Years ago, my husband and I were describing radio stations and how they work to our eight-year-old son. Being a digital native, he had a hard time wrapping his head around the inability to skip songs or listen to anything he wished, as many times as he wanted.

During the lesson in the old-timey days, we started playing music we’d grown up with. Inevitably, Turning Japanese by The Vapors popped up on the playlist. In natural 80s-child fashion, we began singing along and dancing around the kitchen, then came the bridge.

I sang one thing, and my husband sang another. We stopped immediately and began bickering over who was correct. Was it his ‘Psycho Ranger’ or my ‘Cyclone Ranger’?

What we thought would be a quick internet search for a misheard lyric turned to a rabbit hole to a song analysis, which dipped its toe in the pool of casual racism.

Let’s inspect Turning Japanese by The Vapors.

The Misheard Lyric

In 1980, The Vapors released their second single, Turning Japanese, from their album New Clear Days. They felt they had a hit on their hands, and they were right. Radio stations ate it up. It hit the top ten in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. In the US, it hit the top-40.

Upon the album’s LP release, Psyched Lone Ranger appeared on the lyric sheet. However, other releases showed the lyric to be Cyclone Ranger, referencing the 1935 film of the same name about cattle rustlers who go straight, but their reputations precede them.

Astute viewers will note that neither of the “official” lyrics is what my husband and I were singing. However, we still find ourselves in a quandary. Two original sources for two different lyrics. So, damnit! What ‌the hell is the band singing?

In a tweet from May 2020, someone asked The Vapor’s official Twitter account, “What’s a cyclone ranger?” To which The Vapors responded, “No idea. We prefer Psyched Lone Ranger, which is the actual lyric.”

Ah, success. Wait. What the hell is a Psyched Lone Ranger? Answers beget more questions. Damn you, Internet!

The Song Analysis

Let’s set the nonsense lyrics aside for the moment and see if the broader context of the song will give us some clues as to the meaning of Psyched Lone Ranger.

Being from the US, I had heard that Turning Japanese referred to a British euphemism for masturbation because our eyes get all squinty at the point of climax. Yeah, it’s problematic.

However, that definition is a US invention. The phrase “Turning Japanese” is not British slang for rubbing one out, nor does it have anything to do with the song’s meaning.

Let’s look at the song’s opening lyrics: 

I’ve got your picture
Of me and you
You wrote, “I love you.”
I wrote, “Me too.”

Both the narrator and the person pictured in the image have written professions of their feelings to each other: You wrote, “I love you” / I wrote, “Me too.”

Another reading of the song is of a stalker pursuing their ex. The stalker’s interpretation hinges on the second verse:

I've got your picture, I've got your picture
I'd like a million of you, all 'round my cell
I want a doctor to take a picture
So I can see you from inside as well

‘Cell’ is an interesting word choice. Some interpretations take ‘cell’ to mean a prison cell, which would explain the narrator’s separation from the person in the photo, and reinforces the stalking angle. ‘Cell’ could also refer to a padded cell in a mental institution.

However, if this song hadn’t been released in 1980, the stalking angle would hold more weight. Any of us who have lived through the 80s knows stalking wasn’t considered a crime back then, unless you lived in Scotland, where anti-harassment laws were written as part of Scottish common law under Breach of the Peace.

In the UK, anti-stalking laws didn’t appear on the books until 1997 with the Protection from Harassment Act. However, the UK had laws against telephone and postal harassment with the Telecommunications Act of 1984 and the Malicious Communication Act of 1988.

The US got the drop on the UK when in 1991, California passed an Anti-Stalking Law after actor Rebecca Schafer was shot to death on her doorstep by a crazed fan who had harassed her for months. Sadly, the California law focused more on protecting celebrities than on the average Joe.

A different interpretation of the word cell is a monk’s bedroom, which is strictly utilitarian for sleeping, praying, and self-imposed isolation, unlike a prison or a padded cell. Wherever the narrator is, he’s not having any fun.

No sex, no drugs, no wine, no women
No fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it's dark

The narrator has gone from a partying, sex-crazed, womanizing, sin-lover to involuntary celibate. This feels like the perfect time for an incel joke…Hm…anyway, moving on.

The tone of the song shifts from the first verse to the second. The photo is not enough. The narrator wants more. He wants to see their insides as well. While the reference to an X-ray is benign, it gives the feeling that it’s only the beginning of his obsession. Staring at this picture instead of moving on is turning his world upside down. Contrary to the upbeat music, here is a guy on the precipice of doing something drastic to the person in the photo, the person who has dumped him.

So, what exactly is a psyched lone ranger?

Everyone around me is a total stranger
Everyone avoids me like a psyched Lone Ranger, everyone.

Psyched has a range of meanings, from mentally prepared to intimidate to enthusiastic. A psyched lone ranger can be someone mentally ready for something or prepared to frighten the competition. Coupled with the addition of “avoids,” we see an image of an angry loner who no one wants to be around. His grief sets him apart from his friends and family, and he doesn’t recognize anyone around him. He is a stranger in his own land.

