#interestingly in anime scoring irish music has retained its gendered style divisions (reels for men airs and ballads for women)

[supercantaloupe]

music in fantasy anime especially tends to have a lot of influences from irish (traditional and celtic rock) music in it (for example in fairy tail, seven deadly sins, and hxh) (in some cases it's just straight up irish song with japanese lyrics instead of irish/english). this is bc irish music has a surprisingly long history in japan going back to the meiji restoration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the japanese govt was creating its national school system, with curriculums influenced by western (esp angloamerican) schooling and the western professors they invited to help structure the new japanese national schooling. they imported hundreds of books of american and angloceltic songs, and frequently gave them japanese lyrics (either translated or just entirely new), and used those as the basis of national music education in japan (these japanese irish/english folk songs becoming the "shōka" genre in japan). specifically shōka music was cultivated because of its ability/goal to promote national unity, both through teaching the same songs nationwide but also because the themes (lyrically and musically) of shōka songs appeal to an idyllic, nostalgic, agrarian past (whether real or imaginary). shōka then had a strong influence on the development of japan's own "classical" and popular (enka) music tradition (esp modifying western scales to be more pentatonic). shōka waned from the school curriculums around the 1960s so now even moreso than before it has a "nostalgic" quality to it in japanese music/media culture. hence its widespread application in the fantasy genre of anime, which is distinguished from more futuristic genres like mecha and sci-fi by its grounding in nature, agrarian society, and the mythologized past.

and that's why your average fighter boy protag in a fantasy anime's theme is a celtic rock reel

"what's musicology grad school like" we watched anime clips in class today