) represented the materialist tradition in opposition to the attempts of René Descartes (1596–1650) to provide the natural sciences with dualist foundations. There followed the materialist and atheist "abbé" Jean Meslier (1664–1729), along with the works of the French materialists: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, German-French Baron d'Holbach (1723–1789), Denis Diderot (1713–1784), and other French Enlightenment thinkers. In England, John "Walking" Stewart (1747–1822) insisted on seeing matter as endowed with a moral dimension, which had a major impact on the philosophical poetry of William Wordsworth (1770–1850).


title: Materialism

text: In late modern philosophy, German atheist anthropologist Ludwig Feuerbach would signal a new turn in materialism through his book "The Essence of Christianity" (1841), which presented a humanist account of religion as the outward projection of man's inward nature. Feuerbach introduced anthropological materialism, a version of materialism that views materialist anthropology as the universal science.


title: Materialism

text: Feuerbach's variety of materialism would go on to heavily influence Karl Marx, who in the late 19th century elaborated the concept of historical materialism—the basis for what Marx and Friedrich Engels outlined as "scientific socialism":


title: Materialism

text: Through his "Dialectics of Nature" (1883), Engels later developed a "materialist dialectic" philosophy of nature; a worldview that would be given the title "dialectical materialism" by Georgi Plekhanov, the father of Russian Marxism. In early 20th-century Russian philosophy, Vladimir Lenin further developed dialectical materialism in his book "Materialism and Empirio-criticism" (1909), which connected the political conceptions put forth by his opponents to their anti-materialist philosophies.


title: Materialism

text: A more naturalist-oriented materialist school of thought that developed in the middle of the 19th century was German materialism, which included Ludwig Büchner (1824–99), the Dutch-born Jacob Moleschott (1822–93) and Carl Vogt (1817–95), even though they had different views on core issues such as the evolution and the origins of life in nature.


title: Materialism

text: Contemporary analytic philosophers (e.g. Daniel Dennett, Willard Van Orman Quine, Donald Davidson, and Jerry Fodor) operate within a broadly physicalist or scientific materialist framework, producing rival accounts of how best to accommodate the mind, including functionalism, anomalous monism, identity theory, and so on.


title: Materialism

text: Scientific materialism is often synonymous with, and has typically been described as being, a reductive materialism. In the early 21st century, Paul and Patricia Churchland advocated a radically contrasting position (at least, in regards to certain hypotheses): eliminative materialism. Eliminative materialism holds that some mental phenomena simply do not exist at all, and that talk of those mental phenomena reflects a totally spurious "folk psychology" and introspection illusion. A materialist of this variety might believe that a concept like "belief" simply has no basis in fact (e.g. the way folk science speaks of demon-caused illnesses).


title: Materialism

text: With reductive materialism being at one end of a continuum (our theories will "reduce" to facts) and eliminative materialism on the other (certain theories will need to be "eliminated" in light of new facts), revisionary materialism is somewhere in the middle.


title: Materialism

text: Contemporary continental philosopher Gilles Deleuze has attempted to rework and strengthen classical materialist ideas. Contemporary theorists such as Manuel DeLanda, working with this reinvigorated materialism, have come to be classified as "new materialist" in persuasion. New materialism has now become its own specialized subfield of knowledge, with courses being offered on the topic at major universities, as well as numerous conferences, edited collections and monographs devoted to it.


title: Materialism

text: Jane Bennett's book "Vibrant Matter" (2010) has been particularly instrumental in bringing theories of monist ontology and vitalism back into a critical theoretical fold dominated by poststructuralist theories of language and discourse. Scholars such as Mel Y. Chen and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, however, have critiqued this body of new materialist literature for its neglect in considering the materiality of race and gender in particular.


title: Materialism

text: Métis scholar Zoe Todd, as well as Mohawk (Bear Clan, Six Nations) and Anishinaabe scholar Vanessa Watts, query the colonial orientation of the race for a "new" materialism. Watts in particular describes the tendency to regard matter as a subject of feminist or philosophical care as a tendency that is too invested in the reanimation of a Eurocentric tradition of inquiry at the expense of an Indigenous ethic of responsibility. Other scholars, such as Helene Vosters, echo their concerns and have questioned whether there is anything particularly "new" about this so-called "new materialism," as Indigenous and other animist ontologies have attested to what might be called the "vibrancy of matter" for centuries. Other scholars such as Thomas Nail have critiqued "vitalist" versions of new materialism for its depoliticizing "flat ontology" and for being ahistorical in nature.


title: Materialism

text: Quentin Meillassoux proposed "speculative materialism", a post-Kantian return to David Hume which is also based on materialist ideas.


title: Materialism

text: The nature and definition of "matter"—like other key concepts in science and philosophy—have occasioned much debate:


title: Materialism

text: One challenge to the conventional concept of matter as tangible "stuff" came with the rise of field physics in the 19th century. Relativity shows that matter and energy (including the spatially distributed energy of fields) are interchangeable. This enables the ontological view that energy is prima materia and matter is one of its forms. In contrast, the Standard Model of particle physics uses quantum field theory to describe all interactions. On this view it could be said that fields are "prima materia" and the energy is a property of the field.


title: Materialism

text: According to the dominant cosmological model, the Lambda-CDM model, less than 5% of the universe's energy density is made up of the "matter" described by the Standard Model, and the majority of the universe is composed of dark matter and dark energy, with little agreement among scientists about what these are made of.


title: Materialism

text: With the advent of quantum physics, some scientists believed the concept of matter had merely changed, while others believed the conventional position could no longer be maintained. For instance Werner Heisenberg said, "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible…atoms are not things."


title: Materialism

text: The concept of matter has changed in response to new scientific discoveries. Thus materialism has no definite content independent of the particular theory of matter on which it is based. According to Noam Chomsky, any property can be considered material, if one defines matter such that it has that property.


title: Materialism

text: In the philosophical materialism G. Bueno redefines the term "matter" for philosophy and defines a more precise term than "matter", the "stroma"


title: Materialism

text: However, not all conceptions of physicalism are tied to verificationist theories of meaning or direct realist accounts of perception. Rather, physicalists believe that no "element of reality" is missing from the mathematical formalism of our best description of the world. "Materialist" physicalists also believe that the formalism describes fields of insentience. In other words, the intrinsic nature of the physical is non-experiential.


title: Materialism

text: Most of Hinduism and transcendentalism regard all matter as an illusion, or "maya", blinding humans from knowing the truth. Transcendental experiences like the perception of Brahman are considered to destroy the illusion.


title: Materialism

text: Rudolf Peierls, a physicist who played a major role in the Manhattan Project, rejected materialism: "The premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being... including knowledge and consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing."


title: Materialism

text: Erwin Schrödinger said, "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."


