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 don't think I'll be watching it but there's apparently quite a crazy moon in Markiplier's sci-fi-horror flick "Iron Lung".
That very pencil-thin segue is there to merely introduce musician/composer Himiko Kikuchi's（菊池ひみこ） "Crazy Moon" from her 3rd album "All Right". Considering that this album was released in 1982, I guess my file on Kikuchi is going back in time. Anyways, I don't have any expertise in time signatures so I'll have to quote YouTube commenter Antón Alonso - The IRL Bard: "Love this song because it starts on 11/8 and then goes to a nutty nasty 12/8 divided into 5 and 7 which is so good and then settles for the keyboard solo in a nice 7/8."
We both agree then that "Crazy Moon" is indeed a crazy moon...or since I'm in Canada, a crazy loon. It is a major jam session lasting nearly eight minutes that goes every which way with the drums, horns and keyboards. I'm not surprised that this has probably been a favourite at her concerts and Kikuchi looks so self-contained while hitting the keys.
As much as we Torontonians have been grumbling about how wintry this winter has been with a couple of major snowstorms hitting us in about as many weeks, I don't think we can really compare with certain northern areas of Japan this season. Watching NHK News this morning, Akita Prefecture for example has been walloped with metres of snow compared to the two-thirds of a metre that has collected on our sidewalks. And unfortunately, there have been some deaths due to the snow from elderly people falling off of roofs while trying to push off the heavy snow buildup. I'm hoping that both my area and much of the Tohoku area will see spring soon.
As such, I checked things online to see if I could find a go-touchi（ご当地）song regarding Akita Prefecture whether it be an enka, min'yo, Mood Kayo or just plain ol' kayo kyoku. I was able to find this min'yo titled "Chouja no Yama" that has connections with the prefecture although I couldn't track down either its year of origin or its songwriters.
However, this particular iteration of "Chouja no Yama" was sung by enka singer Kouhei Fukuda（福田こうへい）, who had started out in the min'yo genre. The song was a track on his May 2022 21st single "Furusato Dayori"（ふるさと便り...Messages from Home） which reached No. 15 on Oricon. It's quite the gentle traditional folk song but the title is intriguing since the word "chouja"（長者） can be translated into many English words of varying meaning. According to Jisho.org, it can mean: 1) millionaire, 2) one's superior; one's elder; one's senior, 3) virtuous and gentle person, 4) female owner of a whorehouse in a post town and 5) chief of a post town.
That's quite the myriad of responses. Personally, I'd like to think it can be translated as "The Mountain of the Virtuous" based on definition No. 3 but according to Kotobank, the first lyrics apparently refer to someone striking gold on a local mountain (so, "The Mountain of the Rich Man" perhaps) with the folks represented by the singers hoping to share in the bullion. However, Kotobank also mentions that it may have originated as a grass-cutting song through the farm work of the women in the area before it evolved into something to be sung for guests at the local onsen. If the song has a base in Akita Prefecture, it looks to be the Lake Tazawa area in Senboku City.
This YouTube video was posted about a dozen years ago by 28hb Seiichiro（28hb誠一郎）.
(Admittedly, what's written below may be old news to her fans so please bear with me here.)
In the years that we've been writing on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", we've realized that a few singers got their fifteen minutes of fame only to disappear completely from view. Takako Mamiya（間宮貴子）and Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）are two notable examples. Maybe another one was Reiko Takahashi（高橋玲子）who a lot of fans know for her super cheerful City Pop"Sunset Road". She released her two singles in the late 1980s and that was all she wrote seemingly.
Well, commenter Robert B. contacted me last week and informed me that he had found this new Reiko Takahashi YouTube channel established by the singer herself on January 27th last week, which includes a video containing a brief statement of gratitude from her for her fans' support back in the 1980s and currently. The number of comments for it has made a steady line upwards.
Then a few days later, the YouTube channel Kimi no Station: The Home of City Pop posted an English-language version of Takahashi's "Sunset Road" with the added subtitle of "Let me into your place". According to the blurb under the video, this version was only available on the tape cassette form of the July 1st 1987 single.
Also through the blurb, I discovered that Takahashi under the new name of Rayko was a part of an all-Japanese house band that played on Season 5 of "The Eric Andre Show" back in 2020. You can see her at the upper right of the screen at the 8-second mark. Plus, you can check out her Instagram account. Thanks to Robert B. for the tip.
Well, going into the first full week of February 2026, we're not that far away from the next big celebration on the calendar which is Valentine's Day at the end of next week.
It's been over three years since putting up my most recent article regarding singer and future AMAZONS member Yuko Ohtaki（大滝裕子）. In the time that I've known about this lady from Yamanashi Prefecture during her relatively brief solo career in the 1980s, she's delved into a few genres such as country and City Pop.
