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.
We're on the last day of August 2026 and although we're still about three weeks away from official autumn, August 31st still feels as if the summer is coming to an end. Today for example, my hometown is rather overcast and rainy although the humidity is still there but the general atmosphere (no pun intended) is one of a season reaching its finale.
Perhaps it's the appropriate time and place then to post this instrumental by Osakan pianist Yukie Nishimura（西村由紀江）. "Natsu no Owari ni" (At the End of Summer) is a pleasant and calming track from her May 1986 debut album"Angelique". With the addition of that fizzy synthesizer in the middle, I'd been wondering about calling this a technopop tune as well, but I decided to stick with the pop label. Just the thing to accompany a brunch-cooking session.
I've known about Nishimura for quite a long time and it was because later in her career, she also came up with the soundtrack for the 1991 Fuji-TV drama "Hyakuikkaime no Propose"（101回目のプロポーズ....The 101st Proposal). I may have to take a look at that soundtrack sometime in the near future. Anyways, see you in September!
Some of this year's Winter Olympics took place in Milan, Italy and I've heard that it is one of European centres for high fashion, so it'll probably be a city that I'll never be able to visit with pride since I have all the sartorial taste of the Doctors Who of the 1980s.
A few days ago, commenter YMOfan04 sent me the link to this video of a song titled "Milano Fantasy" by Romi Yamada（ロミ・山田）. At first, I'd wondered if it were that veteran voice actor who had the Big Bad part on the entertaining anime "Kill La Kill"（キルラキル）over a decade ago, but that was actually Romi Park（朴璐美）and she would have been all of eight years old when "Milano Fantasy" was released. The only other person that I knew with that variant of name was German/French actress Romy Schneider.
Nope, actually, the singer here is Romi Yamada whose real name is Hiromi Yamada（山田ひろみ）. She was born in 1933 in Japan-annexed Korea and was both a singer and actress. From what I could glean from her J-Wiki biography, her career began in the early 1960s with songs from the kayo kyoku genre. However, her 3rd-last single was the 1980 "Milano Fantasy" which was written by Koutarou Aso（麻生香太郎）and composed by Osamu Shoji（東海林修）, one of the pioneer synthesizer players. And indeed, the song sounds like something quite New Wave and Euro technopop...perhaps a bit ahead of its time since I get some Gazebo vibes from listening to it. I'll have to find out from YMOfan04 about which synth was being used here.
One of the other trivia tidbits that I learned regarding Yamada was that she had her time working in Las Vegas and so she actually bumped elbows with many of the legendary Rat Pack such as Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. And apparently, one time, even the King himself, Elvis Presley, complimented her on her performance. I'll have to check out her earlier discography.
Hope everyone is having a good Sunday out there. Indeed, we're in the final Sunday of August and so for us in Toronto, we're in that annual zone of pop culture appreciation as Fan Expo wraps up and the hype surrounding the Toronto International Film Festival heats up over the next couple of weeks.
Commenter Brian Mitchell was asking about a singer that I hadn't heard before. Yumi Shizukusa（滴草由実）is a Kagoshima Prefecture-born singer and songwriter who also happens to be an artist and radio personality. From what I've read so far, she retired from singing about half a decade ago but had been active between 2002 and 2021. There's one song from her 2015 album"Blue" titled "All My Life" that attracted my friend's ears.
According to her J-Wiki profile, Shizukusa delved into soul, rock and pop and with "All My Life", it feels like some especially sultry R&B...perhaps with some 90s dance beats and tribal percussion. I get the vibe that I have heard it somewhere before but I can't really remember when and where, and the J-Wiki article on "Blue" doesn't specify any tie-up between "All My Life" and any anime or commercial. But from the music video, I can see that it was filmed in Odaiba by Tokyo Bay.
Intending to write about this song, I couldn't help but post this photo of Tom Cruise by Gage Skidmore. Indeed, Cruise has played plenty of mavericks from IMF operative Ethan Hunt to US Navy ace pilot Pete Mitchell and he's going to play another very different sort of maverick in "Digger".
First off, I have to say that I had never encountered the expression hamidashi（はみ出し）before. According to Jisho.org, it means "sticking out" or "protruding" and with the longer expression hamidashi mono（はみ出し者）, it means "maverick" or "nonconformist" which fits the images of "a person who sticks out". Initially from what I could glean of the expression in hiragana and kanji, I'd thought that it meant "teeth sticking out", so just imagine all of the definitions given in this paragraph, implied or otherwise, and the ever-smiling Tom Cruise would be the sample picture in the Japanese dictionary.
And so, we come to the late Hiroyuki Okita's（沖田浩之）third single from August 1981, "Hamidashi Champion"(Maverick Champion). Just out of a sense of whimsy and curiosity, I wanted to check out what singles were being released at the end of August (which is when I'm writing this one) back in 1981, and sure enough, this was the only one. Written by Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）and composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, having the rock guitar flailing away was the appropriate thing for a song about a lone wolf winner. One would think that "Hamidashi Champion" was used for some sort of high school drama or a commercial about motorbikes, but it was actually utilized for a Morinaga confection ad.
