Juice=Juice -- More! Mi Amore（盛れ!ミ・アモーレ）

 

I caught my first "Uta Con"（うたコン）in a couple of weeks, and not surprisingly, the theme of the episode this week was the summer song. So, of course, one of the ultimate J-Pop summery bands TUBE showed up, and I have to say that leader and vocalist Nobuteru Maeda（前田亘輝）did a great job with Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）"Ride on Time". 

Veteran aidoru group Juice=Juice was also there and if I'm not mistaken, they took care of the finale. They sang their 20th single as a major act, "More! Mi Amore" (Look Hot! Mi Amore) which is actually one-half of a double A-side single accompanying "Shi no Go no Iwazu Satto Wakarete Ageta"（四の五の言わず颯(さっ)と別れてあげた...I Made a Clean Break of It Without Any Fuss）. I'd assumed that the single was their latest from this year but it actually got released in October 2025.

Another crazy assumption that I'd had was that looking at the title, I thought this was some sort of tribute to Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）"Meu Amore" but that's further from the truth. Instead, the song was written and composed by singer-songwriter Aoi Yamazaki（山崎あおい）although both songs have got that frenetic Latin spice infused into their DNA. There's nothing like a Latin-arranged aidoru tune to get the group going all crazy with the choreography which will get the fans all into a lather at the concerts. The single managed to hit No. 2 on Oricon.

Yuko Machida -- Yuuwaku Summer（誘惑SUMMER）

 

It's threatening rain out there as I type this now, but so far, any precipitation has held off. Plus, compared to some of the heat that was bombarding us last week, it's been quite pleasantly cooler today, and the wonderful thing is that the huge cloud of forest fire smoke from northern Ontario has largely stopped coming our way.

We have another obscure pop singer from the 1980s in our midst here. I could find little on Yuko Machida（街田祐子）aside from the fact that she released (only?) two singles in 1981 with the first one being "Yuuwaku Summer" (Summer of Temptation). Now, the songwriters here were lyricist/composer Ichiro Araki（荒木一郎）and arranger Akira Inoue（井上鑑）, both of whom have had their hands in the City Pop jar. However, aside from a few chord progressions that struck me as being City Pop, "Yuuwaku Summer" is really a cute pop ditty with Machida's twee vocals, although I don't think she was ever labeled as an aidoru. In addition, looking at the single cover with the singer wearing that particular dress, I'd expected something like a 50s/60s pop song but it actually all sounds rather contemporary to me (except for a boss sax blast).

Shozo Ise -- Omoide ga Tsukinai Yoru（想い出がつきない夜）

Big Dipper Asterism by NOIRLab
via Wikimedia Commons

 

For all those very dedicated "Kayo Kyoku Plus" readers and fans of singer-songwriter Shozo Ise（伊勢正三）in general, it's probably quite well known that Ise has had appendages in both the folk and City Pop fields. I've often written on his urban contemporary material including "Heart Beat" which was the topic of the most recent article that I wrote about him back in January.

Well, this time around, I'm swerving back to his folk roots via his song "Omoide ga Tsukinai Yoru" (A Night of Endless Memories) which was not only his first single from April 1980, but also a track on his debut album "Hokuto Shichisei"（北斗七星...The Big Dipper） which hit the record store shelves on the same day as that single. It's quite the folksy tune, written and composed by Ise, albeit with a richer sheen of sophistication in the arrangement. Maybe this could have been a transitional song for him from folk to City Pop. I also have to admire the song being played with the backdrop of a sky-view Tokyo at night, thanks to uploader Taka Kash. Would be interested in hearing what the rest of "Hokuto Shichisei" sounds like.

J-Canuck's Second Tribute to Umi no Hi（海の日）

 

Happy Monday! Well, the third Monday of July has already passed in Japan but they did celebrate a long weekend culminating in the national holiday of "Umi no Hi" or Marine Day (or Sea Day or Ocean Day). I was watching the NHK news footage of kids and grownups hitting the sea and having oodles of fun while the heat wave bombarded on them. And so I figured about whether I actually had done a tribute to the national holiday. As it turned out, I did do a tribute back in 2023, also on the third Monday of July.

