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It’s PuffyAmiYumi’s World — We’re Just Living in It.

Hip-hop producer/artist Sean Combs isn’t the only Puffy in the music world. In fact, on the surface, Japan’s PuffyAmiYumi appears to be Combs’ polar opposite — an anti-Puffy of sorts.

In contrast to the Court TV ghetto superstar, PuffyAmiYumi are a cute, self-described “unit” — from their identical, trend-starting, bleached-auburn hair to the very name of their group, which merges the Tokyo duo’s names, Yumi Yoshimura and Ami Onuki, into one. And their music couldn’t be any more different: PuffyAmiYumi mixes ’60s power pop with whimsical tin-pan-alley melodicism, supercharged guitars and glittery flashes of disco and jazz.

But talk to Yoshimura and Onuki on the phone, as I did last week, and you will probably discover that the two Puffies have more in common than you’d suspect. Like the stateside Puffster, PuffyAmiYumi have been very successful — so much so that the winsome twosome sounded a little jaded and whiney after answering a slew of taxing questions from yet another tiresome rock journalist. Words such as “boring” cropped up often.

Yumi Yoshimura and Ami Onuki of PuffyAmiYumi. Photo courtesy of PuffyAmiYumi.

“I don’t know what the reason is for our success,” griped Onuki via a translator. “I wish I knew, and in a way, if we actually knew the reason for our success, it would be kind of boring because there would be no creativity.”

Then again, who wouldn’t be bored? After all, Japan is PuffyAmiYumi’s playground. After five albums, including a record of remixes by notables such as Konishi of Pizzicato Five and Malcolm McLaren, the duo is one of the most popular acts in Japan, as well as in other parts of Asia. In the past five years, they’ve sold more than 14 million discs. From their million-plus-selling single, “Asia No Junshin” to their own regular variety show, these pop babes have built something of a media empire on cuteness, Sex Pistols riffs, Saturday Night Fever grooves, and a shopaholic’s sense of style. And don’t even go into the TV commercials, print ads, footwear, fashions, posters, toys and dolls.

What’s next? The United States, of course.

“Spike” is the J-pop twosome’s first U.S. release, via Sony Music, and the first to include English lyrics amid the Abbalike psych-pop (“Dec.”), Ramones-y raveups (“Destruction Pancake”), Beach Boys-inspired surf (“Su-I Su-I”) and ’70s-era space-disco (“Cosmic Wonder”). The album’s producers include past collaborators such as songwriter Okuda Tamio and former Jellyfish member Andy Sturmer, who also named the duo in the grand tradition of producer-controlled pop acts.

The duo’s beginnings also fit the mold of other Svengali scenarios — by all appearances, they seem to have popped out fully formed from an incredible, inevitable, plastic pop machine. About six years ago, Tokyo resident Onuki and Osaka native Yoshimura met after a series of auditions at an artist management office. Tamio played a large part in developing their songs, which dropped a psychedelic pop bomb on the techno-oriented charts a year later.

Through it all, their rapport has kept them together, says Yoshimura: “We feel comfortable together, like real close friends, and we’re obviously used to working together, so we see the good bits and bad bits of each other and are able to actually continue our relationship for six years without any fights. One thing is that we are so down-to-earth together.”

The money probably doesn’t hurt, either.