His is a name that I've seen among the pages of "Japanese City Pop" over the past several years but never got to him until recently.
Then I finally got to hear some of his stuff on YouTube and I gotta admit that I do like what he was selling back then. Jin Kirigaya（桐ヶ谷仁）is one of those City Pop/AOR artists that I would never have heard about if not for my bible "Japanese City Pop". He's one of those people who exists in that underwater 90% of my Japanese pop iceberg. Kirigaya hasn't even merited a J-Wiki page but he does have his own website.
Kirigaya was born in Tokyo and made his debut as a singer-songwriter in November 1979 with his first album "My Love For You" followed by his first single the year after, "Unhappy Day". The song for this article is "Wind Surfing", the first track of his 2nd album, "Windy", from July 1981.
With Michio Yamagami's（山上路夫）lyrics and Kirigaya's smooth melody and vocals, it's about as hammock-friendly a Resort Pop song as anyone songwriter can get. And what better instrumental touch than Jake H. Concepcion on sax? I will never get onto one of those contraptions for wind surfing but I would be more than happy to lay out on the beach to some of those wind surfers after hearing "Wind Surfing".
At this point, Kirigaya has released 4 original albums and 7 singles with a 2-CD Best compilation that was released in 2005. Let's see how much I have in the till to get that set.
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