Ummm not really... I believe there are many people who are fans of only 'j-music' mainly because of the language...
Well, that depends of people, because I totally hate hate HATE Portuguese, not the people, just the language, and I've heard a couple of Portuguese bands that sound neat, I like their music, but the language-- I prefer to avoid it. Saying that a band is more of less just because of it's nationality or language, if you ask me, is imbecile.
Pan and Blues, wow... you guys really rock. I actually never knew that story about J-Wave, I had always assumed that the "J-" prefix was something that got stuck on by overseas fans. You guys seriously need to publish an article on all this, not just in English but also in... hell, every other language you can. 
People need to know this shit!
About "visual" vs. "visual kei", I first found out about Japanese rock (including visual) in about 1996 or so, and at the time the English-language internet fan community was calling it "visual rock" or sometimes "visual shock". Or just "visual", yeah. I wish I could remember the first time I saw the term "visual kei", but I can't remember really. All I remember for sure is that it wasn't until years later-- I'd estimate around 1999-2000 or so, I suppose.
The rumor I've heard is that Mana from Malice Mizer claims he "invented visual kei" (ha... :roll:)-- I've never seen the supposed interview so I have no clue if that's true or not, but you guys might want to do some research in that direction. It seems possible he had something to do with the invention of the term "visual kei" anyway, the timing would be about right (considering there would have been, at the time, some delay between when the term came into use in Japan and when it became popular among English-speakers).
Well, that article Blues talked about, I wrote it for the first time about 4 years ago with the help of the friend I told you, and since then we've never stopped researching about the topic, interesting thing you always find more and more.
We have already covered the Mana part, and indeed, there's a notable difference between Visual and Visual Kei, and yes, Mana was the one who named this neo Visual as Visual Kei, let me explain.
In Japan, Visual started on middle 70's by copying Black Sabbath's looks and Glam attitude and clothing, bands like Murbas and Visual Scandal were the first ones to do this, because they wanted to attract more people to their lives, wanted to be noticed, so they transformed those looks into what turned to be Visual, something to impress the audience and that had some kind of relation with their music style. Why make up? to avoid people calling them "copy cat". Visual was just a nickname they used to be identified by their looks.
Later, Seikima II joined, but they were into another level because they were a little bit more traditional, y'know that KISS make up came from Japanese theater Kabuki, when only men can perform, so they use make up to cover up as women and show expressions. But they used armors, this was a common thread on Visual back then, which X also copied, and so did a bunch of other bands like SAVER TIGER and Urgh Police!!.
X were the ones who made Visual go mainstream though, they were the first band of that circle to ever made it to TV Stations, but that DOES NOT makes them what ignorant people call them "fathers of Visual/Visual Kei".
This Visual thing was a huge boom, but everything that goes up gotta fall someday, so when X decided to quit this Visual style (say 94), most of the bands in it did it as well, they were already known and the style wasn't that popular anymore. That's when Mana comes, at that time he had MALICE MIZER with Tetsu, they dressed like Visual, but when Gackt came Mana decided he couldn't let that style die, and that's when he transformed the concept of Visual and gave it the name of Visual Kei in magazines, because that's how MALICE MIZER wanted to be called about their looks. He mixed barroque looks with French maids of XV Century, also known as Lolita, but he twisted all those pop cultures and meanings to his own way (this was also the birth of his clothing store, Moi-même-Moitié). At the end Visual Kei was an aesthetic movement that complemented music; if they were singing about death, at their concerts they had this huge scenario of a gothic church and clothing that made easy to tell that story by their music.
LAREINE also followed MALICE MIZER path, but there weren't much bands that respected VK main point, nowdays being VK means to wear weird clothing and some make up, but most of them don't represent anything by it, but well, you can't avoid it, clothing brands like h.Naoto and SeX PoT ReVenGe have bought bands entirely, what else can they do?
...wow that was long XD lol, but yeah, the "J-" thing article and the Visual/VK one are the ones we're been working on for years.
Sorry for making the post this long and thanks to anyone who read it.
