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.
It's been a good long while since I've mentioned singer-songwriter Yuko Shibuya（渋谷祐子）. I remember posting my first article of her back in 2016 for her "Konya dake Koibito"（今夜だけ恋人） which is a cover of "C'est Un Dernier Nuage" by Jean-Jacques Debout. At the time, I was rather begging for information on Shibuya so I gather that since 2016, her data has increased somewhat significantly including her own J-Wiki page at last. I can now say that "Konya dake Koibito" is her third single from February 1979.
I can also mention that the song launches Shibuya's 2nd album"Pop Lady II" which was released a month later. Also on the album is "Yoru no Ushio"(Night Tide) whose melody was crafted by the singer with Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）handling the lyrics and Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）arranging it. As I noted above, it's been a while since I've heard Shibuya so I'm getting to realize once more how soulful her vocals are, especially enhanced with this ballad seasoned with a languid Latin guitar and the keyboards which once again bring out that quintessential 70s City Pop sound: the haze effect. Plus for a bit of refinement, there are some wonderful strings and a harp. It really does feel and sound like a couple walking along the beach at night barefoot while carrying their shoes.
I would expect that there may still be a number of Canadians enjoying their Holiday vacations in the Caribbean for at least a few more days before they have to come back to the bitter cold and work come Monday. Allow them to enjoy the warmth and good feelings for a little while longer.
This is a fairly raucous song for Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）in terms of the arrangement by Akira Inoue（井上鑑）. That percussion and beefy saxophone which start "Bahama Airport" can probably trigger a few tremors but they don't allow themselves to overwhelm Inagaki's tender vocals. It is definitely his style out there. "Bahama Airport" is the second track on the City Pop crooner's debut album"246:3AM" from July 1982. Kozo Endo（遠藤幸三）was the lyricist while Akira Mitake（見岳章）composed the summery happy melody.
Well, it's been a few years but it looks like the pop group cinnamons and the AOR unit evening cinema have brought their energies together once more (one of their earlier examples is "Fuyu no Tokimeki"（冬のトキメキ）) and this time, it's a cover of a City Pop classic.
A few months ago, cinnamons x evening cinema recorded their own version of "Shibuya de Go-ji" (渋谷で5時...Shibuya at Five） which had been originally sung by Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）and Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）back in 1994. Can't believe it's been over thirty years but hey, we're a patient lot. Anyways, to also give credit where credit is due which is something that I didn't do when I wrote up the original article, Kanata Asamizu（朝水彼方）took care of the lyrics while Martin himself came up with the thrilling melody with the late Nobuo Ariga（有賀啓雄）being the original arranger.
"Shibuya de Go-ji" still retains some of that City Pop feeling although I think the arrangement this time around takes things into a slightly more pop direction. But that doesn't detract from the overall effect at all. It still gives off that fun invitation to one of the most exciting centres in Tokyo and I will always love that music video...it does look like the perfect date if the two can find each other by 5 o'clock in the huge masses of humanity around the statue of Hachiko on a Friday night.
Hello and nice to have you back on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". While folks in Japan are still enjoying their Holidays, over here in Toronto, it seems like everyone's back at work despite it being a Friday. Well, let's see if we can try to give some solace before the weekend.
For that matter, let's welcome you to the first Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP for 2026. And we start off with something very relaxing in the form of Yukari Ito's（伊東ゆかり）"Utsurigi na Hito"(Fickle Person). Written by Fumi or Hiroshi Fukunaga（福永史）and composed by Yasuhiro Kido（木戸やすひろ）, this comes from Ito's July 1979 album"Anaa shika Mienai"（あなたしか見えない...I Only See You）. It occupies the bossa nova corner of City Pop and a lot of it reminds me of the song stylings of Keiko Maruyama（丸山圭子）with her famous "Douzo Kono Mama"(どうぞこのまま）. And yet, when I think of the setting, my mind comes up with a slow cruise down the Riviera. Cocktails aren't mandatory but welcome.
Haven't seen singer-songwriter Reimy（麗美）in a while, so it's nice to have her here right at the beginning of this new year.
As I've stated in the past regarding Reimy, she seems to have had three stages in her singing career. Her first phase in the early to mid-1980s had her often covering Yuming's songs or providing some pretty aidoru-esque fare. In her second phase, she was doing more West Coast dance pop stuff for a short while, and then finally the third phase in the late 1980s going into the early 1990s involved her own creations which followed a gentle pop style.
"Saigo no Yasashisa"(The Final Kindness) was a B-side to her June 1987 single"fa・ri・ra". Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and composed by Reimy herself, it's a step away from the dance floor although the arrangement by Trevor Veitch still keeps it within that Los Angeles disco. It's a pleasant groove tune with some introspection about the nightlife that could fit LA or even Tokyo. And in a way, the song might be a fusion of those last two phases that I was referring to above.
