Japanese homegrown reggae icons U-Dou & Platy.

“Japanese Reggae?” So posed a headline in the New York Times Style Magazine online last week when it ran Jonathan L. Fischer’s post on the subject. In it, Fischer suggests that Japanese Reggae has evolved from its imported roots and turned into something nihonjin can claim as their own.

I’m not terribly versed in reggae (Japanese or otherwise) so I did a little digging on one of the bands mentioned in Fischer’s piece. Called U-Dou & Platy, one of Fischer’s sources suggests they may represent the current state of Japanese reggae. Give ’em a listen below. I did and they’re not half bad.