J-Pop and other modern Japanese pop music sometimes inserts some English words into their lyrics. Why doesn't US pop music generally include Japanese lyrics?
by 
Egao No Genki
ANSWERS: 6
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Do you live in America? If you do, that's the reason. :) America is very ignorant when it comes to other cultures & languages. I don't see any American artists inserting any Japanese lyrics in their music no time soon. Which is sad. :(
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I don't claim to be entirely accurate about this, but I believe that in most Japanese schools, English is a mandatory subject for at least the first several years of education. Because of this, it is common for most educated Japanese to know at least a little English. Nowadays, it seems to be the fashion to apply this knowledge to song lyrics. Were there as big of a focus on learning Japanese in America as there were on learning English in Japan, perhaps you might see more Japanese lyrics in English songs. And anyway, the most Japanese you're likely to hear in any popular English song would be Japanese words that we have assimilated into regular use in English. For example, words like "sayonara", "sushi", "tsunami", or "kamikaze".
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yeah, america tends to be ignorant towards other cultures, and music is a business, so they cater to those who will pay the most. Some artists are begginging to explore that realm. Kanye West plays with the idea of japanese girls, same with Gwen Stefani ( although yes they are terrible examples). What we play more with is spanish. Many spanish artists come up to the USA and make millions and many non-hispanics also ( beyonce for example) make spanish albums to cater to those who will pay for that stuff.We do not have an example of a majorly popular Japanese pop artist ( utada hikaru doesnt count, as most ppl dont know who she is). However we do Know who Shakira is.
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Given that people will get kanji on their bodies not knowing what it is, I don't think we could handle it in the music.
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Because in Japan, it's cool and it's the trend to have English words and you're probably going to be more popular if you know English. In English-speaking places, Japanese isn't really that popular. And besides, some words in English have become part of Japanese culture, like the word "cool" for example.
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Ignorance, I don't agree with that answer. Why WOULD we put Japanese lyrics into American songs? For that matter, why not Swahili, Cantonese, Arabic, or Dutch? It just doesn't make sense, because the market is geared towards English lyrics as that's what sells. If that bothers you consider the fact that English is a global language with at least 400 million total speakers, so the lyrics can be widely understood if songs are written in English. Japanese on the other hand, although the country might house 127,288,416 (or so) people, is certainly not popular enough for people to grasp the lyrics. Not to mention the Japanese pop songs are so overdone and pre-written... I don't think branching out lyrically and musically in the pop world is really their thing. They're not ahead of the game when it comes to pop, or pop rock; perhaps classically, orchestrally and instrumentally in ensembles. But their pop could use some work to really capture the tunes of people around the world.
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