VISUAL KEi

Visual Kei is a musical movement born in Japan in the early 80’s. Visual Kei band members, mostly men, often wear outrageous make-ups with flamboyant hairstyles, feminine accessories, and luxuriant costumes, usually paired with androgynous aesthetics. The “Kei” is Japanese for “style” or “type”, referring that its main focus is on visual aesthetics rather than its lyrics and music. Although, nowadays, their music has been largely influenced by western music, its original dramatization of the music was an influence of Kabuki theatre.
Although similarities can be drawn between several bands, its music style includes varieties of widely different genres such as pop, classical, rap, heavy metal, power metal, and electronic. Visual Kei is also known as VK, Visual Rock, or J-Rock, meaning all Japanese rock music.