V-ROCK FESTIVAL '09

Wow, this event is gonna be amazing!  V-ROCK FESTIVAL is the first big visual rock festival to be organized in Japan and has a huge list of awesome artists participating, including the GazettE as headliners and Marilyn Manson as a sort of special guest.  The festival will take place over two days at Makuhari Messe halls 9-11 from Sat. 24-Sun. 25th in October.  One-day tickets are 12,000 yen.  You can find more information about the event at the official website.  There's also a promotional video where they introduce the festival and some of the artists that'll be in it, and discuss visual rock as a genre, mentioning a bit about where it started from and briefly examining the recent surge in international popularity.

This festival is great for so many reasons, not only because it shows greater awareness and initiative in creating a large scale event focused specifically on visual rock from within Japan, but a huge festival of this nature will hopefully attract the attention of the media and become a form of promotion.
Though the average Japanese person may have heard of some of the big names like X JAPAN, LUNA SEA, etc. a large percentage of the mainstream population has very little to no knowledge of visual rock bands, and it's difficult for the bands to really grab the attention of people outside the visual subculture (because that's what it is, a subculture that for years has only managed to break into the public consciousness to a limited extent.)  Even concerning fans of other genres and types of rock, it's still hard because there's long been an undercurrent of prejudice against visual rock for various reasons, though it seems to have lightened up a bit lately.  I really think certain young v-rock artists are making strides in breaking through these barriers though.
Thus, along with incidents where newer visual rock bands have been mentioned in regular morning TV news reports, and gained more ground in the charts, it makes me so happy to see an event like this that shows increasing attention being paid to v-rock. :D

It's nice that Japanese media and public sitting up and beginning to take notice of what's been going on here, because there really is an important flow of culture and soft power exertion happening.  My major is anthropology, so I've actually studied this frequently occurring phenomenon, where people don't become aware of something in their own culture until outside forces or other cultures become fascinated with it and then they think, "hey, they're making a big fuss about this, maybe there's something to it" and start to be more introspective and appreciate it themselves.  It's happened before in the world of art, music, food, fashion, and many other sectors in cultures all over the world.  It's really exciting and interesting to me that this sort of thing is going on right now and we can witness and be a part of it. 

What's more, they even mention in the festival promotional video that v-rock is an important representation of Japanese culture, and indeed it is and most likely will continue to spread and gain popularity all over the world, just like anime has...but I believe visual rock has perhaps even more potential than anime, because music is something that can really move people and be felt despite language barriers.  Also, visual rock aesthetics are in keeping with edgy, growing trends in global fashion and new ideas of what's beautiful so I think the appeal of the looks will be a big draw for people as well.

Sorry about my rant...^_^;
Here's a list of some of the artists who will appear in the festival:
ALI PROJECT
BREAKERZ
D'espairs Ray
DuelJewel
ドレミ團
the GazettE
heidi.
イロクイ。
Kagrra,
LOVEX
Marilyn Manson
メリー
Moi dix Mois
NEGATIVE
PENICILLIN
Sadie
SuG
SOHODOLLS
高見沢俊彦 （BAND MEMBER：Gt:ルーク篁/ANCHANG/KOJI）
土屋アンナ
Versailles
ヴィドール
ViViD

and more...