We’ve all been there—dumped and heartbroken, talking nonstop about our ex, crying into our beer. Heartbroken people can be insufferable, but a broken-hearted person on the edge of insanity would be like an amped-up vigilante in a mask, with a derogatorily named sidekick.

I think I’m turning Japanese—The (Racist?) Hook 

David Fenton, The Vapor’s lead singer, wrote in 2021 for Songwriting Magazine about how he penned Turning Japanese. Based on his own suffering love life, Fenton had written most of the song, including the melody, but hadn’t settled on a hook yet. Then one evening, as he fell asleep, the phrase, ‘I’m turning Japanese,’ popped into his head. He wrote it down and presented it to the band the following day.

According to Fenton, the phrase Turning Japanese could have been anything; Turning Cantonese, Portuguese, Beninese, Lebanese. Fenton attempted to create a metaphor that encapsulated how heartbreak and teen angst can make one feel like a foreigner in their own skin. Sometimes we feel like we’re turning into something unexpected. The unexpected transformation they went with was Japanese, which, I suppose, to a bunch of British kids might have seemed as far from the UK as one could get.

If you read through the lyrics, the chorus is the only place that mentions Japanese. The song isn’t about anything remotely Asian. There isn’t much to support the claim that the song is racially motivated and derogatory toward Asian cultures or peoples. It’s just a terrible metaphor. 

The Riff

The song begins with a musical expression called the Oriental riff. This quintessential riff alerts Westerners that something Asian is about to happen. A gong usually accompanies it, and when you hear it, you can assume something racist is coming.

The Oriental riff was written for the 1847 stage show, The Grand Chinese Spectacle of Aladdin.

The riff is constructed from the pentatonic scale, used heavily in traditional Asian music, and sounds Asian to the casual Western listener, but it is an American invention. Thomas Comer most likely composed the phrase for the Aladdin Quickstep. The original musical expression comprised just the first four notes of what we recognize today. After the first four, the tune could go wherever the composer fancied. Those first four notes built the foundation for the Oriental riff.

But it wasn’t until the 1880s that the Oriental riff took hold. The pentatonic scale swept through Western music as the blues rose in popularity. Racial tensions surrounding Asians in America reached a boiling point, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended Chinese immigration for ten years.

Two years after the US passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, California Representative Thomas J. Geary proposed the Geary Act, which extended the Chinese Exclusion Act by an additional decade. Not the best legacy.

By the 1920s, the Oriental riff became what we recognize today and has been used in iconic songs like Kung Fu Fighting by Carl Douglas, China Girl by David Bowie, and A Passage to Bangkok by Rush, just to name a few. It’s also appeared in a host of movies and cartoons, almost all of which are better off forgotten. There was even a parody response to The Vapors called Turning Hakujin by Steve Dahl and Teenage Radiation. More recently, Asian artists have re-appropriated the Oriental riff, and it appears in the Super Mario Land video game soundtrack, composed by Japanese musician Hirokazu Tanaka.

The Take Away

Turning Japanese is a catchy 80s pop song that rocketed The Vapors to one-hit-wonder fame. Contrary to popular belief, Turning Japanese is a break-up song about a guy who’s slowly going insane over the loss of his relationship. The chorus, which befuddled audiences worldwide, scrambled to give meaning to the nonsense lyrics.

American audiences started the rumor that Turning Japanese meant masturbating and looking Asian while climaxing. This mildly racist idea was most likely fueled by the use of a musical expression, the Oriental riff, which has historically been used in a racist fashion.

Sources

“Actress’s Murder Led to Tougher Anti-Stalking Laws: The killing 25 years ago of actress-model Rebecca Schaeffer has given stars greater protection from obsessed fans” (2014). The Hollywood Reporter, https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/actress-murder-led-tougher-anti-718274/.

“Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882,” (2021). History.com. Retrieved July 4, 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/chinese-exclusion-act-1882.

Chow, Kate, (2014). “How the ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ Melody Came to Represent Asia.” NPR. Retrieved July 1, 2021, from https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/08/28/338622840/how-the-kung-fu-fighting-melody-came-to-represent-asia

“The Cyclone Ranger,” (1935). IMDB. Retrieved on July 4, 2021, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026253/

“Dadadada-da-da-dun-dun-daa!: The Asian Riff”. Adoption.com: China Adoption blog. February 19, 2007. Archived from the original on July 13, 2012. Retrieved June 28, 2021.

Favorite melodies from the grand Chinese spectacle of Aladdin (1847). Historic New England. Retrieved June 24, 2021, from https://www.historicnewengland.org/explore/collections-access/capobject/?refd=EP001.10.TMP.062

Peter, (2019). “The origin of the “Oriental Riff,” The Aladdin Quick Step. Inside the Musical Mind. Retrieved July 18, 2024, from https://web.archive.org/web/20210727053225/https://insidemusicalmind.com/2019/05/12/the-origin-of-the-oriental-riff-the-aladdin-quick-step/

Thomas Comer. “The Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection.” John Hopkins Sheridan Libraries and University Museums. Retrieved June 24, 2021, from https://levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu/people/thomas-comer