title: Materialism

text: Werner Heisenberg, who came up with the uncertainty principle, wrote, "The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct 'actuality' of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible... Atoms are not things."


title: Materialism

text: Some 20th-century physicists (e.g., Eugene Wigner and Henry Stapp), as well as modern day physicists and science writers (e.g., Stephen Barr, Paul Davies, and John Gribbin) have argued that materialism is flawed due to certain recent scientific findings in physics, such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory. According to Gribbin and Davies (1991):


title: Materialism

text: The objections of Davies and Gribbin are shared by proponents of digital physics who view information rather than matter to be fundamental. Famous physicist and proponent of digital physics John Archibald Wheeler wrote, "all matter and all things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe." Their objections were also shared by some founders of quantum theory, such as Max Planck, who wrote:


title: Materialism

text: James Jeans concurred with Planck saying, "The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter."


title: Materialism

text: In the "Critique of Pure Reason", Immanuel Kant argued against materialism in defending his transcendental idealism (as well as offering arguments against subjective idealism and mind–body dualism). However, Kant with his refutation of idealism, argues that change and time require an enduring substrate.


title: Materialism

text: Postmodern/poststructuralist thinkers also express a skepticism about any all-encompassing metaphysical scheme. Philosopher Mary Midgley argues that materialism is a self-refuting idea, at least in its eliminative materialist form.


title: Materialism

text: Arguments for idealism, such as those of Hegel and Berkeley, often take the form of an argument against materialism; indeed, the idealism of Berkeley was called "immaterialism". Now, matter can be argued to be redundant, as in bundle theory, and mind-independent properties can, in turn, be reduced to subjective percepts. Berkeley presents an example of the latter by pointing out that it is impossible to gather direct evidence of matter, as there is no direct experience of matter; all that is experienced is perception, whether internal or external. As such, the existence of matter can only be assumed from the apparent (perceived) stability of perceptions; it finds absolutely no evidence in direct experience.


title: Materialism

text: If matter and energy are seen as necessary to explain the physical world, but incapable of explaining mind, dualism results. Emergence, holism and process philosophy seek to ameliorate the perceived shortcomings of traditional (especially mechanistic) materialism without abandoning materialism entirely.


title: Materialism

text: Some critics object to materialism as part of an overly skeptical, narrow or reductivist approach to theorizing, rather than to the ontological claim that matter is the only substance. Particle physicist and Anglican theologian John Polkinghorne objects to what he calls "promissory materialism"—claims that materialistic science "will" eventually succeed in explaining phenomena it has not so far been able to explain. Polkinghorne prefers "dual-aspect monism" to materialism.


title: Materialism

text: Some scientific materialists have been criticized for failing to provide clear definitions for what constitutes matter, leaving the term "materialism" without any definite meaning. Noam Chomsky states that since the concept of matter may be affected by new scientific discoveries, as has happened in the past, scientific materialists are being dogmatic in assuming the opposite.


title: Materialism

text: a. Indeed, it has been noted it is difficult if not impossible to define one category without contrasting it with the other.


title: J-pop

text: J-pop (, "jeipoppu"; often stylized as J-POP; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in traditional music of Japan, and significantly in 1960s pop and rock music. J-pop replaced "kayōkyoku" ("Lyric Singing Music", a term for Japanese popular music from the 1920s to the 1980s) in the Japanese music scene.


title: J-pop

text: J-rock bands such as Happy End fused the Beatles and Beach Boys-style rock with Japanese music in the 1960s1970s. J-country had popularity during the international popularity of Westerns in the 1960s1970s as well, and it still has appeal due to the work of musicians like Charlie Nagatani and venues including Little Texas, Tokyo. J-rap became mainstream with producer Nujabes and his work on "Samurai Champloo", Japanese pop culture is often seen with anime in hip hop. Other trends in Japanese music include J-Euro in the early 1990s, namely Namie Amuro, even Latin music, CCM, and gospel music have scenes within J-pop.


title: J-pop

text: J-pop is further defined by new wave and crossover fusion acts of the late 1970s such as Yellow Magic Orchestra and Southern All Stars. Popular styles of Japanese pop music include technopop during the 1970s1980s, city pop in the 1980s, and Shibuya-kei in the 1990s.


title: J-pop

text: The origin of modern J-pop is said to be Japanese-language rock music inspired by the likes of The Beatles. Unlike the Japanese music genre called "kayōkyoku", J-pop uses a special kind of pronunciation, which is similar to that of English. One notable singer to do so is Keisuke Kuwata, who pronounced the Japanese word "karada" ("body") as "kyerada". Additionally, unlike Western music, the major second ("sol" and "la") was usually not used in Japanese music, except art music, before rock music became popular in Japan. When the Group Sounds genre, which was inspired by Western rock, became popular, Japanese pop music adopted the major second, which was used in the final sounds of The Beatles' song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and The Rolling Stones' song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". Although Japanese pop music changed from music based on Japanese pentatonic scale and distortional tetrachord to the more occidental music over time, music that drew from the traditional Japanese singing style remained popular (such as that of Ringo Shiina).


title: J-pop

text: At first, the term "J-pop" was used only for Western-style musicians in Japan, such as Pizzicato Five and Flipper's Guitar, just after Japanese radio station J-Wave was established. On the other hand, Mitsuhiro Hidaka of AAA from Avex Trax said that J-pop was originally derived from the Eurobeat genre. However, the term became a blanket term, covering other music genres—such as the majority of Japanese rock music of the 1990s.


title: J-pop

text: In 1990, the Japanese subsidiary of Tower Records defined J-pop as all Japanese music belonging to the Recording Industry Association of Japan except Japanese independent music (which they term "J-indie"); their stores began to use additional classifications, such as J-club, J-punk, J-hip-hop, J-reggae, J-anime, and Visual kei by 2008, after independent musicians started to release works via major labels. Ito Music City, a Japanese record store, adopted expanded classifications including Group Sounds, idol of the 1970s–1980s, enka, folk and established musicians of the 1970s–1980s, in addition to the main J-pop genres.


title: J-pop

text: Whereas rock musicians in Japan usually hate the term "pop", Taro Kato, a member of pop punk band Beat Crusaders, pointed out that the encoded pop music, like pop art, was catchier than "J-pop" and he also said that J-pop was the music, memorable for its frequency of airplay, in an interview when the band completed their first full-length studio album under a major label, "", in 2005. Because the band did not want to perform J-pop music, their album featured the 1980s Pop of MTV. According to his fellow band member Toru Hidaka, the 1990s music that influenced him (such as Nirvana, Hi-Standard, and Flipper's Guitar) was not listened to by fans of other music in Japan at that time.


