Kawasaki, hip hop city: Urban culture as city planning in Japan

This paper examines Kawasaki City's innovative cultural policy development, which strategically integrates hip hop culture into city-building initiatives. Long recognized as an industrial hub, over the last decade Kawasaki has reimagined its urban identity through youth culture and creative expression, positioning hip hop as a key driver for cultural regeneration and social cohesion. By supporting local hip hop practitioners, such as dancers, musicians, and visual artists, Kawasaki has fostered a dynamic creative ecosystem that supports arts on the periphery, linking the city’s history of progressive politics to hip hop’s iconically urban and forward-looking swagger. This article highlights key initiatives, including the International Street Festival Kawasaki and the Kawasaki Mural Art Project (KMAP), which reflect the city’s commitment to cultural inclusivity. Through the critical analysis of policy frameworks alongside first hand and archival interviews with practitioners and government officials, this study highlights how Kawasaki City incorporates hip hop’s traditional four artistic elements—breaking, rapping, deejaying, and graffiti writing—into its urban planning in ways that satisfy hip hop community-centred goals. As part of the ERC CIPHER project’s study of global hip hop knowledge flows, we argue that Kawasaki’s model of incorporating hip hop into city-building processes is a transferable one, offering valuable insights into how cultural policies can achieve social inclusion, foster creative economies, and contribute to progressive civic engagement.