Visual kei (Japanese: ヴィジュアル系 or ビジュアル系, Hepburn: Vijuaru kei or Bijuaru kei; lit. "Visual Style"), abbreviated v-kei (V系, bui kei), is a subculture and category of Japanese musicians that have a strong focus on extravagant stage costumes that originated in Japan during the early 1980s. Koji Dejima of Bounce wrote that visual kei is not a specific sound, but rather it "revolves around the creation of a band's unique worldview and/or stylistic beauty through visual expressions in the form of makeup and fashion". While visual kei acts can be of any music genre, it originated with bands influenced by glam rock, heavy metal, punk rock and gothic rock.

Visual kei was pioneered by groups such as X Japan, Dead End, Buck-Tick, D'erlanger, and Color, and gained further notoriety in the 1990s through the success of groups like Luna Sea, Glay, L'Arc-en-Ciel, and Malice Mizer. The movement's success continued through the 2000s with Gackt and more musically broad bands such as Dir En Grey, the Gazette, Alice Nine, and Versailles, a period which some critics term "neo-visual kei" (ネオ・ヴィジュアル系). Many acts tone-down their appearance upon achieving mainstream success, calling into question whether they are still to be considered visual kei.

The term "visual kei" was derived from one of X Japan's slogans, "Psychedelic Violence Crime of Visual Shock", seen on the cover of their second studio album Blue Blood (1989). This derivation is credited as being coined by Seiichi Hoshiko, the founding editor of Shoxx magazine, which was founded in 1990 as the first publication devoted to the subject.

However, he explained in a 2018 interview with JRock News that visual kei was technically coined, or at least inspired by, X Japan's lead guitarist Hide. Hoshiko also said that at the time they were called 'Okeshou Kei' (お化粧系, Okeshō Kei; "Makeup Style"), "but it simply felt... too cheap... Even though X Japan was a big band and people used the term 'Okeshou kei' to describe them, the term was still lacking substance, I didn't like the term at all! Because of this, I tried to remind all the writers to not use this term as 'They are not okeshou kei, they are visual-shock kei'.

From there, it went from 'Visual-shock kei' to 'Visual-kei' to 'V-kei'. After we spread the word, fans naturally abbreviated it to 'V-kei'. The Japanese love to abbreviate everything as a matter of fact." Hoshiko considers visual kei a distinctive Japanese music genre and defined it "as the music itself along with all the visual aspects of it."

Visual kei emerged in the 1980s Japanese underground music scene, pioneered by bands such as X Japan, Dead End, Buck-Tick, D'erlanger, and Color. Music journalist Taiyo Sawada noted the musical diversity of the scene's early acts; some had strong metal influence, some were influenced by 1980s goth and new wave, while others evolved from hardcore punk. Japanese pop culture website Real Sound wrote that similarities between the appearances and behavior of the founders of visual kei and members of the yankī delinquent subculture are often noted. The movement designated a new form of Japanese rock music influenced by Western hard rock and glam metal acts like Kiss, Hanoi Rocks, Mötley Crüe and Twisted Sister. In The George Mason Review, Megan Pfeifle described the movement as being roughly divided into two generations, with the first in three transitional eras, of which the first era lasted just over a decade.

In the late 1980s and until the mid-1990s, visual kei received increasing popularity throughout Japan, when album sales from such bands started to reach record numbers. The first band with recordings that achieved notable success was Dead End, whose independent album Dead Line (1986) sold over 20,000 copies, and whose major label debut album Ghost of Romance (1987) released by Victor Entertainment reached No. 14 on the Oricon Albums Chart. That same year, Buck-Tick released their major debut Sexual XXXXX! through the same record label. Dead End even had albums Ghost of Romance and Shámbara (1988) released by American label Metal Blade Records, with radio station and MTV exposure in the United States. In 1990, D'erlanger's major debut album Basilisk reached No. 5 on the Oricon chart, but they and Dead End both disbanded that same year.

In 1988 and 1989, Buck-Tick and X Japan started to gain mainstream success that continues to present-day. Buck Tick's single "Just One More Kiss" entered No. 6 and "Aku no Hana" is first visual kei No. 1 single on the Oricon Singles Chart, while their studio albums Seventh Heaven (1988) and Taboo (1989) charted at No. 3 and 1 respectively and were the first Japanese rock band to hold a concert at the Tokyo Dome. They continued to have success, with nearly all of their subsequent albums topping the charts until 1995 and later reaching the top ten on the charts. X Japan's first album, the independently released Vanishing Vision, reached No. 19 in 1988, making them the first indie band to appear on the main Oricon Albums Chart. Their second and major debut album Blue Blood (1989) reached number 6 and has since sold 712,000 copies. Their third and best-selling album Jealousy was released in 1991, topped the charts and sold over 1 million copies. They went on to release two more number one studio albums, Art of Life (1993) and Dahlia (1996). In 1992, X Japan tried to launch an attempt to enter the American market, even signing with Atlantic Records for a US album, but this ultimately did not happen.