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.
Eiichi Ohtaki's Niagara sound, based on American pop music of the 1960s, was created from his own unique viewpoint of well-versed pop music historical knowledge, irrespective of whether it was Japanese or Western. The culmination of all that was his timeless masterpiece "A Long Vacation". The success of that album was especially due to the lyrics of Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, I believe. When Matsumoto's prose, which came straight out of a page of vibrant youth like a watercolour painting, was layered onto Ohtaki's one-and-only Niagara sound, truly evergreen pop music was born.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
At this writing, I think there are only two or so of these YouTube videos showing "OIOI TOKYO TASTE ROOMS", so they are quite precious. Now, I've mentioned this show a couple of times in the past, going all the way back to 2013, and I have to make some clarifications here since I was rather loose with my details. For one thing, I referred to the show as just "Rooms"; well, the full name is now above us. For the second thing, I'd assumed that the show ran on for a few years when in fact, it was just for a year on late-night Fuji-TV between 1994 and 1995.
But I guess such was the impressive style and panache that the producers behind "OIOI TOKYO TASTE ROOMS" placed onto this mere 10-minute vignette that it was like getting that video version of a great midnight snack. And indeed, the program ran at around the 12:30 am time period as it focused on the more interesting apartment layouts of urbanites ranging from their late teens to thirties. Having a passing interest in architecture and interior décor, I have to admit that it was some late-night catnip to me as I watched from the comfort of my futon.
Of course, being sponsored by the department store Marui, having the show get into viewers' eyes and minds probably had them snoozing and perhaps dreaming of furniture and other interior goods that they could get from stylish Marui itself. If I'm not mistaken, there was also a rather bizarre segment of about a minute in length in which a famous actress or female Fuji-TV announcer in character or even a viewer would leave a phone message on some existential matter.
However, it was the ending theme that did catch my ear, and in the past, I have posted about a couple of those themes: Kenjiro Sakiya's（崎谷健次郎）"ROOMS" and Kaya Saeki's（佐伯伽耶）"Perfume wo Nokosenai" （パフュームを残せない）. Today's theme is "Dry Flower" which was singer/actress Miwako Fujitani's（藤谷美和子）July 1994 2nd single following her hit duet with the late Yoshiaki Ohuchi（大内義昭）, "Ai ga Umareta Hi"（愛が生まれた日）which had been released earlier in February. Written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）, although I have put on the City Pop label for it because of its overall urbaneness, it doesn't have that usual groove but it does have some of that sophisticated pop and dramatic balladry. I'd say that it fit the "OIOI ROOMS" ethos quite well with the resident of that refined apartment or condo sighing about love and all that jazz. Still, after waking up the following morning, I didn't get that urge to buy a tapestry or a OIOI bookshelf.
It's certainly sounding like Kenichi Fujimoto's（藤本健一）1986 "Aperitif" album is one of those secret City Pop masterpieces. I haven't written about him since 2020 when I posted the article for one of its tracks, "Memories".
Not too long ago, I encountered another one of the tracks, "Moon Light", which was written and composed by Fujimoto with co-lyricist credits also going to Mike Dunn. There's nothing like a bluesy urban sax to start things off and then a nice nocturnal Fender Rhodes leading the way along with Fujimoto's crooning vocals.
Although I think that J-R&B had a bigger boom at the turn of the century, I also believe that a decade earlier, there had also been a sizable upward trend in the revelation of the genre, partially fueling the transition from kayo kyoku to J-Pop. I was in Gunma when acts including Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）, ZOO and Da Bubblegum Brotherswere hitting it big on the charts.
However to be honest, I had never heard of the duo Darlin' before. Formed in 1987, they released three singles and two albums and have been categorized on J-Wiki as a rock and pop unit with Masato Ishida（石田正人）as the vocalist while Jiro Takada（高田次郎）was the guitarist. From their March 1991 2nd album"Love Education", I offer the track "Highway no Mukougawa"(Beyond the Highway), a cool-down urban ballad that sounds more soulful than rock or pop. Could make for the ideal midnight drive song. It was written and composed by Ishida with Katsuya Koga（古賀勝哉）being the co-lyricist.