title: J-pop

text: In contrast to this, although many Japanese rock musicians until the late 1980s disrespected the "kayōkyoku" music, many of Japanese rock bands of the 1990s—such as Glay—assimilated "kayōkyoku" into their music. After the late 1980s, breakbeat and samplers also changed the Japanese music scene, where expert drummers had played good rhythm because traditional Japanese music did not have the rhythm based on rock or blues.


title: J-pop

text: Hide of Greeeen openly described their music genre as J-pop. He said, "I also love rock, hip hop and breakbeats, but my field is consistently J-pop. For example, hip hop musicians learn 'the culture of hip hop' when they begin their career. We are not like those musicians and we love the music as sounds very much. Those professional people may say 'What are you doing?' but I think that our musical style is cool after all. The good thing is good."


title: J-pop

text: has origins in the Meiji period, but most Japanese scholars consider the Taishō period to be the actual starting point of "ryūkōka", as it is the era in which the genre first gained nationwide popularity. By the Taishō period, Western musical techniques and instruments, which had been introduced to Japan in the Meiji period, were widely used. Influenced by Western genres such as jazz and blues, "ryūkōka" incorporated Western instruments such as the violin, harmonica, and guitar. However, the melodies were often written according to the traditional Japanese pentatonic scale. In the 1930s, Ichiro Fujiyama released popular songs with his tenor voice. Fujiyama sang songs with a lower volume than opera through the microphone (the technique is sometimes called "crooning").


title: J-pop

text: Jazz musician Ryoichi Hattori attempted to produce Japanese native music which had a "flavor" of blues.


title: J-pop

text: He composed Noriko Awaya's hit song "Wakare no Blues" (lit. "Farewell Blues"). Awaya became a famous popular singer and was called "Queen of Blues" in Japan. Due to pressure from the Imperial Army during the war, the performance of jazz music was temporarily halted in Japan. Hattori, who stayed in Shanghai at the end of the war, produced hit songs such as Shizuko Kasagi's "Tokyo Boogie-Woogie" and Ichiro Fujiyama's "Aoi Sanmyaku" (lit. "Blue Mountain Range"). Hattori later became known as the "Father of Japanese "poppusu"". The United States soldiers—who were occupying Japan at the time—and the Far East Network introduced a number of new musical styles to the country. Boogie-woogie, Mambo, Blues, and Country music were performed by Japanese musicians for the American troops. Chiemi Eri's cover song "Tennessee Waltz" (1952), Hibari Misora's "Omatsuri Mambo" (1952), and Izumi Yukimura's cover song "Till I Waltz Again with You" (1953) also became popular. Foreign musicians and groups, including JATP and Louis Armstrong, visited Japan to perform. In the mid-1950s, became a popular venue for live jazz music. Jazz had a large impact on Japanese "poppusu", though "authentic" jazz did not become the mainstream genre of music in Japan. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Japanese pop was polarized between urban "kayō" and modern "enka".


title: J-pop

text: Modern J-pop is also sometimes believed to have had its roots with Chinese immigrant jazz musicians who had fled Shanghai during the communist takeover, and were collaborating with the U.S.-occupied forces to help introduce s variety of new genres to the Japanese public. In 1949, when the communists took over and established the People's Republic of China on the mainland, one of the first actions taken by the government was to denounce popular music (specifically both Chinese pop music, known as Mandopop, and Western pop music) as decadent music, and for decades afterwards the Communist Party would promote Chinese revolutionary songs while suppressing Chinese folk songs, Chinese pop songs and Western pop songs. Dissatisfied with Chairman Mao Zedong's new music policies, a number of Shanghainese jazz musicians fled to the British colony of Hong Kong and established Cantopop, which is pop music sung in the Cantonese dialect of Chinese. However, a few musicians instead settled in Japan, where they became members of the Far East Network and collaborated with the American soldiers to help expose the Japanese public to a wide variety of western genres. This eventually lead to the establishment of modern Japanese pop music, known as "kayōkyoku".


title: J-pop

text: During the 1950s and 60s, many Kayōkyoku groups and singers gained experience performing on US military bases in Japan. Around the same time, Yakuza manager Kazuo Taoka reorganized the concert touring industry by treating the performers as professionals. Many of these performers later became key participants in the J-pop genre.


title: J-pop

text: In 1956, Japan's rock and roll craze began, due to the country music group known as Kosaka Kazuya and the Wagon Masters; their rendition of Elvis Presley's song "Heartbreak Hotel" helped to fuel the trend. The music was called "rockabilly" (or "rokabirī") by the Japanese media. Performers learned to play the music and translate the lyrics of popular American songs, resulting in the birth of . The rockabilly movement would reach its peak when 45,000 people saw the performances by Japanese singers at the first Nichigeki Western Carnival in one week of February 1958.


title: J-pop

text: Kyu Sakamoto, a fan of Elvis, made his stage début as a member of the band The Drifters at the Nichigeki Western Carnival in 1958. His 1961 song "Ue wo Muite Arukō" ("Let's Look Up and Walk"), known in other parts of the world as "Sukiyaki", was released to the United States in 1963. It was the first Japanese song to reach the Number One position in the United States, spending four weeks in "Cash Box" and three weeks in "Billboard". It also received a gold record for selling one million copies. During this period, female duo The Peanuts also became popular, singing a song in the movie "Mothra". Their songs, such as "Furimukanaide" ("Don't Turn Around") were later covered by Candies on their album "Candy Label". Artists like Kyu Sakamoto and The Peanuts were called .


title: J-pop

text: After frequently changing members, Chosuke Ikariya re-formed The Drifters in 1964 under the same name. At a Beatles concert in 1966, they acted as curtain raisers, but the audience generally objected. Eventually, The Drifters became popular in Japan, releasing "Zundoko-Bushi" ("Echoic word tune") in 1969. Along with "enka" singer Keiko Fuji, they won "the award for mass popularity" at the 12th Japan Record Awards in 1970. Keiko Fuji's 1970 album "Shinjuku no Onna/'Enka no Hoshi' Fuji Keiko no Subete" ("Woman in Shinjuku/'Star of "Enka" All of Keiko Fuji") established an all-time record in the history of the Japanese Oricon chart by staying in the Number One spot for 20 consecutive weeks. The Drifters later came to be known as television personalities and invited idols such as Momoe Yamaguchi and Candies to their television program.


title: J-pop

text: The Ventures visited Japan in 1962, causing the widespread embrace of the electric guitar called the ""Ereki" boom". Yūzō Kayama and Takeshi Terauchi became famous players of electric guitar. In 1966, the Beatles came to Japan and sang their songs at the Nippon Budokan, becoming the first rock music band to perform a concert there. The public believed that the Beatles would cause juvenile delinquency. The Japanese government deployed riot police against young rock fans at the Nippon Budokan. John Lennon felt that they were not well regarded in Japan, but Beatlemania has never really died there. The Beatles inspired Japanese bands, creating the group sounds genre in Japan.


