Ambient music in Japan is described as kankyō ongaku, which translates to «environmental music». This term not only refers to the environment i.e. nature as a source of inspiration (or musical material itself), but also marks a shift of paradigm in the contextualization of music. It emphasizes that the space in which sound is listened to is an essential component of music. Compositions in the realm of this genre were made to supplement the environment, to enhance its natural (man-made or not) surroundings. During the 1980s and 1990s, Japan was experiencing a period of great economic prosperity. This led to a vast expansion of the urban environment, and ambient music was viewed as sonic retreat from the vigorous pace of city life and meritocracy.

How music relates its environment today has fundamentally change since is infancy, in that the spaces itself have changed. How ambient music is socially connected to the ambient environment has shifted. Most noticeably with the rising importance of the internet. The digital space has not only become vital for listening and distributing music, but also for the constitution of self: space in the ambient today is deeply personal. Furthermore, the impact on the aesthetics of music imposed by the virtual world cannot be underestimated. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital tools of communication became as important as ever. The whole world was confined at home and people were forced to engage with their own surroundings. This led to a worldwide rediscovery of Japanese Ambient music. Not only the original practitioners of kankyō ongaku, who actually did not draw a lot of attention when they started releasing music in the 1980s, finally received international recognition, but a wave of contemporary artists found solace in the creation of ambient style music and set out to modulate this rich cultural heritage into something new. This culture has since developed into a sprawling scene in Japan, which is taking the world by storm. The contemporary artists transcended the historic notions of ambient music into something new, and exactly these current developments are what I am interested to explore. These developments will be relevant to music internationally, that is why I want to deepen the dialogue between Switzerland and Japan now.