Japonisme 2.0 German Visual-kei Fans, Tokio Hotel, and the Popular Music Genre That Must Not Exist

In the first half of the year 2006, almost every relevant German TV station reported on what Jens Balzer in the Berliner Zeitung on December 23, 2005 had already predicted to become “the next big thing in 2006” (2005b): a Germany-wide scene composed of teens and tweens who, referring to the Japanese rock music genre visual-kei that stands at the center of all their activities, call themselves Visuals or Visus. The concert might well be the reason why almost all German TV stations reported about the Visu scene in early 2006. The visual-kei is not a Japanese subculture that was globally spread through the internet and adopted by German fans, becomes most obvious when one compares the dynamics of the concerts visual-kei bands give in Japan with those they give in Germany.