title: J-pop

text: Most Japanese musicians felt that they could not sing rock in Japanese, so the popularity of Japanese rock gradually declined. As a result, there were debates such as "Should we sing rock music in Japanese?" and "Should we sing in English?" between Happy End and Yuya Uchida about Japanese rock music. This confrontation was called . Happy End proved that rock music could be sung in Japanese, and one theory holds that their music became one of the origins of modern J-pop. The Beatles also inspired Eikichi Yazawa, who grew up in an underprivileged family, his father dying when he was a child. Keisuke Kuwata, who grew up in a dual-income family, was influenced by the Beatles through his older sister, then an avid fan. Yōsui Inoue was also a fan of The Beatles, but he said that his music style was not particularly related to them. After Happy End disbanded in 1973, Haruomi Hosono, a former member, began a solo career and later formed Yellow Magic Orchestra.


title: J-pop

text: In the early 1960s, some Japanese music became influenced by the American folk music revival; this was called , although the genre of music was mostly covers of original songs. In the late 1960s, the Folk Crusaders became famous and the underground music around that time became called "fōku". As with "enka", Japanese "fōku" singers Wataru Takada performed social satires.


title: J-pop

text: In the early 1970s, the emphasis shifted from "fōku"s simple songs with a single guitar accompaniment to more complex musical arrangements known as . Instead of social messages, the songs focused on more personal messages, such as love. In 1972, singer-songwriter Takuro Yoshida produced a hit song "Kekkon Shiyouyo" ("Let's marry") without decent television promotion, though fans of "fōku" music became very angry because his music seemed to be a mersh music. The highest-selling single of the year was the "enka" song by Shiro Miya and the Pinkara Trio, "Onna no Michi". The song eventually sold over 3.25 million copies. On December 1, 1973, Yōsui Inoue released the album "Kōri no Sekai", which topped the Oricon charts and remained in Top 10 for 113 weeks. It spent 13 consecutive weeks in the number-one spot, and eventually established a still-standing record of a total 35 weeks at the number-one position on the Oricon charts. Yumi Matsutoya, formerly known by her maiden name Yumi Arai, also became a notable singer-songwriter during this period In October 1975, she released a single "Ano Hi ni Kaeritai" ("I want to return to that day"), making it her first number-one single on the Oricon charts. Miyuki Nakajima, Amii Ozaki, and Junko Yagami were also popular singer-songwriters during this period. At first, only Yumi Matsutoya was commonly called a new music artist, but the concept of Japanese "fōku" music changed around that time. In 1979, Chage and Aska made their debut, and folk band Off Course (with singer Kazumasa Oda) released a hit song "Sayonara" ("Good-bye").


title: J-pop

text: Rock music remained a relatively underground music genre in the early 1970s in Japan, though Happy End managed to gain mainstream success fusing rock with traditional Japanese music. Several Japanese musicians began experimenting with electronic music, including electronic rock. The most notable was the internationally renowned Isao Tomita, whose 1972 album "Electric Samurai: Switched on Rock" featured electronic synthesizer renditions of contemporary rock and pop songs. Other early examples of electronic rock records include Inoue Yousui's folk rock and pop rock album "Ice World" (1973) and Osamu Kitajima's progressive psychedelic rock album "Benzaiten" (1974), both of which involved contributions from Haruomi Hosono, who later started the electronic music group "Yellow Magic Band" (later known as Yellow Magic Orchestra) in 1977.


title: J-pop

text: In 1978, Eikichi Yazawa's rock single "Jikan yo Tomare" ("Time, Stop") became a smash hit that sold over 639,000 copies. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of Japanese rock. He sought worldwide success, and in 1980 he signed a contract with the Warner Pioneer record company and moved to the West Coast of the United States. He recorded the albums "Yazawa", "It's Just Rock n' Roll", and "Flash in Japan", all of which were released worldwide, but were not very commercially successful. Keisuke Kuwata formed the rock band Southern All Stars (SAS), which made their debut in 1978. Southern All Stars remains very popular in Japan today.


title: J-pop

text: In the same year, Yellow Magic Orchestra (YMO) also made their official debut with their self-titled album. The band, whose members were Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto, developed electropop, or technopop as it is known in Japan, in addition to pioneering synthpop and electro music. Their 1979 album "Solid State Survivor" reached number one on the Oricon charts in July 1980, and went on to sell two million records worldwide. At around the same time, the YMO albums "Solid State Survivor" and "X∞Multiplies" held both the top two spots on the Oricon charts for seven consecutive weeks, making YMO the only band in Japanese chart history to achieve this feat. Young fans of their music during this period became known as the . YMO had a significant impact on Japanese pop music, which started becoming increasingly dominated by electronic music due to their influence, and they had an equally large impact on electronic music across the world. Southern All Stars and Yellow Magic Orchestra symbolized the end of New Music and paved the way for the emergence of the J-pop genre in the 1980s. Both bands, SAS and YMO, would later be ranked at the top of HMV Japan's list of top 100 Japanese musicians of all time.


title: J-pop

text: In the early 1980s, with the spread of car stereos, the term came to describe a type of popular music that had a big city theme. Tokyo in particular inspired many songs of this form. During this time, music fans and artists in Japan were influenced by album-oriented rock (especially adult contemporary) and crossover (especially jazz fusion). City pop was affected by new music, though its origins have been traced back to the mid-1970s, with the work of the Japanese rock band Happy End and its former member Haruomi Hosono, as well as Tatsuro Yamashita.


title: J-pop

text: The popularity of city pop declined when the Japanese asset price bubble burst in 1990. Its musical characteristics (except its "cultural background") were inherited by 1990s Shibuya-kei musicians such as Pizzicato Five and Flipper's Guitar.


title: J-pop

text: Throughout the 1980s, rock bands such as Southern All Stars, RC Succession, Anzen Chitai, The Checkers, The Alfee, and The Blue Hearts became popular. Anzen Chitai came from Yosui Inoue's backup band. On December 1, 1983, rock singer Yutaka Ozaki debuted at the age of 18. In 1986, The Alfee became the first artists to play a concert in front of an audience of 100,000 people in Japan. Some Japanese musicians, such as Boøwy, TM Network, and Buck-Tick, were influenced by New Romanticism.


title: J-pop

text: Boøwy became an especially influential rock band, whose members included singer Kyosuke Himuro and guitarist Tomoyasu Hotei. Their three albums reached number one in 1988, making them the first male artists to have three number-ones within a single year. Subsequent Japanese rock bands were modeled on this band. Guitarist Tak Matsumoto, who supported TM Network's concerts, formed rock duo B'z with singer Koshi Inaba in 1988.