Interestingly enough, "Hamidashi Champion" hit the shelves only some weeks after the release of the romance movie "Endless Love", the debut film for Cruise.
If you haven't heard we've lost a few famous people this week. The one that Caught my attention was the passing of Peter Cullen, who if you were not aware is famously known as the voice of Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh (yes really), and the leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime.
I remember being 12 years old the first time I went to the theater to see Michael Bay's 2007 Transformers. Seeing Optimus Prime transform on the big screen will always be a core memory for me. He was quite literally the coolest thing I had ever seen, he was essentially a Gundam with the personality of Superman.
And hearing him speak?
It was like hearing the voice of God.
Even as an adult, listening to Prime hype up humanity as a cause worth fighting for still sends chills down my spine.
As I got older, however, the Michael BayTransformers movies became less appealing to me as I started noticing more and more of their flaws. Thankfully, a friend of mine did me one of the biggest favors of my life and introduced me to the original 1986 The Transformers: The Movie.
Two things immediately jump out at you when watching this film. First, the animation is a huge step up from the original cartoon.
Second?
The music.
I'm giving this soundtrack five Michelin stars, because Stan Bush absolutely cooked.
Other artists helped, obviously. Shoutout to Lion for delivering one of the best renditions of the original "Transformers Theme," as well as "Weird Al" Yankovic for his wonderfully bizarre New Wave parody "Dare to Be Stupid."
But the real standout tracks are the ones performed by Stan Bush.
Rent must have been DUE, because this man went out of his way to craft two of the most aggressively '80s songs ever recorded.
The first is "Dare," which plays when we're introduced to the movie's main character, Hot Rod (You'd think that would be Optimus Prime, but, spoilers...It's not.)
And then there's the song that kicks in when Optimus Prime finally confronts Megatron for the last time:
"The Touch."
In my mind, "The Touch"is the theme song of Optimus Prime.
The song is pure, raw testosterone in synthesized form. Blazing guitars, triumphant keyboards, and Stan Bush singing like the entire fate of humanity depends on whether or not you believe in yourself. It's the ultimate pick-me-up.
Transformers has given me some fond memories growing up, and I'm grateful to have grown up in a world where a talking pick up truck taught me about the sanctity of human life. That was only possible thanks to the man behind the voice.
Knowing that I have mentioned curry-based kayo in the past, I have waxed philosophically on the type of curry I like. First off, I was weaned on the Japanese style of rice curry through the good folks at S&B but going into my university years, I did discover the varieties from other nations such as India and Thailand. I also discovered the limits of my gastrointestinal tract (but they were all tasty, I assure you).
Back in 2015, the Okinawan-based rock and hip-hop band Orange Range gave their tribute to one particular dish "Sushi Tabetai"（SUSHI食べたい）with help from a fellow named Soy Sauce（ソイソース）who's a guitarist from the band NAOTO. Over a decade later, the collaboration came up with a sequel in July of this year titled "Curry Tabetai" (Wanna Eat Curry). With a bit more rap and a tongue pressed further into the (curry-laced) cheek in addition to an even more deranged video, the boys focused their voices and stomachs on the wonders of the Japanese style of curry.
Well, whaddaya know? There was a method to the madness!
It was around a couple of weeks ago that I posted up "Those Sad and Lonely Tunes", an Author's Picks highlighting songs with titles that featured sadness or loneliness including Hibari Misora's（美空ひばり）classic "Kanashii Sake"（悲しい酒）.
Well, I may have stumbled across a cousin to "Kanashii Sake", and I believe it was sung on an episode of "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）recently. "Akachochin no Onna" (Woman of the Red Lantern) was enka singer Mieko Makimura's（牧村三枝子）7th single from March 1976.
Written by Hikaru or Ko Yabuki（矢吹光）and composed by Kiyoshi or Yo Maki（真木陽）, it actually starts out feeling a little scary or chilly because of that organ. If it hadn't been for the warmth of the bluesy guitar accompanying the organ, I might have given up on the song altogether but I'm glad that I didn't. But indeed, it is a sad song about a woman who's eking out her living at what is probably a forlorn drinking establishment (a lot of watering holes in Japan are symbolized by a red lantern). Yabuki's lyrics only consist of three 3-line verses but they give an adequate description of a lonely proprietress who hasn't spoken with loved ones in the longest time (out of shame?) and may have ended up at the bar due to romance trouble.
The song is given further pathos (and this could be important information for those karaoke singers out there) from Makimura's measured and seemingly defeated/exhausted delivery of the words.
My family has often wondered whatever happened to Makimura since she hasn't shown up on any kayo kyoku shows in many years. According to her J-Wiki article, she actually appeared on an interview show in 2023 and revealed that she had been battling cancer that arose around a decade prior. There's no mention on whether she was able to defeat it but she ended up moving from Tokyo to Shizuoka Prefecture where her relatives reside nearby.
As a PS for the songwriters' names, it doesn't happen often but occasionally, I come across names that I can't definitively identify and this time, it has occurred with both the lyricist and composer. If anyone can confirm or deny my attempts above, please let me know.
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