I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
I regret that I never took the opportunity to visit Okinawa during my years in Japan. I have a friend who lives in Naha and we've exchanged correspondence and Christmas cards once a year for many years now. Maybe I'll get that chance someday. Certainly would love to try Okinawan cuisine such as goya champloo and their distinct brand of soba.
One reason that I mentioned the above is that this particular song was used as the campaign jingle for Japan Air Lines' 1985 campaign for Okinawa. "Summer Time Graffiti" was the second single released by the band TOM★CAT. I wrote about these guys back in 2022 with their November 1984 debut song"Furare Kibun de Rock 'n' Roll"（ふられ気分でRock'n' Roll） and they stood out for their main vocalist TOM, aka Atsumi Matsuzaki（松崎淳美）with her distinct look of J-Roy Orbison in hair and sunglasses as she manned the keyboards.
"Summer Time Graffiti" was written and composed by TOM and released in April 1985. It's definitely got that 80s sound with those orchestra hits launching the song off and TOM's keyboard work which almost had me sprouting a mullet from the back of my head. I think that JAL was quite happy with this one for their campaign since it's dynamic enough to make tourists think about parting with their money for a trip down to Japan's southernmost prefecture. "Summer Time Graffiti" made it to No. 13 on Oricon.
And here I thought that Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）got all her Xmas feelings out when she released her 1987 "Snow Garden". Well, apparently not.
At the very least, she did have one more Christmas song in the form of "Futari dake no Christmas" (A Christmas Just For Two) which was a track on her December 1989 album"Precious Moment". Seiko-chan herself came up with the lyrics (as she did for all of the tracks) with Minoru Komorita（小森田実） as the composer and Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）as the arranger. Speaking about arrangement, "Futari dake no Christmas" has this solemn and hushed atmosphere but also seems to possess a child-like wonder about the Holidays as if a couple were getting married in an ancient church on Christmas Eve. As for "Precious Moment", it scored a No. 6 ranking on Oricon.
I'll tell you...I get all kinds of images when I listen to this one by technopop pioneer Susumu Hirasawa（平沢進）. This is about the earliest that I've gone in his long career and "Iriyou Hachi no Yuuwaku"(Temptation of a Bee) is part of his discography when he was with the progressive rock band Mandrake.
Mandrake was a band I mentioned in my previous Hirasawa article back in October for "Dummy no Sakuryaku"（ダミーの策略）. By the time that this particular song came out, the band was pretty much on its last legs and to be honest, I don't think "Iriyou Hachi no Yuuwaku" sounds really anything prog rock. It sounds as if Hirasawa really wanted to show off this wonderful new genre called technopop. Anyways, "Iriyou Hachi no Yuuwaku" was a track on the compilation record titled "Synthetic Space" which was released in 1978.
Starting off with a ticking that reminded me of a disco version of the theme from the famed American newsmagazine show "60 Minutes" and then some really furious tearing out of pages from a book, the synths in this one really do sound as if a bee were falling into temptation. Then, it goes into something out of a Tex Avery cartoon before there is an ominous fadeout and fade-in which takes we listeners into a fearsome odyssey out of yet another 1980s "Doctor Who" episode. The intrepid bee comes sonically back leading to an apocalyptic conclusion...maybe this is the Butterfly Effect brought to its ultimate power. I can't even imagine what the production staff must have thought when this was recorded.
Back in September this year, I posted an APB for Neff for a group of Chinese-language covers of Japanese and Western songs. Basically, the mystery was solved and that included the final song of the compilation whose original version was "Tabi ni Detai" (I Want to Go on a Trip). What I hadn't realized at the time was that I had already written about it through Kyo Nishimura's（西村協）1982 cover of the song. I did realize that the windmills of my mind were getting a little tattered.
Mind you, although I did give my brief two cents' worth of the original song by folk singer-songwriter Masamitsu Tayama（田山雅充）and another cover version in the aftermath of the APB, I figured that both should get their own article so I've got them both here. Starting with Tayama's "Tabi ni Detai" which was the final track of his May 1977 album"Kouyou"（紅葉...Autumn Colours）, it's a truly folksy introspective number with that acoustic guitar as Tayama sings about taking those close to him to pleasant places outside the city such as that tiny seaside town or a small forested hill, thanks to Tsuzuru Nakasato's（中里綴）lyrics.
In January 1978, the late Yoko Kishi（岸洋子）released her cover version of "Tabi ni Detai" as her 14th single. This version has a more conventional kayo arrangement including those silky strings and what sounds like a harpsichord.