Ohtaki's fifth and final single to date, "Isei" (The Opposite Sex), was released in March 1981, and it's a song that heartily bounces about with a feeling similar to The Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", although I don't consider "Isei" a ska tune the way The Beatles' classic has been classified. Created by some big guns in the Japanese songwriting industry: lyricist Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）, composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and arranger Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）, it's also one of those happy tunes that basically maintains a pop line although at certain points, I did wonder whether it was trying to poke a little bit into country and City Pop.
Lyrically, it deals with a teenage girl dealing with her feelings for a guy and secretly relishing the fact that one rival for his affections has lost the chase. As I said, Valentine's Day is around the corner, and the lass is on the verge of making those homemade chocolates for the fellow.
Because we've been writing "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for fourteen years now, I've been getting interested in seeing some of those B-sides for those famous singles by various kayo performers. To think that it's taken this long just to start plumbing the depths of "the other side" is somewhat astonishing although we have managed to take a look at some of them even before last week's anniversary.
One of the earliest posts that I put up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" was for Hiromi Ohta's（太田裕美）classic "Momen no Handkerchief"(木綿のハンカチーフ）which was released back in December 1975 as the Tokyo-born singer's 4th single. The cheery kayo kyoku has stuck with Ohta all these decades so that basically whenever she shows up nowadays on some TV show, it's to sing either "Momen no Handkerchief" or "Saraba Siberia Tetsudo"(さらばシベリア鉄道）.
The plot of the A-side involved the relationship between a couple of smalltown lovers in which the guy is now working in the big city while the gal is still in the hometown. Well, the somewhat more melancholy "Yureru Aijou" (Wavering Love), the B-side, seems to be a sequel of sorts for "Momen no Handkerchief". I've only listened to it a few times but the impression I'm getting is that the couple have met up again during the boyfriend's semi-regular visits back home, and maybe, just maybe, things are a little unsteady on the romance front, at least according to what I've gleaned from the title. Perhaps the guy is worried that his girlfriend is losing interest due to the distance and passage of time but she keeps reassuring him that she doesn't need to see a ring or that small house built for her and him...just that occasional but regular "I love you" is fine enough for now.
The same team behind "Momen no Handkerchief" was also taking care of 'Yureru Aijou": lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and arranger Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）. Methinks that if a 2026 single based on the fate of the couple were produced, I would think that the couple are celebrating their 45th anniversary, still in that small house in their hometown, with grandchildren.
Well, welcome to February 2026. It's hard to believe that one-twelfth of the year has already sped by but for those sports fans, there will be a delicious glut of events to look forward to. The one around the corner (as in the end of this business week) is the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
Interestingly enough, Italy also held the Winter Olympics twenty years ago in 2006 in Turin/Torino. Of course, all Japanese broadcasters for the Games had to have some sort of theme song. I actually wrote about the one for the upcoming Games in Milan-Cortina, back number's"Doushite mo Doushite mo"（どうしてもどうしても）on behalf of NHK's coverage, early last month.
For the 2006 Games, TBS brought in Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）February 2004 22nd single,"Masshiro" (Pure White) as the station's official theme song. It's not one of those supremely rousing firebrand sort of Olympic tune but it's a relatively quiet and reassuring number for all involved in a "Hey, everything will be alright. It's all in the hips" sort of way. Plus, as usual with Oda's voice, there is that lovely creamy texture to it so I often think of hot chocolate with that big white marshmallow in the middle.
Now, some viewers might be thinking that TBS was just a little too early with the Olympic themes since "Masshiro" was released a full two years before the Torino Games. Well, that was because it hadn't meant to be an Olympic theme initially. It was actually released as a single to commemorate its status as the theme to a TBS drama which was broadcast during that time titled "Sore wa Totsuzen Arashi no you ni"（それは、突然、嵐のように…Suddenly, It Was Like a Storm） starring Makiko Esumi（江角マキコ）. It peaked at No. 4 on Oricon.
When I first got to know singer-songwriter Mitsuko Komuro（小室みつ子）via the blog some years ago, it was through her City Pop songs from the early 1980s including her "Highway Rendezvous"（ハイウェー ランデブー）. However, most recently, I did listen to her take on "Get Wild", the song that she made alongside composer Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉） (and yes, there's no familial connection between the two of them oddly enough) which has become one of the most popular anison. Her cover also contains some of that pop-rock edge.
Now, I've gotten a few listens to her 7th single from June 1991, "Beginning", and it's also something that takes a different direction. It's a power pop ballad that sounds like it could have been created for one of her namesake's earliest clients, Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）, and in fact, Mitsuko herself sounds a bit like Misato in her delivery. The arrangement also lends itself to that theory. The singer-songwriter provided words and music but also had some help from Issei Yoshioka（吉岡一政）; that first name can be read in four ways according to Jisho.org and since I couldn't find a romanized version of the name, I just went with "Issei", but if someone can confirm or deny my choice, please let me know.
.jpg)
