Mami Yamase -- Hoshizora no Etranger（星空のエトランゼ）/Michael Ondo（マイケル音頭）

 

I've heard of the manga "What's Michael?" before and apparently it deals with the adventures of a rather unique portly cat whose name is not Garfield. But that's pretty much all of it. I only heard recently that there was even an anime done between 1988 and 1989.

Aidoru and tarento Mami Yamase（山瀬まみ）was given the assignment to sing the two sets of opening and ending themes for "What's Michael?". The first of these songs that I encountered was the first ending theme "Hoshizora no Etranger" (Starry Sky Stranger) that was written by Ben Uozumi（魚住勉）and composed/arranged by Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）. Having a happy Eurobeat approach, Yamase once again shows that her singing voice is just delightful and very different from the somewhat strangulated spoken voice she used on screen for most of her time on television.

"Hoshizora no Etranger" was released as Yamase's 8th single in May 1988. On the B-side was the first opening theme for the anime, "Michael Ondo" (The Michael Folk Song) which was created by Uozumi and Makaino once again. Given a contemporized and especially playful version of a Japanese folk song arrangement, Yamase demonstrates a mixture of her singing voice and that spoken voice (or a lighter version of it).

trf -- Hey! Ladies & Gentlemen

 

Perhaps it's a bit early in the week to bring in the dance stuff but hey, it's trf. Still have quite the nostalgia for them after first hearing about them just a little before I headed for Japan for my second tour of duty as an English teacher.

Of course, there were their heyday in the mid-1990s with big hits like "Boy Meets Girl" and then their contribution to the 1998 Nagano Olympics, "UNITE! THE NIGHT!", brought them back to the charts. But there are probably some trf songs in between that I most likely didn't give my full attention to. For example, the title "Hey! Ladies & Gentlemen" rings a bell but I can't say that I could remember the song off the top of my head. 

Released in June 1996 as the group's 14th single, this was another one of Tetsuya Komuro's（小室哲哉）creations. It's got some of that House beat in there although for some of that other techno stuff in the arrangement, I'll probably need YMOfan04's or Marcos' wisdom in terms of categorization. Within all that synthesized rumbling, there is a story about sweaty bodies being invited for some fusion on the dance floor. Hey, it's the 1990s! "Hey! Ladies & Gentlemen" peaked at No. 4 on Oricon and it went Platinum. As for an album, it appears on the January 1998 album "WORKS -THE BEST OF TRF-" which was at No. 1 for a couple of straight weeks and eventually became the 25th-ranked album for the year. It also became the campaign song for Tokyo Beauty Centre.

May the 4th Birthdays

 

Yes, along with the fact that May the 4th is Greenery Day in Japan, it's May the 4th as Star Wars Day everywhere on the planet. I figure that if I'm going to commemorate Greenery Day, then why not this pop cultural holiday as well. The opening scene from "A New Hope" will always be one to awe the heck out of me. I'm sure that the first audiences to see the movie back on May 25th 1977 had eyes and mouths fully agape at the sight of the Imperial Star Destroyer chasing and capturing the Rebel Blockade Runner over Tatooine. 

But let's focus on this day, May the 4th. I figure that it might be time to look at a few birthdays of Japanese singers. Cue "Entertainment Tonight" theme!👉

Happy Birthday to...

Kazuko Aoyama（青山和子）

Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）

Fusanosuke Kondo（近藤房之助）

Daisuke Ono（小野大輔）

And Happy Birthday to Audrey Hepburn who would have been 97 years old today!

Midori Songs

I gather that Golden Week has reached the halfway point so according to NHK this morning, the U-turn rush has already begun with the cars heading back to Tokyo stuffing the highways rather than the opposite. 

As of 2007, May the 4th became known as Greenery Day in Japan so I'm not sure whether there are (or were, as of this writing) any horticultural events throughout the country but hopefully, the plants and trees are growing luxuriantly. In Japanese, Greenery Day is translated into Midori no Hi（みどりの日）so I thought that it would be nice to have an Author's Picks on some of those songs sung by ladies with the given name of Midori.

(1962) Midori Hatakeyama -- Koi wa Kamiyo no Mukashi kara （恋は神代の昔から）

(1978) Midori Kinouchi -- Yokohama Eleven （横浜いれぶん）

(1992) Midori Karashima -- Hitomi - Genki （瞳・元気）

(2019) Midori Oka -- Kami no Tsuru（紙の鶴）

Hachiro Izawa -- Otokogasa（男傘）

 

One of the earliest television theme songs that I remember hearing when I was but a toddler was the theme song for the long-running series "Perry Mason" with Raymond Burr. That killer tune with the pounding piano keys has long embedded itself into my music memories, and in fact, I will probably cover it on this Thursday's edition of Reminiscings of Youth (or more accurately, Reminiscings of Babyhood).