There is no record of any other activity past 1992 under the Darlin' name, but in 1994, with the addition of bassist Keisuke Goshima（五島圭介）and drummer Tatsuya Suzuki（鈴木達也）, a new four-piece group named NONSTOP was formed with one single being released in November of that year. I'm assuming that's Ishida on the left of the "Love Education" album cover looking all sheepish after admitting to wearing a Jackson Pollock painting as his shirt.😎
Recently, some of my family were able to visit Lisbon, Portugal for the first time and they had a really good time there. They kept things to the city and though the rest of us gave them the third degree about what they did, what they ate, etc., I wasn't quite sure if they had mentioned touring around the Alfama district which is the oldest neighbourhood of the city.
Interestingly enough, I begin Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP with more of an exotic kayotune here that's titled "Alfama no Musume" (The Girl From Alfama) by Saki Kubota（久保田早紀）. Kubota, of course, is well known for "Ihojin"（異邦人）, one of the exotic kayo classics from the late 70s/early 80s although it had ironically had its genesis solidly set in central Tokyo.
Well, on the other hand, "Alfama no Musume" is one of the tracks from the exotic kayo A-side of her third album "Saudade"（サウダーデ）from November 1980, and all of that A-side had been recorded right in Lisbon itself with the more New Music B-side being recorded in Tokyo. That bi-city nature of creating an album reminded me of Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）City Pop-friendly"Miss M" from the same year in which her Side A was recorded in Los Angeles. Kubota would have her own City Pop moment with her following album "Air Mail Special"（エアメール・スペシャル）from 1981 (and my previous article on one of her songs is from that album).
But getting back to "Saudade", the A-side starts off with an acoustic version of "Ihojin" with the second track being "Alfama no Musume", a short-but-sweet-and-oh-so-flavourful kayo of the region. Kubota sings as if she's toe-dancing on the cobblestones of some of those Alfama streets. The original "Ihojin" may have been a rousing adventure along the Silk Road but "Alfama no Musume" is definitely more of a romantic stroll in Portugal. Kubota was responsible for words and music with Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）taking care of arrangement for all of the tracks on the album.
One of the earlier posts on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" was for the classic kayo "Itsudemo Yume wo"（いつでも夢を）by entertainers Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）and Sayuri Yoshinaga（吉永小百合）, a huge hit that also reached my ears early in life.
Well, that was all back in September 1962. But I'm sure that everyone involved was thinking about whether lightning could strike twice with Hashi and Yoshinaga. Sure enough, going into 1963, the songwriters for "Itsudemo Yume wo", lyricist Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）, went to work and created "Wakai Tokyo no Yane no Shita"(Under the Roof of Young Tokyo) for recording and release in April of that year.
Not surprisingly, "Wakai Tokyo no Yane no Shita" was another big hit, officially known as Hashi's 34th single, as it sold a million records. It continues the same sort of happy-go-lucky beat from "Itsudemo Yume wo" as youth enjoy life in an emerging and vibrant Tokyo. A few months later, a movie was concocted based on the song. Yoshinaga starred in it and Hashi was supposed to have been in the film as well, but an incident involving him and others had landed the singer in hospital and so he wasn't able to fulfill the role which was then taken over by actor Mitsuo Hamada（浜田光夫）.
Welcome to another edition of Reminiscings of Youth where I present some of the non-Japanese songs that I grew up with as a kid, teen or even young adult. And this time, I would like to go with another example of a negative being turned into a positive...at least, where marketing of a product is concerned.
When it came to condiments, I think that there were a fair share of people who couldn't stand having to wait for mustard or ketchup to slowly drag itself out of the bottle and onto the hamburger or hot dog. For me, that was indeed the case until I learned the inertia method many years later. However, the good folks at Heinz Ketchup took that logistical weakness and made it into something to be savored...anticipated, you might say.
Yes, it was the waiting that was part of the joy of having some of that ketchup on your burger or dog, and what helped it was the usage of a classic 1970s pop song, appropriately titled "Anticipation" by Carly Simon. What I was surprised about was that "Anticipation" had been released so early in the 1970s...November 1971, to be exact...since those Heinz commercials were more of a late 1970s/early 1980s phenomenon. However, listening to "Anticipation" a few times, I can now understand that it was an early 1970s tune with the laidback rhythm and piano.
"Anticipation" reached No. 9 in Canada while in the United States, it hit No. 13. The original song may have been about the giddy and nervous feelings about how a romance might play out, but for me, it'll always be about the ketchup. So, now I've got a Bond movie and a fabric softener plus a ketchup ad that has helped me cotton onto Carly Simon.
At the Japan Record Awards that were handed out at the end of 1971, there were two songs that won for Most Popular Kayo.
