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.
Isn't this something? A couple of lovers in their best finery as they look longingly into each other's eyes under a huge shining supermoon in some exotic city such as Casablanca. Cocktails and dinner are awaiting them on a table a few metres away.
I'm pretty sure that the setting established in Yoko Minamino's（南野陽子）"Moon Rendezvous" is far less glamorous and luxurious but no less exciting for the people involved. From what I've understood of Shun Taguchi's（田口俊）lyrics, the lass is happily expecting to meet her beloved Dad or beau at the airport...or maybe both; that would be quite the interesting thing. As for Mitsuo Hagita's（萩田光雄）melody (and he also arranged the song), considering the lyrics and the title, I would've been anticipating a City Pop tune, but instead, it hews to an innocent and smooth bossa nova style. For an aidoru song, it sounds quite mature and refined, and at the time, Nanno was still under twenty. The song wasn't released as a single but was included as a track on her November 1986 2nd album"Virginal" which peaked at No.2 on Oricon.
Hello, J-Canuck here! Fireminer is back with a new article on an R&B band that hasn't been on KKP before.
It is difficult for a single blog entry to comprehensively describe the impact of YouTube to overseas fans of Japanese music. Till this point, I still can’t wrap my head around the effort my older brother put into loading up his Gen 2 iPod with Japanese music at a time when you pretty much had to go fishing on P2P servers. But only a few years down the line and things got much easier with YouTube. Just go there and you can enjoy an entire world of Japanese music in full 240p glory.
A good number of my peers were immediately attracted to Japanese hip-hop because of YouTube. They did not belong to the breakdance crew, who were into Crunk anyway. I suppose they were born a bit too late for the Missy Elliot era, so they went with M-Flo and Nujabes instead. In hindsight, their style of atmospheric reggae- and R&B-infused hip-hop truly was the forefather to the modern lo-fi beat music you find everywhere on YouTube nowadays.
The one YouTube music video that overseas fans kept recommending to each other was “Garden” by Sugar Soul (シュガー・ソウル) and Kenji Furuya (降谷建志) of Dragon Ash fame. Little has to be said about Dragon Ash. If you were into Japanese hip-hop at the time, you knew Dragon Ash. Sugar Soul though we had little idea about. They were an R&B trio formed in 1996 by DJ HASEBE (real name: Hasebe Daisuke), vocalist aico (real name: Machida Aiko) and composer Kawabe (real name: Kawabe Kenhiro). Their single Garden was released in 1999 and was arguably their biggest hit to date.
That orchestral backing was just delightful and hankered back to the 90s golden age of hip-hop, when you started to see a lot of crossovers but the music had not been subsumed by the lazy sampling of the bling era. The lyric was inspirational and talked about reaching to a promised land through the fire and turbulence of life. It’s the kind of music that puts spring in your steps.
Sugar Soul would release another four singles and one album before calling it quit in 2001. After giving birth, vocalist aico resumed activity as the singer for the electronic dance unit KAM (カム) in 2010. Sugar Soul reunited in 2018 to commemorate their 20th anniversary and released the EP “UPLOAD”.
First off, thanks go to The history man on YouTube for providing this video on the life and career of kayo kyoku songwriting legend Yu Aku (1937-2007) who apparently remains the 2nd-most prolific lyricist in Japan following Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）. Yesterday, the return of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）after the Olympic break was a big one for all of the kayo fans since a good chunk of the program was a tribute to the works of Aku who would have been 89 back on February 7th..
This isn't an Author's Picks because I wasn't the one who came up with these songs for performance on the show last night. Of course, it was the NHK producers who did that but I still wanted to acknowledge the Aku songs that had been sung on the Shibuya stage since they have remained part of the bread and butter that make up a lot of this blog. You can also take a look at a Creator article that I wrote up back in 2015 regarding Aku and his constitution on writing those lyrics.
Another new face to add to the files of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", Yoshimi Yokosuka（横須賀昌美）has been recognized on J-Wiki as a model and an actress from Ishikawa Prefecture who began her career in 1980 as a Shiseido commercial model. However, she also branched out into music starting in 1981 with only four singles up to 1988.
