Kaho - 「Every Hero」 - Theme song to 『ミス・パイロット』/Miss Pilot

Image courtesy of http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/katyu09_3302/15716020.html

One of my all-time favorite dramas of the 80s was the Daiei and TBS TV's inspiring, sentimental and extremely melodramatic drama series 『スチュワーデス物語』/"Stewardess Monogatari" (1983) which starred J-Pop idol and Daiei regular 堀ちえみ/Hori Chiemi. Chiemi who portrayed Matsumoto Chiaki, a petite, clumsy and somewhat naive girl from an abusive home, who had dreams of becoming a JAL (Japan Airlines) Stewardess. Following her ambitions, she bravely enters the elite JAL Training Academy where she endures all sorts of hardships, trials and tribulations during her training program. While she suffers through various humiliations and setbacks, she achieves her goal and becomes a JAL stewardess thanks in part to her spunky determination.  She even finds time to fall in love with her handsome and dashing training instructor Murasawa Hiroshi (風間杜夫/Kazama Morio), a former JAL Purser with an equally tragic and troubled past. While sometimes over-the-top, sappy and a bit contrived, it was a superb teen soap-opera style drama with heart. 

There have been other subsequent other airport-themed dramas and films since then including Fuji TV's 2006 comedy 『アテンションプリーズ』/"Attention Please" (a remake of a 1970's TV drama) with 上戸彩/Ueto Aya; Fuji TV's 2012 drama/thriller『TOKYOエアポート』/"Tokyo Airport" with 深田恭子/Fukuda Kyoko and the hilarious 2008 film 『ハッピーフライト』/"Happy Flight" with 綾瀬 はるか/Ayase Haruka, yet none have really come close to matching the spirit and feel-good nature of "Stewardess Monogatari", that is until this 2013 Fuji TV drama series came along.  While maintaining "Stewardess Monogatari's", "cinderella" like feel,『ミス・パイロット』/"Miss Pilot" successfully updates the story for today's generation and also redefines the role of female airline employees in Japan, while giving audiences a detailed look into how a major modern airline conducts it's daily operations and explores the rigorous training that is involved by airline pilots.

Kaho Shimada -- Rosey/Manga-tique Romance（マンガチック・ロマンス）

 

Having a passing interest in architecture especially for buildings that have that futuristic tinge, I was quite elated to get this shot of Mode Gakuen Cocoon Tower in Shinjuku. I never had any particular need to enter the above ground floors but I did access the basement ones where a bookstore resides. Access was possible through the covered passage leading from Shinjuku Station's West Exit to the hotel-and-skyscraper area.

Anyways, I want to introduce a new person into "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Her name is Kaho Shimada（島田歌穂）and she's a singer and a musical theatre actress. I can't quite remember whether she's appeared on "Uta Con"（うたコン）since its beginnings several years ago but I remember that she used to appear fairly often on the show's predecessor "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）on NHK with her golden tones.

As an example, I can offer her "Rosey" from her 2nd album "Distractions" which was released in February 1990. Written and composed by Takashi Tsushimi（都志見隆）, it's a pretty stylish pop love ballad about realizing too late that a love has now gotten away. It's a sad song to be sure but the arrangement and Shimada's rich and resonant vocals can bring fans back for repeat listenings. Many singles and albums of hers have come out between 1981 and 2019. Shimada's most famous role on stage is that of Eponine in the Tokyo production of "Les Misérables".

Born Kaho Shima（島歌穂）in 1963 in Tokyo, the future entertainer grew up in the midst of a musical family. Her father, Takaho Shimada（島田敬穂）, was a musician who trained one of the Anison Kings, Isao Sasaki（ささきいさお）, while her mother, Reiko Tsukubane（筑波嶺玲子）, was a jazz singer who emerged from the famed Takarazuka Troupe. Teenaged Kaho had a recurring role in a tokusatsu comedy series "Ganbare!! Robocon"（がんばれ!!ロボコン...Do Your Best!! Robocon） through the mid-1970s and then made her debut as an aidoru in April 1981 with her first single "Manga-tique Romance", a 70s funk/disco-sounding tune written by Fumiko Okada（岡田有希子）and composed/arranged by Katsuo Ono（大野克夫）.

Perhaps one reason that I haven't seen Shimada recently on an NHK program (she did appear on the Kohaku Utagassen in 1988 and 1989) is that she may be very busy as an assistant professor of drama at the Osaka University of Arts.