title: J-pop

text: In the late 1980s, girl band Princess Princess became a successful pop-rock band. Their singles "Diamonds" and "Sekai de Ichiban Atsui Natsu" ("World's Hottest Summer") were ranked at the number-one and number-two spots, respectively, on the 1989 Oricon Yearly Single Charts.


title: J-pop

text: In the late 1980s, a new trend also emerged in Japanese rock music: the "visual kei", a movement notable by male bands who wore makeup, extravagant hair styles, and androgynous costumes. The most successful representatives of the movement are X Japan (formerly known as "X") and Buck-Tick. X Japan released their first album "Vanishing Vision" on the indie label Extasy Records in 1988; their album "Blue Blood" was released on CBS Sony in 1989. "Blue Blood" sold 712,000 copies, and their 1991 album "Jealousy" sold over 1.11 million copies. Surprisingly, X Japan were a heavy metal band, but guitarist hide later came under the influence of alternative rock, releasing his first solo album "Hide Your Face" in 1994 and launching his successful solo career.


title: J-pop

text: In the 1970s, the popularity of female idol singers such as Mari Amachi, Saori Minami, Momoe Yamaguchi, and Candies increased. Momoe Yamaguchi was one of the first "kayōkyoku" singers to use the special pronunciation characteristic of J-pop. In 1972, Hiromi Go made his debut with the song "Otokonoko Onnanoko" ("Boy and Girl"). Hiromi Go originally came from Johnny & Associates.


title: J-pop

text: In 1976, female duo Pink Lady made their debut with the single "Pepper Keibu". They released a record nine consecutive number-one singles.


title: J-pop

text: In the 1980s, Japanese idols inherited New Music, though the term fell out of usage. Seiko Matsuda especially adopted song producers of previous generations. In 1980, her third single "Kaze wa Aki Iro" ("Wind is autumn color") reached the number-one spot on the Oricon charts. Haruomi Hosono also joined the production of her music. She eventually became the first artist to make 24 consecutive number-one singles, breaking Pink Lady's record.


title: J-pop

text: Other female idol singers achieved significant popularity in the 1980s, such as Akina Nakamori, Yukiko Okada, Kyōko Koizumi, Yoko Minamino, Momoko Kikuchi, Yōko Oginome, Miho Nakayama, Minako Honda, and Chisato Moritaka. Okada received the Best New Artist award from the Japan Record Awards in 1984. Nakamori won the Grand Prix award for two consecutive years (1985 and 1986), also at the Japan Record Awards.


title: J-pop

text: Japanese idol band Onyanko Club made their debut in 1985, and produced popular singer Shizuka Kudō. They changed the image of Japanese idols.


title: J-pop

text: Around 1985, however, people began to be disenchanted with the system for creating idols. In 1986, idol singer Yukiko Okada's song "Kuchibiru Network" ("Lips' Network"), written by Seiko Matsuda and composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, became a hit song, but she committed suicide immediately after that.


title: J-pop

text: Hikaru Genji, one of the Johnny & Associates bands, made their debut in 1987. They became a highly influential rollerskating boy band, with some of their members gaining their own fame as they got older. Their song "Paradise Ginga", written by Aska, won the Grand Prix award at the 30th Japan Record Awards in 1988. Some of the group's backing dancers later formed SMAP.


title: J-pop

text: The late 1980s also saw the rise of the female duo Wink. They didn't laugh, unlike Japanese idols of former eras. Wink debuted in 1988, surpassing the popularity of the then-most popular female duo, BaBe. Wink's song "Samishii Nettaigyo" won the grand prix award at the 31st Japan Record Awards in 1989.


title: J-pop

text: Popular singer Hibari Misora died in 1989, and many "kayōkyoku" programs, such as "The Best Ten", were closed.


title: J-pop

text: CoCo made their hit debut with the 1989 single "Equal Romance" for the hit anime series "Ranma ½". Tetsuya Komuro, a member of TM Network, broke Seiko Matsuda's streak of 25 consecutive number-ones by making his single "Gravity of Love" to debut at number-one in November 1989.


title: J-pop

text: During this period, the Japanese music industry sought marketing effectiveness. Notable examples of commercial music from the era were the tie-in music from the agency Being and the follow-on, Tetsuya Komuro's disco music.


title: J-pop

text: The period between around 1990 and 1993 was dominated by artists from the Being agency, including B'z, Tube, B.B.Queens, T-Bolan, Zard, Wands, Maki Ohguro, Deen, and Field of View. They were called the . Many of those artists topped the charts and established new records, notably B'z, which eventually established a new record for consecutive number-one singles, surpassing Seiko Matsuda's record. B'z is the Japanese biggest selling artist of all time, according to Oricon charts and RIAJ certifications. On the other hand, Wands, regarded as a pioneer of the "J-pop Boom" of the 1990s, had trouble because member Show Wesugi wanted to play alternative rock/grunge.


title: J-pop

text: Many artists surpassed the two-million-copy mark in the 1990s. Kazumasa Oda's 1991 single "Oh! Yeah!/Love Story wa Totsuzen ni", Chage and Aska's 1991 single "Say Yes" and 1993 single "Yah Yah Yah", Kome Kome Club's 1992 single "Kimi ga Iru Dake de", Mr. Children's 1994 single "Tomorrow Never Knows" and 1996 single "Namonaki Uta", and Globe's 1996 single "Departures" are examples of songs that sold more than 2 million copies. Dreams Come True's 1992 album "The Swinging Star" became the first album to sell over 3 million copies in Japan. Mr. Children's 1994 album "Atomic Heart" established a new record, selling 3.43 million copies on Oricon charts.


title: J-pop

text: The duo Chage and Aska, who started recording in late 1979, became very popular during this period. They released a string of consecutive hits throughout the early 1990s; in 1996, they took part in "MTV Unplugged", making them the first Asian group to do so.


title: J-pop

text: After TM Network disbanded in 1994, Tetsuya Komuro became a serious song producer. The period between 1994 and 1997 was dominated by dance and techno acts from the , such as TRF, Ryoko Shinohara, Yuki Uchida, Namie Amuro, Hitomi, Globe, Tomomi Kahala, and Ami Suzuki. In that time, Komuro was responsible for 20 hit songs, each selling more than a million copies. While Globe's 1996 album "Globe" sold 4.13 million copies, establishing a record at the time, Namie Amuro's 1997 song "Can You Celebrate?" sold 2.29 million copies, is the best selling single of all time by the female solo artist in the history of Jpop. His total sales as a song producer reached 170 million copies. By 1998, Komuro's songs had become less popular. By the middle part of the first decade of the 21st century, Komuro's debt lead him to attempt the sale of his song catalog—which he didn't actually own—to an investor. When the investor found out and sued, Komuro tried to sell the catalog to "another" investor in order to pay the judgement he owed the first investor.