But I still wouldn't let the idea of another Author's Picks go. So thanks to a J-Wiki entry called "Umi wo Daizai to Shita Gakkyoku"（海を題材とした楽曲...Songs Themed on the Sea）, I was able to find some more ocean-frolicking-themed tunes that I had already written about way back when. Without further ado then:

(1966) The Wild Ones -- Omoide no Nagisa（想い出の渚）

(1980) Seiko Matsuda -- Aoi Sangoshou（青い珊瑚礁）

(1984) Junichi Inagaki -- Ocean Blue （オーシャンブルー）

(1984) Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe -- Kimi no Heart wa Marine Blue （君のハートはマリンブルー）

(1985) Yukiko Okada -- Summer Beach

(1986) TUBE -- Season In The Sun

Guernica -- Ginrin wa Utau（銀輪は唄う）

Wikimedia Commons

Jun Togawa（戸川純）is a singer whose works have popped up periodically on the blog over the years, beginning with KKP writer nikala's article on her "Yumemiru Yakusoku" (夢見る約束) and my own article on Togawa's "Zukei no Koi"（図形の恋）, both from the 1980s. My own impression of the singer was that she was an avant-garde post-punk/New Wave chanteuse who could be seen as a precursor to Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）. 

Recently though, commenter YMOfan04 let me in on some information about Togawa. Before all of that post-punk and New Wave tour de force hit my eyes and ears for the first time, the Tokyo native had also been a member of the band Guernica which formed in 1981. Togawa formed it with keyboardist and composer Koji Ueno（上野耕路）and stage designer/costumer and lyricist Keiichi Ohta（太田螢一）. In this particular period of Japanese music culture when the Golden Age of Aidoru, 50s rock n' roll, technopop and City Pop were grabbing for their share of the popularity pie, Guernica was devoted in bringing the sounds of early 20th century kayo kyoku or ryukoka and military marches back to life. Incidentally, Guernica, which was also the title of Picasso's legendary anti-war painting from 1937, wasn't the first choice as a name for the trio; initially it had been Intonarumori which were musical instruments devised by an Italian futurist, but they changed their mind.

Guernica's first and only official single was "Ginrin wa Utau" (Singing of Silver Rings) which was released in December 1982. Backed by a full orchestra, Togawa was the vocalist here and the song sounded just like some of that beautiful music, as it was called a century ago, I heard on the old movies and television shows such as "The Little Rascals". Beautiful music were the melodies that were played at those fancy dance parties or soirees to contrast with the so-called "evil" music known as jazz back in the day. One can imagine Togawa being her melody moppet ancestor singing behind a huge NBC microphone on a New York soundstage, and I think that's where member Ohta brought some more of that yesteryear magic while dressing the others in the finery of the day. Quite the contrast with the type of music that Togawa would sing a few years later. Still, Guernica would release three albums up to the end of the 1980s.

Junretsu -- Junretsu Damashii（純烈魂）

By Yosemite via Wikimedia Commons

No "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）tonight but that's OK since we've got family coming over for dinner so we can't really be watching TV. Still, that means we haven't had any kayo programming here for a week since we weren't also able to catch "Uta Con"（うたコン）due to some emergency coverage of Japanese government deliberations.

However, last weekend when we could watch "Shin BS Nihon no Uta", semi-regular guests Junretsu（純烈）appeared to sing "Junretsu Damashii" (The Soul of Junretsu). This was the vocal group's 15th single from February 2024.

On the face of it, this might sound rather self-congratulatory but it's really a sweet thank-you song to the fans for their support all the way from their time entertaining guests at hot spring resorts. Junretsu leader Kazuyoshi Sakai（酒井一圭）was behind the grateful lyrics while the Old Man of Enka himself, Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）under his Joji Hara（原譲二）pseudonym, provided the sweet and laidback melody. "Junretsu Damashii" reached No. 4 on Oricon.

Toshiko Tamamushi -- Ochibazaiku (Watashi wa Ima)（おちば細工 -わたしは今）

By Lystopad via Wikimedia Commons

 

I've had this one on the back burner for a while, so I thought it was time to bring it to the light. It's another obscure song and apparently for Toshiko Tamamushi（玉虫俊子）, this was her one-and-only single to ever come out. There are some sites that talk about the obscurity of "Ochibazaiku (Watashi wa Ima)" (The Craft of Fallen Leaves ~ Me as I am Now) from December 1982 but I couldn't find any information about who the singer was and where she came from.

And that's too bad since I think her vocals are pretty good. Written by Uichi Ohwada（大和田宇一）and composed by Tatsuya Ogino（荻野達也）, "Ochibazaiku" strikes me as being an old-fashioned kayo kyoku most likely about heartbreak (autumn is the perfect season for that when it comes to the Showa Era music) that sounds as if it had been made a decade earlier and it also has a bit of Gallic flavour infused. At the same time, the first several seconds of the song reminds me of Mizue Takada's（高田みづえ）"Ai no Imagination" (愛のイマジネーション）that came out the previous year. Tamamushi has been referred to as an enka aidoru or an enkadol but I really don't get that vibe through this one song. She was apparently just a young lady with that one tune to her name.