Miho Nakayama/Cindy -- ROSÉCOLOR

I had been wondering about how Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）was doing recently since the last news I did hear was that she had divorced her husband, writer-composer Hitonari Tsuji（辻仁成）after 12 years of marriage. Tsuji had also been married once before to actress Kaho Minami（南果歩）who would later marry actor Ken Watanabe（渡辺謙）...but enough of that matrimonial merry-go-round. Apparently at this point, Miporin is continuing to live in France with her son but appeared in her very first stage play earlier this year and was a performing guest last December at the annual "FNS Music Festival" for Fuji-TV, her first appearance on a music show in 18 years.

My recollection of the the 80s female aidoru is divided into the early 80s aidoru featuring ladies such as Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）. But in the second half of the 1980s had the rise of a sassier and take-less-guff brand of aidoru; I always saw Shizuka Kudo（工藤静香）and Nakayama as the leaders of that "movement". And in fact, I read on J-Wiki that for that latter half of the decade, the aforementioned two aidoru along with Yoko Minamino（南野陽子）and Yui Asaka（浅香唯）were dubbed by the media as The Four Aidoru Queens.

In terms of music, my arrival in Gunma Prefecture came following the July 12th 1989 release of Miporin's 16th single, "Virgin Eyes" which had me hooked because of that dynamic melody composed by Anri（杏里）. And as a result, for some years, I kept my eyes and ears on the singer who seemed to be making that transition from regular aidoru to pop star because of "Virgin Eyes" without investigating too much about her earlier material.

Consequently, I didn't really know much about her preceding single which came out in February of that year, "ROSÉCOLOR", aside from the title all in caps. A bit of a pity since it is a nice little Latin-infused ballad which was written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）and composed by Cindy.

One of the reasons that Nakayama and Kudo have stood out to me despite that label of The Four Aidoru Queens is that I always had that comparison between the two singers. Kudo was the aidoru with the oomph factor in her songs and dancing while Nakayama struck me as being at her best with the balladry, vocally speaking. But even in the above performance on "The Best 10", there were some of the characteristic off-notes that I've often associated her with when it came to her uptempo stuff. Still, it is a soothing tune that I wished I could have gotten to know earlier. Well as they say, better late than never.

"ROSÉCOLOR" was the 5th in a string of 5 No. 1 singles that Miporin had between 1987 and 1989 (she would have three more No. 1s after that). It would finish the year as the 27th-ranked single. The ballad would also be used in a Shiseido commercial.

I also came across a video featuring PSY-S' Chaka singing a more straight-ahead pop rendition of "ROSÉCOLOR"; no idea whether this was ever made into a track for one of her own solo albums or as part of some compilation project. The performance stops midway to introduce the cover (with some of that Latin flavour back) by composer Cindy herself for her 1991 album "Don't Be Afraid". She would cover it again in 1997 for her final album "Surprise". At the risk of offending fans of Miho Nakayama, I think Chaka and Cindy delivered smoother versions. The one other reason I put this article up was in a tribute to Cindy herself that I started with my first article on her.

J-COVER 80's ダンス&バラード - The Best of Japanese Cover Songs

I don't buy too many CDs nowadays opting mostly to get most of my music via iTunes however when I recently came across this CD at Amazon Japan, I just had to get it. 「J Cover 80's  ダンス&バラー(Dance & Ballad)」 (ASIN: B004P0A16E) was released in 2011 by GT Music, a division of Sony Music Direct's "Ootona" line of nostalgic compilations geared towards those who are in their 30s-40s who grew up in the 80s. It is very similar to Sony's fantastic 「クライマックス・ベスト (Climax Best)」 series (which I also have) in which they released various themed 80s and 90s music compilation sets sporting such catchy tiles such as ""Sapphire", "Ruby", "Green", "Blue", "Yellow", "Fantastic" and "Dramatic". While most of these CDs generally covered most of the major and well-known J-Pop songs of the 80s, this particular compilation I thought was pretty unique in that it featured a near-complete compilation of all the Japanese covers of various European and American pop songs from the 80s.   

Naoko Kawai -- Half-Moon Serenade （ハーフムーン・セレナーデ）

I had a couple of surprises come to me today concerning Naoko Kawai's（河合奈保子） 27th single, "Half-Moon Serenade". For one thing, when my brother's family came to visit today for dinner, my cute little 8-year-old niece wanted to show me something. She unwrapped a piece of paper which had a set of lyrics, and the lyrics turned out to be those for this very song. Well, I thought, it has begun. The next generation of kayo kyoku fan has come forward. Alas, I may be jumping the gun a bit here since it is just the one song, but I was quite taken aback that a relative born in the 21st century would take an interest in an aidoru singer from the 1980s.

