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Rocking the Mike

From Japan to Australia, more and more karaoke fans are doing it their way

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In the busy Umeda district of Osaka, Japan, about a dozen friends have piled into a room at Super Jankara Karaoke Palace, a club featuring rooms rented by the hour. A young man named Mr Bito is rocking the mike. Not singing, exactly – it’s more as if he’s calling his dog with the lyrics of Chicago’s "Hard to Say I’m Sorry".

Mr Bito may not be the worst singer of all time, but he would definitely make the finals. Some of his friends cover their ears; another types out an English phrase on his mobile phone: "Tone deaf".

The pain, the pleasure, the posing, the disturbing realisation that you don’t sound like ABBA once the shower is turned off – that’s karaoke. For good or ill, it has democratised the experience of singing to a crowd.

Although it is derided as kitsch, karaoke is big business. In Japan alone, annual revenue from karaoke clubs is more than $6.9 billion.

Unbeknown to the cheerful song murderers at Jankara, the man who invented karaoke is only a couple of subway rides away. His name is Daisuke Inoue.

That someone "invented" karaoke comes as a shock to most. It’s like finding out that someone invented bad hair. Nonetheless, here is Inoue, relaxing in his suburban Osaka office, a quiet, round-faced man with a neat grey beard and wire-frame glasses, wearing a brown corduroy jacket and a shy smile. Inoue displays a modest, self-effacing demeanour, seemingly at odds with his past career as a nightclub performer. But it is fitting for a man who has helped so many wallflowers shine. He is surrounded by proof of his contribution to human history: trophies, citations and a modest little wooden box – the very first karaoke machine.

In 1967, 27-year-old Inoue was a struggling nightclub musician in the city of Kobe. A drummer and percussionist, he had taught himself a simple three-finger keyboard style so that he could accompany nightclub patrons who paid for the chance to belt out a tune.

One day in 1969, a business leader asked Inoue to accompany him on a trip so he could sing. Inoue had another idea. He made an eight-track cassette tape of the CEO’s favourite tune, "Leaving Haneda 7.50" by Frank Nagai. The CEO was thrilled. Inoue glimpsed an opportunity. "I thought maybe I can make some money off this," he recalls.

The little box Inoue built in 1969 was officially named 8-Juke. Privately, he called it karaoke, or "empty orchestra" – the Japanese music industry term for backing tapes used by singers who performed without a band.

Unfortunately, Inoue didn’t call a patent lawyer. "It was made from an eight-track tape player, a miniature guitar amplifier and a coin box," he explains. "I did not invent any of those things. I only put them together. So at the time my feeling was, I did not really invent anything."

Inoue’s loss was the industry’s gain. Freed from the necessity of paying royalties, others began making karaoke machines. By the 1980s, bars and clubs all over Japan offered karaoke to any lubricated customer with an urge to warble "My Way".