title: J-pop

text: Namie Amuro, who was arguably the most popular solo singer in the period, came from the "Okinawa Actors School", which also incubated the bands MAX and Speed. At first, while still a part of the Komuro Family, Amuro remained in the dance music genre, but she slowly changed her music style to contemporary R&B and ended her partnership with Tetsuya Komuro.


title: J-pop

text: The sales in the Japanese music market continued to increase. In October 1997, Glay released their album "Review -The Best of Glay", which sold 4.87 million copies, breaking Globe's earlier record. However, it was surpassed in the next year by B'z's album "B'z The Best "Pleasure"", which sold 5.12 million copies. The Japanese market for physical music sales peaked in 1998, recording sales of . In March 1999, Hikaru Utada released her first Japanese album, "First Love", which sold 7.65 million copies, making it the best-selling album in Oricon history.


title: J-pop

text: The late 1990s saw the popularity of rock bands, such as Glay, Luna Sea, and L'Arc-en-Ciel, most of them related to the "visual kei" movement, though they later changed their style. At the time, rock musicians in Japan were absorbing "kayōkyoku" music after the genre vanished. Glay became especially successful, with massive exposure in the media, comparable to that of the most popular pop singers produced by Tetsuya Komuro. In July 1999, Glay played a concert to a record audience of 200,000 people at the Makuhari Messe, certified by Guinness World Records as the biggest solo concert in Japan. In July 1999, L'Arc-en-Ciel released two albums, "Arc" and "Ray", at the same time; they sold over 3.02 million combined copies in the first week of release.


title: J-pop

text: X Japan announced their disbandment in September 1997 and their guitarist hide died in May 1998. His funeral had a record attendance of 50,000 people, breaking the record of Hibari Misora, whose funeral was attended by 42,000 people. After his death, his single "Pink Spider" and album "Ja, Zoo" were certified million-sellers by the Recording Industry Association of Japan.


title: J-pop

text: Johnny & Associates produced many all-male groups: SMAP, Tokio, V6, KinKi Kids and Arashi. SMAP hit the J-pop scene in a major way in the 1990s through a combination of TV "Tarento" shows and singles, with one of its singers, Takuya Kimura, becoming a popular actor commonly known as "Kimutaku" in later years.


title: J-pop

text: By the late 1990s, the girl group Speed was very popular; they announced their disbandment in 1999. The group returned to the music scene in 2008. Another all-female band, Morning Musume, produced by Tsunku, former leader of band Sharam Q became very popular, with a string of releases that were sales hits before even being released. The group's popularity gave origin to the Hello! Project. Following the pattern set a decade before by the 1980s all-female Onyanko Club, Morning Musume spawned several splinter bands.


title: J-pop

text: In the late 1990s and early 21st century, female singers such as Hikaru Utada, Ayumi Hamasaki, Misia, Mai Kuraki, and Ringo Shiina became chart-toppers who write their own songs or their own lyrics. Hikaru Utada is the daughter of Keiko Fuji, a popular singer of the 1970s. Ayumi Hamasaki was made Utada's contemporary rival, though both women claimed the "competition" was merely a creation of their record companies and the media.


title: J-pop

text: Zeebra introduced hip hop music to Japanese mainstream music. In 1999, was featured by Dragon Ash in their song titled "Grateful Days", which topped the Oricon charts.


title: J-pop

text: Ayumi Hamasaki won Grand Prix awards for three consecutive years—the first time in Japan Record Award history—between 2001 and 2003. Although Hamasaki became very famous, Tom Yoda, then-chairman of her record company Avex Group, argued that her tactics were risky, because Avex disregarded the modern portfolio theory. This concern disappeared when the company's other singers (such as Ai Otsuka, Kumi Koda, and Exile) also reached a certain level of popularity in the mid-2000s under Yoda's management policy. BoA, a Korean singer also a part of Avex group, also achieved high levels of success although being Korean in Japan. She opened the Hallyu door to other Korean artists so that they may achieve varying levels of success in Japan as well.


title: J-pop

text: In December 2002, the digital-download market for was created by mobile-phone company au. The market for digital downloads grew rapidly, and Hikaru Utada's 2007 song "Flavor of Life" sold over 7 million downloaded copies. In October 2007, EMI Music Japan announced that Utada was the world's first artist to have 10 million digital sales in one year. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry's 2009 digital music report, Thelma Aoyama's digital single "Soba ni Iru ne" and Greeeen's digital single "Kiseki" sold 8.2 million copies and 6.2 million copies, respectively, in the 2008 download rankings.


title: J-pop

text: In the first decade of the 21st century, hip hop music and contemporary R&B influences in Japanese music started to gain attention in popular mainstream music. In November 2001, R&B duo Chemistry's debut album "The Way We Are" sold over 1.14 million copies in the first week, and debuted at the number-one position on the Oricon weekly album charts. Hip hop bands such as Rip Slyme and Ketsumeishi were also at the top of the Oricon charts.


title: J-pop

text: Rock band Orange Range featured several elements of hip hop in their music. Orange Range's album "musiQ" sold over 2.6 million copies, making it the number one album of 2005 on the Oricon charts.


title: J-pop

text: Pop/R&B singer Ken Hirai topped the Oricon yearly album chart in 2006 with the release of his greatest hits album "10th Anniversary Complete Single Collection '95-'05 Utabaka", selling over 2 million copies.


title: J-pop

text: The pop/hip-hop duo, Halcali, have the honor of being the first Japanese female hip-hop artists to break the Oricon top 10 charts. They have also performed overseas two times in 2008, once at the Anime Central festival in Chicago, and once more at Central Park, NYC on Japan Day.


title: J-pop

text: Exile, the dance-vocal group under Avex's sublabel Rhythm Zone, had several million-seller albums. Their album "Exile Love" topped the Oricon yearly album chart in 2008.


title: J-pop

text: Veteran rapper Dohzi-T collaborated with popular singers such as Shota Shimizu, Hiromi Go, Miliyah Kato, and Thelma Aoyama in his successful 2008 album "12 Love Stories".


title: J-pop

text: Although there were only 132 new artists in Japan in 2001, according to the Recording Industry Association of Japan, the number increased to 512 in 2008. In 2008, 14 new artists, such as Thelma Aoyama, attended the NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen for the first time.


title: J-pop

text: Rock musicians such as Mr. Children, B'z, Southern All Stars, and Glay still topped the charts in the first decade of the 21st century. Mr. Children's song "Sign" won the Grand Prix award at the 46th Japan Record Awards in 2004. When the group released their album "Home" in 2007, they passed 50 million albums and singles sold, making them the second-highest selling artist of all time in Japan since the origin of Oricon—just behind B'z, who held the number-one position with more than 75 million records sold until then. "Home" topped the 2007 Oricon yearly album charts.