I don't consider myself a particularly lucky man. I've never won a lottery nor did I ever find the love of my life. However, where I did score some luck was growing up at a very interesting time in Toronto. I finally got some freedom in staying up late at night around the late 1970s going into the 1980s: music videos were just coming into their own and there were some rather intriguing TV shows popping up on the tube in my area.
I mentioned this in last week's Reminiscings of Youth when I wrote about the late Lalo Schifrin's theme for "T.H.E. Cat" suspense series. I got to (re-)acquaint myself with a number of these old TV shows and even some musical interludes through the lone season of a 1980 program called "The All-Night Show" on the local multicultural channel, CFMT-47 (popularly known as MTV just before a certain music channel down south grabbed the call letters forever). This aired most nights (so about 300 episodes) for about four to five hours overnight...a time when most channels would actually sign off and go to test patterns.
"The All-Night Show" starred comedian Chas Lawther as Chuck The Security Guard, the overnight guardian of MTV, who, out of a sense of boredom and curiosity, would basically take over operation at the station and with some drop-in buddies, engage the viewing audience in conversation and show off some of those old TV shows such as "The Twilight Zone", "The Beverly Hillbillies", the aforementioned "T.H.E. Cat" and other chestnuts. Obviously, even with my newfound nocturnal liberty, I didn't get to watch "The All-Night Show" every night. It was more like Friday and/or Saturday nights past 1 am and that wasn't even for the entire show (I don't think my parents would have been too thrilled to wake up to see that I hadn't gone to sleep).
One of the most bizarre moments on the show that I still remember to this day is when Chuck showed a washed-out video of a man outside somewhere who confessed on camera that he no longer had the will to live and would blow himself up with a homemade bomb right in front of the camera. He took his clothes off right then and there and blew himself up, although there didn't seem to be any gore. I think even Chas/Chuck looked very rattled by the sight and in the next several minutes, "WTF?!" phone calls came pouring in. Another number of minutes passed by before a woman phoned in to reassure everyone that her husband had survived his own suicide attempt of several years prior with surprisingly few injuries and that he was feeling much better with therapy and love but that he would not be willing to provide any further comment. I'm not sure if this had been an elaborate (and unfunny) hoax by the show but from Chuck's expression, it sure didn't look like it.
Along with watching some of the spookier episodes of "The Twilight Zone", one other thing that stuck with me was the de facto theme song for "The All-Night Show" which played after a few minutes of a Chuck intro. I'd heard "Strangers in the Night" before, notably with Frank Sinatra, so the song was recognizable but this version was about as spacey and bizarre and un-jazzy as it could get as it usually played over a montage of clips from B-movies and old TV episodes.
This version was provided by French composer Jean-Jacques Perrey and German-American composer Gershon Kingsley, known popularly known as Perrey and Kingsley, who were known as two pioneers of electronic music in the 1960s. In fact, their take on "Strangers in the Night" can be found in their 1967 album "Kaleidoscopic Vibrations: Electronic Pop Music From Way Out", and yeah, it was way out, man!
As I stated above, "The All-Night Show" lasted just a month shy of one year between September 1980 and August 1981. It was a good run and I've seen YouTube comments wondering whimsically if there could be another program like that to pop up in the overnight hours once more, but then again, I have to observe that YouTube is probably doing something like that right now.
Anyways, just for comparison's sake, here is Ol' Blue Eyes' version of "Strangers in the Night" from 1966. But let's go with the starting date of "The All-Night Show" which was late September 1980. What was at the top of the Oricon charts on September 22nd that year?
Happy New Year and welcome one and all to 2026! Hopefully, once you are seeing this, you are largely hangover-free or very satisfied with the finale to "Stranger Things".
Let's start the first entry on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with something a little more eclectic but still quite relaxing before everything comes out of Holiday mode as of tomorrow. I don't know anything about YeYe but according to what I've found out thus far, she's singer-songwriter Natsuko Hashiguchi（橋口なつこ）from Shiga Prefecture and when she was about 20 in 2009, she started up the trio concentrate on popping as their bassist and vocalist.
She also began a solo career under the name YeYe (the Chinese word for "grandpa" [yéye]) from 2010 which has embraced indies pop, chamber pop, guitar pop, and electro pop. One digital single that she released in August 2022 was "Suimen ni, Ice"(Ice on the Water) and it's a collaboration between her and Ginger Root with his delectably synthy 80s sound. Ginger Root took care of the arrangement of YeYe's creation to make it sound like an old-fashioned lighthearted pop song played at a tropical club as filtered through all that technology of the 80s. From what I could glean from the lyrics, it sounds like someone is pining for that significant other and hopefully that water will be able to melt through the ice.
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