Until '70s popular songs of the U.S. or Europe (especially the U.K.) were comparatively appreciated in Japan. Many Japanese seemed to feel themselves 'awkward', that is, 'inferior' to them in the way of rhyming or the way of producing rhythms, not to mention in recording techiniques. I am one of them and I am thankful to the Western countries for their oldies. However, some of the Japanese pop songs of those days gently send lyrics or rhythms to my ears when I listen to them again. While I am doubtful about some of their compositions, today in Japan it is popular for the Japanese to listen to tunes which properly 'digest' the Western rhythms, and this comes to a natural conclusion that it is more familiar with songs 'delivered by the same persons in shape and language'. Basically, audiences are reluctant to seek new ones after when they fixed their own tastes. I hear "There is no frontier in music", though, not only in Japan these words are seldom applied to audiences except when something is 'ripe for it'. I cannot say precisely what is 'ripe for it'. It depends on various elements including social environment and so on, however, I think it should be one of indispensable conditions that is as follows : a musician happens to be interested in and absorbed in a kind of music different from those loved by people around him, and then it finally reaches to audiences. I will take up the persons of the time when people had the ears to listen to and became enthusiastic over the music which was mysterious enough to be on no side of any genre or the music seemingly unsuitable for the performer, before commercialization and categorization of music went further. (2005/04/17)