Out of sheer boredom one night I decided to scour the internet for ヴィジュアル系用語 (visual kei terminology). Having been to a few concerts in Japan, I understood many of the concepts but not the names of certain things, and even just doing some quick translations I realized I actually knew very little about the concert-going subculture of the visual scene. Since more and more overseas fans are finding their way to Japan to see their favorite bands live, I thought it would be helpful for people to be able to look up and learn the terms, too.
One thing that overseas fans need to understand about visual concerts in Japan is that they are, generally speaking, very structured and the rules about participating are rather rigid. There is a checklist of things you are expected to do before, during, and after a concert, so along with just translating terms I will also try to explain their actual usage to the best of my ability. All words are listed by their romanization and have the Japanese underneath. Someday I would love to have illustrations or even video demostrating what certains thing are.
Please note that I do not fully understand what certain subgenres are or what bands fall under which categories. The explanations of the various "kei" are simply translations of information that I have found online. Feel free to correct any mistakes you find!
A little about myself. My name is Karen and I was born in 1986 (so I don't have to update this page every year). My first experience in Japan was a summer study abroad my freshman year of college. At the end of that six week trip I went to my first visual concert, "Like an Edison presents..." at Shibuya O-East. It was an extremely overwhelming experience and due to my lack of knowledge of not only the language, but how things were done in Japan, it was not as enjoyable an experience as I originally thought it would be. Yet another reason why I hope to steer people away from the same fate! Two years later I studied abroad in Tokyo my junior year, and went to about 30 concerts, all indies (so my knowledge of major bands and concerts is very limited). I learned much of the concert etiquette by experience but since I rarely ever talked to the Japanese fans I never actually knew what to call most things. Now I do, haha.
Please view the SPECIAL link above for some other important explanations about the visual scene.
Special thanks to Lisa for hosting this site! And for giving me the idea and the name. I also want to thank all of my awesome friends on LJ for helping me fix errors and giving me words that weren't already included!