There is much extant scholarship on the presence of jazz in Japan and its subsequent growth. However, little has been said about stylistic shifts within jazz subgenres as performed by Japanese artists, particularly in jazz fusion from the 1970s and 1980s.

Though fusion in the US is generally defined as a combination of rock and jazz styles, there is evidence that fusion in Japan borrows more from its popular music (namely, the "city pop" genre of the 70s and 80s) than it does from rock. Instrumentation choices in US and Japanese jazz fusion, for instance, have striking deviations, and there is a marked difference in the stylistic usage of guitar in the two countries, likely resulting from variances in the blending of genre. Japanese jazz fusion also has a number of distinct harmonic trends, including a tendency towards tonic substitutions (iii and vi instead of I), downwards chromatic motion (bVI-V-i), and the use of minor v.

Through an examination of these alongside other stylistic trends in Japanese jazz fusion in the 1970s and 1980s, this research aims to address a gap in jazz studies by providing some concrete analytical frameworks for understanding the regional style beyond its historical context, and move towards a more empirical characterization of some of its distinctive features.