Her third single was "Breathless" which was released in May 1988. Written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）, composed by Kisaburo Suzuki（鈴木キサブロー）and arranged by Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）, it's quite the dance-pop-friendly sort of song, and I'm not sure, but would this also be considered to be part of Eurobeat? I'll have to find out from commenters. In any case, for someone who seems to have been considered as a thespian and model, her vocals weren't too shabby.
For the longest time, I was rather confused about whether one of the most famous cities in Western Japan was formally known as Fukuoka or Hakata. Well, as it turns out, Hakata is actually the most famous area in the city of Fukuoka...filled with a literal and huge community of yatai food stands and it's beloved for the tonkotsu ramen. I would love to have some of that now though if I have too much of it, my blood will end up resembling the broth. I did stay there one night although I regret not exploring too much of the area outside of Hakata Station which you can see above.
At the site "TV Tropes", there is the Early Installment Weirdness section which talks about how long-running TV series started out a bit strangely or differently compared to the peak years which most fans are acquainted with. For example, the original "Star Trek" had a differently arranged theme song, Mr. Spock was a little more emotional and Lt. Uhura wore a gold command uniform for one episode rather than the familiar red one.
Well, we've come to one of those on KKP. Allow me to introduce Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）, enka singer. Fans of the late Showa Era brand of music might pop their eyes at that introduction since we all know that the Gifu Prefecture-born Noguchi gained his fame from not only being a hit aidoru singer of the 1970s but also one of the three teen heartthrobs that made up the Shin-Gosanke（新御三家）, or The New Big Three, alongside Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）and the late Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）.
But it is true. When I first wrote about Noguchi's 2nd single, the intrepid hit "Aoi Ringo"（青いリンゴ）from August 1971, this was a reset of sorts. His very first single from May of that year was "Hakata Miren" which I first translated as "Hakata Regrets" but I'm now thinking it could be a little less melancholy and will re-translate it as "Remembering Hakata". Regardless, "Hakata Miren" is indeed an enka song and teen Goro sang it in a way that made me wonder whether the management group around had been trying to mold him into the next Shinichi Mori（森進一）. His catchphrase was even "The Adorable Hope of Enka". It was a very different sound from him and ultimately one that didn't impress listeners. There isn't even an Oricon ranking listed for it.
I couldn't find any videos of Noguchi singing "Hakata Miren" live aside from this one. Other kayo singers have covered it, though. Incidentally, the song was written by Tetsuo Houshi（鳳司哲夫）and composed by Eiichi Arai（荒井英一）.
It was exactly a year ago (and also today happens to be the current Emperor's birthday in Japan so it was a national holiday over there) that I posted up "Dance-y Songs for Me (for International Dance Day)". I don't consider myself anything of even being a mediocre dancer but I always enjoy seeing the experts trot their stuff especially when it comes to music I've come to known and love. And yes, International Dance Day is on April 29th but as I mentioned in the original article a year ago, I can't wait until the 29th. I wanna boogie now! So, without further ado:
This was one of commenter Brian Mitchell's suggestions when he spoke on the original dance article, and I see that the dance-oriented video games have agreed as well. Seeing how kayo kyoku has been getting its props around the world, I can also imagine that folks can be strutting their stuff to Pink Lady's classic in the clubs as well as the karaoke boxes.
Hey, the Village People brought it to the disco-crazed masses but Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）also made it his own as a beloved piece of his discography. The danceability is already built in, and as with "UFO" above, I'm sure that both the karaoke boxes and dance clubs felt the love for "Young Man". Certainly, Saijo may be looking at us with a smile.
I don't usually consider the music of Hosono（細野晴臣）, Takahashi（高橋幸宏）and Sakamoto（坂本龍一）something to hit the disco floors for (despite YMO marking itself "the No. 1 dance band in Japan"), but "Tighten Up" can be one exception since as with "Young Man" above, this was a Japanese cover of a song by an American band that liked to get the folks up and moving. I still want that YMO shirt!
I'm surprised that I hadn't included this one in the original article but I guess Labels was pretty stuffed to the gills with entries, so I'm glad that I get to put it the second list. After all. Kingo Hamada's（濱田金吾）classic is a City Pop party favour for big city living. Plus, YouTuber hirokoboogie shows how folks can move to the groove if you refer back to the "midnight cruisin'" article.
