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 have to admit that I only found out about this song just earlier today. But as soon as I saw the title "Spy Dai Sakusen" which is the official Japanese title for the original American TV series "Mission Impossible", I knew that I had to investigate, since I remain a big fan of its first few seasons in the 1960s.
For one thing, what was I going to hear in Reiko Kato's（かとうれいこ）"Spy Dai Sakusen"? A moody City Pop tune or a really jazzy number along the themes for James Bond? Neither as it turns out. First off, "Spy Dai Sakusen" is a track on Kato's January 1995 album "Reiko" and it was created by lyricist Masami Tozawa（戸沢暢美）, composer Mayumi Horikawa（堀川まゆみ）and arranger Yuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）. It actually sounds like an upbeat whimsical pop song which probably has so-called "combatants" in the spy adventure of love.
In Kato's J-Wikiarticle, there is indeed a note about this particular song and that the songwriters were all well aware of the title's significance but that's about it. As it is, Kato's "Spy Dai Sakusen" sounds as if it could have made for a theme song for a show of a totally different stripe instead of Bruce Geller's iconic series of adventure and intrigue.
When I was thinking up the article for this song, I was reminded of one of the more hilarious scenes from the anime "Chuunibyou demo Koi ga Shitai"（中二病でも恋がしたい）when Yuuta happened to remember how he had confessed his love to one girl through the deathless line "Love you forever...". Yup, he had every right to give himself a massive concussion for remembering that one.
But to the topic at hand. Commenter Jim Laker added a recommendation to my article "Midori Songs" in which I commemorated Greenery Day during Japan's Golden Week holidays by providing a few songs by singers whose given names were Midori. Well, I was given another Midori...actress, singer and TV personality Midori Utsumi（うつみ宮土理）who I used to see quite regularly on her own shows as well as a guest on other programs. She's in one KKP entry via a duet with her husband, the late Kin'ya Aikawa （愛川欽也）, for the 1978 novelty tune "Man Man March"（マン・マン・マーチ）.
Although Utsumi's J-Wikiarticle doesn't give the occupation of singer to her...just tarento and actress, she did release a number of singles over the decades, and to be honest, she has a pretty nice voice. Anyways, Jim told me about one of her singles which came out in 1977 (it was just before "Man Man March"), and in fact, it was her debut single"Omoidasanaide"(Don't Remember Me). A bittersweet kayo ballad arranged by Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）, the lyrics related a plaintive request about not remembering a past romance since the breakup still hurts like heck. There's something about the song as well that reminds me of Toi et Moi's"Dare mo Inai Umi"(誰もいない海）.
Now, the song was written and composed by Daisaburo Nakayama（中山大三郎）and Utsumi's first foray into recording music was actually a cover of the original by Keiko Shimazaki（島崎恵子）who has no information on J-Wiki or elsewhere, it seems. However, her 1973 single"Omoidasanaide" has an even richer arrangement which has me thinking some of the folk-pop balladry from the United States at the time.
Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎良美）also recorded her own contemporary cover of "Omoidasanaide" as her 29th single in September 1982 with Nozomi Aoki（青木望）acting as arranger (No. 18 ranking). There's not much to say here except that it's another typically wonderful example of Iwasaki balladry. The interesting thing is that the song had been recorded some years earlier when it was included as a track in Iwasaki's March 1979 album of cover songs "Koibito-tachi"（恋人たち...The Lovers） which peaked at No. 14 on Oricon.
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).
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.
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!👉
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.
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.