I heard a bit of that piano pounding in Hachiro Izawa's（井沢八郎）"Otokogasa" last night when it was performed on the latest episode of "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）. When it comes to Izawa, I and probably most people will always think of his signature tune "Ahh, Ueno Eki"（あゝ上野駅）from May 1964 as one of the representative songs for the mass migration of young people from the countryside areas of Japan to the big cities like Tokyo to man the engines needed to power the economic recovery of the nation.

Well, "Otokogasa" was his 5th single which came out later that year in October. There isn't a set translation of the title that I could find on Jisho.org so considering the lyrics, I'm just going to translate it as "Man Under an Umbrella". And those lyrics by Yurio Matsui（松井由利夫）seem to be describing a rather melancholy scene of one last tender embrace under an umbrella in a rain storm by a couple who will soon not be a couple. Izawa's wailing style seals the deal and the music has that jazzy if somewhat mournful Mood Kayo including the key pounding that I referred to in the above paragraphs. Jouji Osawa（大沢浄二）was responsible for the melody.

Yuuto Tatsumi -- Lonely Generation（ロンリー・ジェネレーション）

By Ashish 100 via Wikimedia Commons

It's been several years since I posted a Yuuto Tatsumi（辰巳ゆうと）song onto KKP and he's done some evolving over the years at least from what I've included in his file on the blog. I started with his 2nd single from March 2019, "Otoko no Junjou"（おとこの純情）which was a straight-up enka and then followed up with his 3rd single, the more Mood Kayo "Sentimental Heart"（センチメンタル・ハート）, a March 2020 release.

Well, six years have whizzed by and the young lad has become a man with a change in hair colour, to boot. Tatsumi appeared recently on NHK's "Hayauta" with his latest from March 2026, his 10th single "Lonely Generation", and to be honest, I'm having the Dickens of a time trying to categorize this one. Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）, who usually composes Junretsu's（純烈）songs, took care of this one. 

As a brief aside, when I was looking through the KKP Miyuki file, I noticed that I had completely forgotten to add the music genre to Junretsu's "Futari dake no Himitsu"（二人だけの秘密）, probably because I couldn't really nail down an ultimate genre; in the end, I put it down to pop (of the kayo kyoku style).

I was having the same slight dilemma with "Lonely Generation" which was arranged by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）and written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）. With those veteran guys behind it, there is something old-fashioned if very jazzy about this one. It's definitely not enka anymore although it may be a mix of some Neo-Mood Kayo and jazz/rock fusion. So, why not give it the New Adult Music tag although I've also thrown in the pop tag here, too, because it can perhaps fulfill the Neo-kayo kyoku feeling.

As the title states, the song is about isolated young folks struggling to make connections while not admitting to the loneliness. I would usually think Shibuya would be the setting for this sort of song, but the music makes me think more Akasaka and Roppongi. Maybe young Yuuto is making like an employee of the month at a host club there.

Akiko Ikuina -- Omedetou（オ・メ・デ・ト・ウ!）

It's been an interesting decade and a half since I got back from Japan for good since at about the same time, Japanese gastronomy as it applies to my hometown really started to evolve. During my childhood, it was all about the generalist Japanese restaurant which covered everything through courses such as the teriyaki course, the tempura one and the sushi one. But then from around 2011 or 2012, various ramen chains that started from Vancouver made their way across Canada to Toronto starting with Kinton and that made a huge splash. Then, it was the izakaya boom, Japanese cheesecake and then more specialized fare including udon and tonkatsu.

At least some of these restaurants have also been aware of the Japanese pop culture scene. Kingyo, when it was a full izakaya at the time, decorated its walls with pachinko machines and used to play anime on its back wall, and recently as a converted izakaya/food store, it's had a playlist of Japanese music coming through the speakers.

In the past year or so, there's even been a new place that's brought a bit of Japanese into the old-fashioned diner and even it has mentioned its own Spotify playlist. It's quite the bounty and Cafe Citypop has stuff including Junko Yagami's（八神純子）boppy "Jealous" and Kirinji's（キリンジ）snazzy "Hi Zero Wa Game" (非ゼロ和ゲーム...Non-Zero Sum Game). But it's not all City Pop and I was able to find one song in the list that I hadn't heard before.

Akiko Ikuina's（生稲晃子）"Omedetou" (Congratulations) is a track from her 2nd and final album to date, "Nihon "Ikuina" Kikou"（日本「生稲」紀行...Japan "Ikuina" Travelogue） which was released in August 1989 to a No. 33 ranking on Oricon. "Omedetou" may not be a City Pop tune per se, but it sure is catchy and refined. And as soon as I saw the arranging and composing credits belonging to Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）from Tohoku Shikansen（東北新幹線）fame, I knew that I was going to get something infectiously good. It's got the nice slow-to-medium-tempo groove and an effective combo of keyboards in play. Kazuko Sakata（さかたかずこ）took care of the lyrics.