This was another one of Brian's recommendations. Having listened to "Say Goodbye" in the years since I posted up the article for the song and got my copy of the 1982 album "Awakenings", I'm wondering if the late great Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）had been channeling his inner Stevie Wonder or Herbie Hancock when he came up with this masterpiece. Shimmy those shoulders away.
Speaking of hirokoboogie, here she is with her friends as they cut up a rug doing Anri's（杏里）"Goodbye Boogie Dance". Not sure if there had been a lot of lockin' when the song first came out in 1983, but I'm sure folks at home were shimmying up a storm. I can't even imagine how the new fans were reacting on the dance floor at the City Pop dance parties several years ago to this one.
PSY-S was another technopop band that burst onto the scene with some great hooks...hooks that could potentially grab onto listeners and force them to boogie, shimmy or however folks tend to move. The two versions of "Woman-S" had their own ways of manipulating people into doing their steps; the original (below), for example, had that booming percussion.
I've got a feeling that "Dance-y songs for Me 3" will be coming out in 2027!
I've mentioned about sentimentalism a few times over the past few days, and yesterday was a prime example. As some of you know, I used to have a biweekly Sunday anime + food outing with my anime buddy for about a decade but when COVID stopped those plans, we never really got around to picking things up again.
However, yesterday, a few of us did get together for some lunch at our favourite diner and then for dinner, we grew our group by three times to make the annual Shinta run, and what I mean by that is that every year around this time, we all get together at our favourite yakiniku restaurant, Shinta, up in Richmond Hill for tons of meat for an hour and a half, and then a fair amount of creme brulee and soft-serve ice cream to cool us down. Man, I sure don't eat as much as I used to.
We did plug in some anime between meals though. But as a bit of backstory, allow me to explain. In the pre-COVID era, my buddy and I did watch the first season of what has become a successful video game-to-anime adaptation of a franchise called "Uma Musume: Pretty Derby"（ウマ娘 プリティーダービー...Horse Girls）, all about horse girls who vie to become the very best at their craft. The characters have been named after some of the finest true-life thoroughbreds that have ever raced in Japan over the last several decades, and it seems like the characters have been portrayed by pretty much every female seiyuu that has gone behind the mike.
It was a fun first season and I did watch some of the episodes of the subsequent seasons, but I never really got all that excited about the various theme songs used at the beginning and endings of each episode.
Well, yesterday, I got to see the first few episodes of the second separate anime from the franchise. "Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray"（ウマ娘 シンデレラグレイ）which had its run throughout much of 2025 last year. Again, it has that feeling of The Little Train That Could as the button-down but brilliant Oguri Cap（オグリキャップ）begins to make her mark on the racing world in Japan while making friends and even making enemies into friends (or frenemies).
Oguri Cap (1985-2010) was indeed a legendary racehorse whose popularity loomed so large that he was dubbed "The Idol Horse". I was never a big fan of horseracing myself although I remember my parents taking my brother and I down to the old Greenwood Racetrack here in Toronto to watch some of the races. Making origami cranes out of the thrown-away ticket stubs was more our thing between races. However, even I had heard of Oguri Cap via television; it would be hard not to forget with that name.
Anyways, the anime version of Oguri Cap as played by seiyuu Tomoyo Takayanagi（高柳知葉）actually got to sing the first ending theme for "Cinderella Gray", and it's the first acknowledgement of a "Uma Musume" theme song on KKP. "Mugen" (Infinity) has a nice indies pop sound to it which is reassuring to hear, especially if things get a little too intense by the end of an episode, and I have to say that Takayanagi has some fine vocals to the point that I wonder if she has released some non-anime albums. The song was written and composed by Honoka Takahashi（たかはしほのか）, one-half of the pop-rock duo Regallily（リーガルリリー）.
What I had also forgotten was that Takayanagi already has standing on the blog since she was part of Coro Machikado（コーロまちカド）, the seiyuu quartet who came up with the beefy bass-heavy "Yoi Machi Cantare"（よいまちカンターレ）for the anime "Machikado Mazoku"（まちカドまぞく...The Demon Girl Next Door）.