title: J-pop

text: The sales of physical CDs declined, but audiences to see live performances increased. Eikichi Yazawa took part in rock festivals, and, in 2007, he became the first artist to have performed 100 concerts at the Nippon Budokan.


title: J-pop

text: Other artists, such as Namie Amuro, also continued their long-running careers with successful releases in this period. Her live tour, Namie Amuro Best Fiction tour 2008-2009, not only became the biggest live tour by a Japanese solo female artist—attended by 450,000 fans in Japan—but was also attended by 50,000 fans in Taiwan and Shanghai. While Kazumasa Oda's 2005 album "Sōkana" topped the Oricon weekly album charts, his 2007 single "Kokoro" reached the weekly single charts, breaking Yujiro Ishihara's record and making him the then-oldest singer to top the single charts. Mariya Takeuchi's greatest hits album "Expressions" topped the Oricon album chart in 2008, making her the oldest female singer with the longest active career to reach the number-one position.


title: J-pop

text: Johnny & Associates's all-male groups remained well-known. In 2001, SMAP released their greatest-hits album "SMAP Vest", which sold over a million copies in the first week. In November 2001, Johnny & Associates established the label J Storm for their band Arashi. SMAP's 2003 single "Sekai ni hitotsu dake no hana" sold more than two million copies, being the number-one single in the Oricon yearly single charts for that year. In 2007, Guinness World Records honored KinKi Kids for holding a world record for the number of singles debuting at the number-one position since their debut: 25. SMAP was said to fight a lonely battle at the Kōhaku Uta Gassen, as seen from the viewpoint of its audience share. In 2008, male musicians established a record of four consecutive wins at the Kōhaku Uta Gassen. Arashi's greatest hits album "All the Best! 1999–2009" topped the 2009 Oricon yearly album charts.


title: J-pop

text: Johnny & Associates also produced new groups such as Hey! Say! JUMP, Tackey & Tsubasa, NEWS, Kanjani Eight, and KAT-TUN. In 2006, KAT-TUN's debut single "Real Face", written by Shikao Suga and composed by Tak Matsumoto, sold over one million copies and topped the Oricon Yearly Charts. In 2007, temporary Johnny's Jr. group Hey! Say! 7 broke a record as the youngest male group to ever top Oricon charts, with an average age of 14.8 years. Later that year, Hey! Say! JUMP broke a record as the largest group to debut in Johnny's history, with ten members. They also became the youngest group ever to perform in Tokyo Dome with the average age of 15.7 years old. On the 2008 yearly singles charts, only one single ranked in the top 30 was sung by a female (Namie Amuro's single "60s 70s 80s") except gender-mixed groups, partly because the boy bands enjoyed an advantage in physical single sales. In 2009, Johnny's Jr. artist Yuma Nakayama w/B.I.Shadow became the youngest artist to have their first single to debut at the number-one spot, as the band had an average age of 14.6 years, breaking the former record set by female group Minimoni, 14.8 years.


title: J-pop

text: In February 2001, Ulfuls released their cover version of Kyu Sakamoto's 1963 song "Ashita Ga Arusa". Their cover version debuted at the number-five position, behind Utada, Kinki Kids, Hamasaki and Hirai. In March, Yoshimoto Kogyo's special band "Re: Japan" also released their cover version of "Ashita Ga Arusa". When Ulfuls's cover version of this song remained at number eight, Re: Japan's version topped the Oricon weekly single charts.


title: J-pop

text: In 2003, Man Arai released the single "Sen no Kaze ni Natte" ("As A Thousand Winds") based on the Western poem "Do not stand at my grave and weep". In Japan, the poem was known for Rokusuke Ei's reading at the funeral of Kyu Sakamoto in 1985. Japanese tenor singer Masafumi Akikawa covered the song in 2006. Akikawa's cover version of the song became the first classical music single to top the Oricon charts, and sold over one million copies. On the 2007 Oricon Yearly Charts, the single became the best-selling physical single, scoring a victory over Utada's "Flavor of Life". Oricon claimed that the song was not J-pop. On the other hand, sheet music from the Zen-On Music Company Ltd classified the song as J-pop.


title: J-pop

text: Hideaki Tokunaga covered many female songs on his cover album series, "Vocalist". He released "Vocalist", "Vocalist 2", "Vocalist 3", "Vocalist 4" and "Vocalist Vintage (Vocalist 5)" in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2010, and 2012 respectively. In August 2007, "Vocalist 3" became Oricon weekly number-one cover album with 2 weeks (tied the record in Japan), and in May 2010, "Vocalist 4" became the Japan first Oricon monthly number-one cover album.


title: J-pop

text: In 2010, other singers also released cover albums of Japanese songs such as Juju's "Request" and Kumi Koda's "". Superfly released a single that came with a cover album of Western rock songs, titled "", ultimately becoming the band's third consecutive album to debut at number one on the Oricon weekly album charts.


title: J-pop

text: Folk duos, such as 19, Yuzu and Kobukuro, became popular during the period. Their music was called "neofolk". In October 2007, Kobukuro's double-album "All Singles Best" became the first male album to ship three million copies in the 21st century in Japan. In January 2008, their album "5296" beat out Ayumi Hamasaki's album "Guilty" on the Oricon charts, though she previously had eight consecutive number-one studio albums.


title: J-pop

text: Electronic music bands such as Plus-Tech Squeeze Box and Capsule were called "neo Shibuya-kei". Yasutaka Nakata, a member of Capsule, became the song producer for girl group Perfume. In April 2008, for the first time as a technopop band in 25 years since Yellow Magic Orchestra's 1983 album "Naughty Boys", Perfume achieved a number-one album "Game" on the Oricon charts. In July 2008, their single "Love the World" debuted at number one, making it the first technopop song to reach number one in Oricon history. Other Japanese female technopop artists soon followed, including Aira Mitsuki, immi, Mizca, SAWA, Saoriiiii, and Sweet Vacation.


title: J-pop

text: During the late 2000s and the early 2010s, the anime music industry, such as voice actors and image songs, added weight to Japanese music. Though anime music was formerly influenced by J-pop and "visual kei" music, Japanese indie music apparently influenced the genre at the 2006 FanimeCon. In 2007, after sampling voice actress Saki Fujita's voice to develop it, Vocaloid Hatsune Miku was released, and many songs featuring Hatsune Miku were shown on the Nico Nico Douga. Some of the musicians featuring Hatsune Miku, such as Livetune and Supercell, joined large record companies in Japan. Livetune released "Re: Package" on Victor Entertainment on August 27, 2008, and Supercell released "Supercell" on Sony Music on March 4, 2009. The albums "Re: Package" and "Supercell" were not brought under the control of the copyright system of the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC), breaking the tradition that the musicians under the major labels affiliated with the system.


