In Japanese, the term Karaoke means, literally, 'empty orchestra'. One definition disparagingly describes it as the 'social sensation from Japan where sufficiently inebriated people embarrass themselves in public by singing along to a music track with the lyrics displayed on a tv screen...'. In recent years, the world has been witnessing a massive worldwide Karaoke explosion. In "Karaoke", Zhou Xun and Francesca Tarocco address the complexity of this social craze, exploring its emergence in post-war Japan, its development and spread from South East Asia to the West to become a global phenomenon of modern times. Personal accounts of the Karaoke experience form an important part of this book. The authors are from very different cultural backgrounds and have travelled extensively around the world researching and experiencing first-hand the spread of the Karaoke phenomenon. The world of Karaoke is one of kitsch, crime and weirdness - the authors show how Karaoke can mean dramatically different things to different people. The full colour illustrations in the book reveal the escapist fantasy world of Karaoke bars, exploring the role of Karaoke in prostitution in South East Asia, and all its crazy manifestations, such as Karaoke taxis in Bangkok, and nude Karaoke in Toronto.

Zhou Xun is Reader in Modern History at the University of Essex. She has published widely on health, nutrition and ethnicity, and her latest book is The People’s Health: Health Intervention and Delivery in Mao’s China, 1949-1983 (2020). She is also co-editor of Smoke: A Global History of Smoking (Reaktion, 2004).

Francesca Tarocco is a lecturer in Buddhist Studies at the University of Manchester.