Half Japanese is a seminal punk rock band formed by brothers Jad and David Fair in their Uniontown, Maryland bedroom around 1975 - 1977 along with Mark Jickling and brothers Ricky and John Dreyfuss. Like The Shaggs, the Fair brothers were self-taught and thoroughly unconventional musicians; their early raw, unvarnished sound careened between naïvely amateurish-sounding noodling, primitivism and avant-garde experimentation. Jad is best-known for pretending to play the guitar; after thirty years, he still does not play in any traditional manner, and in the documentary Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King the group's guitarist at the time remarked that Jad only knows "one or two" chords.

Their quirky song lyrics often deal with monsters and the supernatural (especially as influenced by campy "creature feature" and scifi movies), in addition to more conventional themes, such as the visceral thrills of crushes and infatuations. They have stated that all their songs are either "love songs or monster songs."

David Fair's involvement with the group diminished over time, with David ultimately quitting the band to focus on his family and marriage.

The line-up stabilized when guitarist/multi-instrumentalist John Sluggett (also a longtime member of Moe Tucker's band), joined in 1988, followed by fellow multi-instrumental musician Jason Willett, in 1990. Willett also given the task of recruiting the rest of the group's new lineup, which included drummer Gilles Reider.

Since then the group has worked with Moe Tucker from the Velvet Underground, who produced Fire In the Sky (1993), as well as Don Fleming, Fred Frith, and John Zorn, among others.

Fans of Half Japanese include Penn Jillette, who helped the band release some of their albums on his label, 50 Skidillion Watts, and Kurt Cobain, who had them open for Nirvana on the group's 1993 tour. According to reports, Cobain was wearing a Half Japanese t-shirt when he died http://www.thesmokinggun.com/kurt/kcincident4.html.

The band's history and influence are chronicled in the 1993 documentary Half Japanese: The Band That Would Be King by Jeff Feuerzeig.