Eleki

Eleki is the Japanese instrumental rock style — named for the electric guitar — that swept Japan in the first half of the 1960s, when *The Ventures*' tours triggered a national guitar boom. Native groups led by *Takeshi Terauchi* and his *Blue Jeans*, and by *Yūzō Kayama* with *The Launchers*, answered the American surf and beat sound with reverb-drenched lead guitar played at virtuoso speed, increasingly applied to Japanese material: folk melodies, enka tunes and film themes recast as eleki bushi. At its peak the boom sold guitars by the hundred thousand and filled stadiums; it was Japan's first mass youth music and the foundation of its rock industry.