It was often the case that if I were doing an obituary article, it would be for someone in the Japanese music industry. I would wake up in the morning and catch NHK's "News at Nine" which broadcasts live some fourteen hours ahead of us here in Toronto when we're on Eastern Standard Time and then find out if a singer or other person within the industry had passed away.
via Twitter
This morning though, it was a little different. Via the CP24 news scroll, I found out much to my shock that actor-director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner had been found murdered in their home. Reiner was someone that I'd known since I was an elementary school student. The first time I was aware of him was when he had his memorable if brief guest part in an "Odd Couple"episode in the early 1970s when he was performing with the late Penny Marshall who'd had a recurring role on the show as Myrna Turner and who'd been married to Reiner at the time. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any clip of that scene on YouTube or elsewhere but I was able to find a photo that you can see above. Reiner is the man in the white dress shirt, third from the right standing next to Marshall who would become an A-lister director herself.
Reiner would gain further fame that decade as Mike Stivic, the hippie son-in-law of the irascible and conservative Archie Bunker played by Carroll O'Connor in the landmark CBS sitcom "All in the Family". Not surprisingly, sparks flew fast and furious between them.
I didn't watch a lot of "All in the Family" but I did remember catching one episode "Mike the Pacifist" in which Mike had to do something drastic while he and his wife were traveling on the scary New York subway.
Reiner would follow more heavily on the directing track rather than acting which he did on both TV and movies. His directing career was all for the big screen, and like Japanese songwriters Yu Aku（阿久悠）and Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, I often went "He did that?!" when I scrolled down Reiner's filmography as a director. He helmed "This is Spinal Tap", "When Harry Met Sally" and "The Princess Bride" among other flicks. I caught "A Few Good Men" and also "Stand By Me", the August 1986 coming-of-age movie mostly based in 1959 with some rough around the edges. There were stars in the making in that one including Wil Wheaton who would take on the role of Wesley Crusher in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" the following year and then Kiefer Sutherland who would become the Jack Bauer of "24" fame.
I remember when the movie came out, the old 1961 Ben E. King classic of the same name was unearthed as the main theme song to much acclaim. During the movie's run, "Stand By Me" got a lot of airplay on the radio and then as a music video starring King alongside at least some of the actors starring in the movie. When King's song was released in 1961, it hit No. 4 on US Billboard and even with its revival a quarter-century later, it returned to the Top 10 there at No. 9. In Canada, it did even better by hitting the top spot. Personally, I also remember "Stand By Me" as a favourite karaoke song in both Toronto and in Japan...not sung by me, of course. It deserved a better fate than that.
My condolences go out to almost all of Reiner's family, friends and many fans.
So for this special ROY, what was being released as music singles in Japan in the same month as "Stand By Me"?
Well, it wouldn't be a KKP Christmas season without including something Yuletide from the good folks at Nash Music Library. I did have something from them last year with "Happy Christmas". And so, I thought "Why not have them aboard again?".
This time, I have "Kamakura de X'mas" (Christmas in Kamakura). Now, to be honest, Kamakura would be one of the last places where I would imagine anything having to do with Noel and the like, but hey, this ancient city gets snow and illumination so again, why not? "Kamakura de X'mas" is most likely the first KKP entry which has both the Xmas and Traditional Instrumental labels for the same song and with the piano and the jingling bells in there, I couldn't help but get images of Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）and even Studio Ghibli vibes via Joe Hisaishi（久石譲）. The song was part of the October 2024 compilation "Christmas Avenue".
It seems so long ago and yet it's only been a few months since enka singer and actor Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）left this mortal coil at the age of 82. I guess that the music that he provided fans were so imbued with the feeling of a long-ago era that it might be easy to assume that Hashi was someone from a very long time ago.
I was just scrolling through the Top 10 Songs of 1961 and it was evident that Hashi had a lot of hits during that time, including one that came in at No. 9,"Okesa Utaeba" (Why Not Sing A Traditional Folk Song?). Hashi's 3rd single was released in October 1960 and it's definitely an enka tune when compared to some of his later and more muscular rock kayo tunes such as "Zekken No. 1 Start da"（ゼッケンNO.1スタートだ）. Written by Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composed by Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）, it's got that jingly and jangly festival spirit in there although according to the J-Wiki article on "Okesa Utaeba", there was no choreography particularly planned for it in performances of the song unlike some of Hashi's other fare. I certainly thought that there was something min'yo about it.
With the mention of Niigata Prefecture in Saeki's lyrics and perhaps other places within the province, I assume that "Okesa Utaeba" can also be considered to be a go-touchi song or a regional tune as Hashi sings about the one that got away. Maybe the song is supposed to be a salve for that broken heart. Listeners could sympathize because "Okesa Utaeba" managed to sell about 200,000 records and break the Top 10 list in the pre-Oricon era as mentioned above.
