Cities

Where the scene comes from

Tokyo dominates every lineage, but the map's most consequential single edges are regional. Loudness is Osaka. The girls metal boom's commercial trigger is Osaka and its personnel root is Tokyo. Thrash starts in Nagoya. Black and thrash metal is one family in Kuwana. The Sapporo line runs from Saber Tiger through EZO into Loudness and now through Ryujin onto Napalm Records. Fukuoka is the current export city on both sides of the map, with Bridear and Paledusk. The counts below are bands on this map, not the size of each local scene.

Figure 4. Bands on the map by city. Outer ring scales with all bands formed in or based in the city; inner disc with the female led bands among them. Ten hub cities only; bands from Hakodate, Sendai, Kanazawa, Kochi, Kagoshima, Matsue, Fukui, Gunma and Ibaraki are pinned individually on the interactive map and are not counted here.

Counting rule. Bands counts only nodes of kind band (people and institutions are excluded). A band is assigned to one hub region, recorded in the Hub region column of the Nodes sheet, from its place of formation or stated home base: Tokyo includes Hachioji, Kichijoji, Meguro, Shinjuku, Saitama and Kawagoe; Kanagawa includes Yokohama, Kawasaki, Yokosuka, Hayama and Hadano; Chiba includes Funabashi, Tateyama and Makuhari; Osaka includes Kobe; Fukuoka is the city. Defunct bands are counted. Female led counts the all female, female fronted and co led bands together. International projects such as Amahiru and acts whose city is not recorded are excluded from every city count. The same rule is applied by formula on the Cities sheet of the workbook.

Figure 3. The Loudness family. Three feeder bands from three cities, and the Loudness credits that reach into the women's scene, the anime metal crossover and the neoclassical scene. Reading the figure: arrows are personnel or production edges labeled with the person and year. Sources [W].

City	Bands	Female led	What it produced
1. Tokyo	112	46	The center of gravity for every era: Kanto trad metal (Anthem, Show-Ya), the Extasy and Free-Will visual kei duopoly, the thrash and death underground, the entire girls metal boom from Destrose onward, and Babymetal's Amuse backed production and export operation.
2. Osaka	27	9	The Kansai engine: Lazy and Loudness, Earthshaker, 44 Magnum, Marino, Terra Rosa, Aion, Gargoyle, then Galneryus, Crossfaith, Onmyo-za, Blood Stain Child, and the birthplace of Aldious, the band that started the girls metal boom.
3. Kanagawa (Yokohama, Kawasaki)	8	0	Luna Sea, Zi:Kill, Saver Tiger (hide), Mad Capsule Markets, SiM, Systematic Death, and the venue Club Citta in Kawasaki.
4. Nagoya	8	0	Thrash and hardcore stronghold (Outrage, Crowley, Sniper, Unholy Grave, Eternal Elysium) that later produced coldrain, lynch. and Deathgaze.
5. Fukuoka	3	2	The current export city: Bridear, Paledusk and Asterism all come from Fukuoka, the scene's main non-Tokyo breakout source in the 2020s.
6. Sapporo	6	0	Hokkaido lineage: Saber Tiger, Flatbacker and EZO (which fed Loudness), Slang in hardcore, and Gyze which became Ryujin.
7. Chiba	3	0	X was founded in Tateyama; Casbah in Funabashi; Makuhari Messe hosts Loud Park, Knotfest Japan and Download Japan.
8. Kyoto	2	0	Rajas, D'erlanger and Rottengraffty; La:Sadie's members and Kyo of Dir en grey are Kyoto born.
9. Kuwana (Mie)	2	0	A single family: Gezol's Sabbat, Evil Records and Metalucifer, the root of Japanese black and thrash metal.
10. Hirosaki (Aomori)	1	0	Ningen Isu, the doom band that went viral worldwide in 2019 from Japan's far north.

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