Apparently, her mother had come across it on the Net, and then my niece took a liking to it and started to play the tune on her piano. And according to some of the YouTube videos, it seems like a number of young folks have done the same on piano or guitar. "Half-Moon Serenade" is quite the epic ballad for Kawai....someone I had gotten to know through her Kohaku Utagassen appearances as the prototypical bouncy and smiley aidoru of the early 80s. In fact, this was her very first song in which she also wore a second hat as a composer. I remember hearing it for the first time as well on the 1986 Kohaku, her final appearance on the NHK special, and was struck by her performance on the piano and the fact that her voice took on a slightly operatic quality.

The other surprise was that the lyrics were provided by Yumi Yoshimoto（吉元由美）, since I had always associated her with Anri（杏里） in terms of some of the really dynamic R&B pieces that they came up with together. "Half-Moon Serenade" was released in November 1986 and got as high as No. 6 on Oricon. It was also a track on her 13th album, "Scarlet"（スカーレット） which came out in October of that year. The album was notable for that all of the songs were created by Yoshimoto and Kawai.

According to J-Wiki, there was some media criticism at the time leveled at the song for having too much of a resemblance to another ballad from about a decade previously, "Shishuuki"（思秋期） by Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）. I have to admit that the two are similar but frankly speaking, even though I've known both songs for several years, I never made any sort of connection between the two until I came across the J-Wiki writeup for "Half-Moon Serenade". And since I've never come across any complaints from the Iwasaki camp, I'm quite happy to let sleeping dogs lie.

In any case, I'm quietly ecstatic that my niece has gotten a little appreciative peek into my....our....musical world.

Ahhhh, as an aside it seems as if the next generation in Ms. Kawai's world has also made her musical debut of sorts. Her daughter, Kaho, is gonna launch her career with "Every Hero" next month. Here is a brief clip from her music video. My hair is getting ever grayer.

Yutaro Miura -- Hoshikuzu no Merry-Go-Round （星屑メリーゴーランド）

Over the last several years, the inevitable signs of my aging have come to the fore: graying hair, joints that snap, crackle and pop even more than my morning cereal, and the fact that I can barely last one visit to the buffet table (that last one especially hurts). Another sign is hearing and seeing the children of some of my favourite singers from Japan firmly in control of their careers in the geinokai.

Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）daughter, Sayaka Kanda（神田沙也加）, has been entertaining for the past several years, folk singer Ryoko Moriyama's（森山良子）son, singer-songwriter Naotaro Moriyama（森山直太朗）, is a fairly common presence on the telly, and from the pages of this blog, I read that former aidoru Naoko Kawai's（河合奈保子）daughter, kaho, has started her own singing career.

And just within the last few days, I found out that one of Japanese entertainment's longest-lasting couples, actor Tomokazu Miura（三浦友和）and 1970s aidoru Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, have two sons continuing on the family business as it were.

I saw one of their sons, Yutaro Miura（三浦祐太朗）, on some NHK music variety show a few nights ago and although I didn't hear him sing there, I could see some of Tomokazu and some of Momoe depending on which way the singer-songwriter-actor turned his face.

Between 2002 and 2010, Miura was part of a rock band by the name of Peaky SALT whose activities came to a halt when the members had differing views on the future direction of their group. So, Miura went solo with his debut single coming out in 2012. His third single, "Hoshikuzu Merry-Go-Round" (Stardust Merry-Go-Round) came out in January 2015.

The title just seems like a match-up of two words that have been used over and over again for kayo titles but the ballad itself doesn't sound too bad at all. Considering the music video, it almost has a Xmas-y vibe to it and Miura has a decent if not outstanding voice (it doesn't quite stand out from some of his contemporaries). "Hoshikuzu Merry-Go-Round" managed to get as high as No. 46 on Oricon.

I was able to find this video of Miura singing his mother's eternal classic "Ii Hi Tabidachi"（いい日旅立ち）with the man who created it, Shinji Tanimura（谷村新司）, and with Ryudo Uzaki（宇崎竜童）, who also helped come up with a lot of Yamaguchi's later hits, on guitar (Sorry but that video has been taken down, but the above still has Miura performing the song).

At this point, I think this isn't even to the level of wishful thinking anymore but more of wistful fantasy, but there's still some part of me who would love to see Yamaguchi do a surprise appearance anywhere to sing a song.