title: J-pop

text: In June 2009, voice actress Nana Mizuki's album "Ultimate Diamond" became the first voice actor album to reach number one on the Oricon weekly charts. The fictional all female band Hōka-go Tea Time, from the anime series "K-On!", released the mini-album "Hōka-go Tea Time" on July 22, 2009. The mini-album debuted at number one on the Oricon weekly album charts, becoming the first album by anime characters to reach number one. In May 2010, "Exit Tunes Presents Vocalogenesis feat. Hatsune Miku" became the first album featuring Vocaloids to reach number one on the Oricon weekly charts, replacing Hideaki Tokunaga's "Vocalist 4", which had topped the charts for four consecutive weeks.


title: J-pop

text: Since the end of the 2000s, more and more idol groups have emerged. The high number of idol groups in the Japanese entertainment industry is sometimes called the "Warring Idols Period" (アイドル戦国時代, a"idoru sengoku jidai"), an allusion to the Sengoku-jidai. Some of the most successful groups during the 2010s include Hey! Say! JUMP, AKB48, Arashi, Kanjani Eight, Morning Musume, and Momoiro Clover Z.


title: J-pop

text: Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, a Harajuku-based fashion model, made her musical debut in 2011 and gained international popularity with her debut single "Pon Pon Pon", recognized by some Western celebrities such as Katy Perry and Ariana Grande. She is produced by Yasutaka Nakata, who also produces the group Perfume. She subsequently gained success through her songs "Ninja Re Bang Bang" and "Fashion Monster". During 2014, about 486,000 people attended Momoiro Clover Z's live concerts, which was the highest recorded concert attendance for any female musician in Japan.


title: J-pop

text: In 2019, AKB48 announced the postponement of its general election, and Arashi announced the group's hiatus.


title: J-pop

text: Some Japanese pop artists are extremely popular in Japan, and some also have fanbases in other countries—especially in Asia, but also in Western countries. They influence not only music, but also fashion. As of 2016, the top five best-selling artists in the Japanese Oricon charts history are B'z, Mr. Children, Ayumi Hamasaki, Southern All Stars, and DREAMS COME TRUE. Among the five, Hamasaki holds the record for being the only solo artist.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: Juaquin James Malphurs (born May 31, 1986), known professionally as Waka Flocka Flame, is an American rapper. Signing to 1017 Brick Squad and Warner Bros. Records in 2009, he became a mainstream artist with the release of his singles "O Let's Do It", "Hard in da Paint", and "No Hands" (featuring Roscoe Dash and Wale), with the latter peaking at number 13 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. His debut studio album "Flockaveli" was released in 2010. His second studio album "" was released in 2012 and was preceded by the lead single "Round of Applause" (featuring Drake).


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: Malphurs was born in South Jamaica, Queens, New York City. His family eventually settled in Riverdale, Georgia. His mother, Debra Antney, is rapper Gucci Mane's former manager and the CEO of So Icey/Mizay Entertainment. The name "Waka" was given to him by his cousin, after the Muppets character Fozzie Bear's catchphrase, "Wocka Wocka". The name "Flocka Flame" was given to him by Gucci Mane, whom he has known since he was 19.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: Waka Flocka came to fame with his breakthrough single "O Let's Do It" in 2009, which peaked at number 62 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. Waka Flocka is a member of 1017 Brick Squad with Gucci Mane, OJ Da Juiceman, Frenchie, and Wooh Da Kid. On January 19, 2010, Malphurs was shot and robbed at a car wash in Atlanta. The bullet went through his right arm. His debut album, "Flockaveli", was released on October 1, 2010. The album debuted at number six on the US "Billboard" 200. The album was inspired by Tupac Shakur, whose final stage name and pseudonym before his death was Makaveli. He was named the eighth hottest MC of 2010 by MTV.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: Gucci Mane fired Waka Flocka's mother as his manager. There was initially no animosity between the two rappers due to this event. In an MTV interview, both he and Waka Flocka affirmed that their relationship was, at the time, in good standing even though they no longer spoke to one another. In early September, Gucci Mane was seen at Flocka's "Flockaveli" listening party supporting the artist.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: In 2011, Waka Flocka posed for a nude but not revealing picture for PETA, to boycott killing animals and wearing fur. The picture says "ink not mink". Waka Flocka released several mixtapes in 2011, including "Salute Me or Shoot Me 3", "Benjamin Flocka" and his last "Twin Towers 2 (No Fly Zone)" with fellow rapper Slim Dunkin. On August 9, 2011, his collaborative album with Gucci Mane, titled "Ferrari Boyz", was released. The first single was "She Be Puttin On", featuring the now deceased Slim Dunkin, who was shot at an Atlanta recording studio while shooting a music video.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: "Round of Applause", featuring Canadian rapper Drake, was released on October 14, 2011 as the first single from his second studio album, "". It was produced by frequent collaborator, Lex Luger. The album itself was released on June 8, 2012.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: On January 22, 2013, Waka Flocka announced that he had completed his third studio album, titled "Flockaveli 2", featuring guest appearances by Timbaland and Wyclef Jean. On May 21, 2013, he gave a release date of October 5, 2013; in June he gave a new date of January 2014. In July 2014 he named producers on the album; in November the front cover art was released. In January 2020 he announced that he'd release his last album that year; "Flockaveli 2" was not released in 2020.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: In February 2013 he released "DuFlocka Rant 2", a mixtape with guest appearances by Gucci Mane, Lil Wayne, French Montana, Ace Hood and Young Scooter. A sequel followed in May, "DuFlocka Rant: Halftime Show", featuring fellow Southern rapper T.I. In October he released a third mixtape, "From Roaches to Rollies".


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: In 2014 he released two mixtaps, "Re-Up" in March and "I Can't Rap Vol. 1" in July. Also in July he announced a new EDM album, "Turn Up God", to be released later in the year; it wasn't.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: In 2014, Waka Flocka appeared in the third season of the VH1 show "". The show loosely follows events in the life of Waka Flocka and his wife, Tammy Rivera.


title: Waka Flocka Flame

text: On March 2, 2015, Waka Flocka released a collaboration mixtape with DJ Whoo Kid entitled "The Turn Up Godz Tour", with guest appearances from Future, Howard Stern, Machine Gun Kelly, Offset, Cash Out, Bobby V, Gucci Mane, Tony Yayo, and Watch The Duck. On April 1, 2015, Waka Flocka released the mixtape "Salute Me Or Shoot Me 5", with guest appearances from Future, Yo Gotti and Juvenile. Waka Flock released another mixtape, titled "Flockaveli 1.5", on November 25, 2015.