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No particularly good reason to do so but I just wanted to post up another Author's Picks with the theme today being "good" songs. That is to say, songs with "good" in the title and they are good songs, to boot. Plus, it is a Sunday so a lot of whimsy to share.
(1980) Plastics -- Good
(1988) Keiko Kimura -- Good Morning
(1995) Kahimi Karie -- Good Morning World
(2001) Kirinji -- Good Day Good Bye（グッデイ・グッバイ）
(2025) Mrs. GREEN APPLE -- Good Day
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Happy Mother's Day! Hopefully, wherever you are, you and your mother are enjoying a meal, flowers and other things this day. The above photo is that of a Chinese buffet and although we're not going to one tonight, we are going to get some Chinese food delivered to us on Mom's request. Calories be damned!
Speaking tangentially and delicately on buffets and calories, I have this song "Fatty" here by singer-songwriter Jun Matsue（松江潤）. Now, Matsue has representation here already as the leader of his later project Spoozys which was something of a late 1990s/early 2000s group, and from the songs that I've covered under that band name such as "Plastic Planet", we got to hear some raunchy techno rock along the lines of POLYSICS.
Well, "Plastic Planet" may have been Spoozys' debut outing, but "Fatty" was Matsue's first single all the way back in September 1993. And I'm assuming that it was also a track on his first album from that same year, "Sunny Pop Generation". It's definitely some sunny guitar pop/rock...venturing more into the Shibuya-kei sphere than technopop. Instead of POLYSICS, I get more Flippers' Guitar with perhaps a bit more liveliness in the guitar. Maybe it's not really a Mother's Day tune (well, with a title like "Fatty", it shouldn't be😨) but it can still fit the feeling of a nice sunny Sunday song.
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We are approaching the 45th anniversary of this Chage & Aska tune "TABIBITO" (Traveler) which was released on May 25th 1981 as the duo's 4th single. Compared to the slicker and older Chage & Aska that I got to know best when I was living in Japan (as you can see in the top photo), according to the cover of the single for "TABIBITO", the fellows were looking quite rugged back then.
Goro Matsui（松井五郎）was behind the lyrics while Chage took care of the music as Aska sang about heading to wherever to forget about a romance gone sour. Under Ichizo Seo's（瀬尾一三）arrangement, there is something quite Queen-ly or maybe even ALFEE-ish in parts of "TABIBITO" but then hearing Chage and Aska doing their harmonizing, I went, yeah, it's Chage & Aska!
The song peaked at No. 30 on Oricon. "TABIBITO" didn't get onto an original album initially but it was finally placed as a bonus track on the 1986 CD version of Chage & Aska's 3rd album from February 1982, "Tasogare no Kishi"（黄昏の騎士...Twilight Knights）.
2026 marks Haruo Minami's (三波春夫) 25th death anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, the Minami Creates team has bestowed upon us an official lyric video of one of the kayo world's most revered figure's long form kayo-rokyoku (chohen kayo rokyoku...長編歌謡浪曲) works, Nobunaga. On top of that, it was streamed on most, if not all, music listening platforms.
Seeing as how it's been a hot minute since I talked about Minami, here's a brief intro to chohen kayo-rokyoku, conjured up by the man himself. As the name implies, it’s an even fusion of kayokyoku (pop music) and rokyoku (narrative singing). Imagine a kayo or enka with its 3 stanzas. Now imagine fitting a rokyoku's fushi (the singing part) and/or tanka (the spoken part) into the kayo/enka's musical interludes. There you have the basic structure of one of Minami's music babies. Duration-wise, they can be as short as 4 and a half minutes or as long as 20 minutes, but are, on average, about 6 to 10 minutes in length. This makes them longer than the average 3-ish/4 minute kayo, but much shorter than the average 25-35 minute rokyoku set.
The idea of making rokyoku more quickly consumed and digestible, and thus more acceptable to a population that was beginning to lose interest and patience for the older genre, was a significant factor that pushed Haru-san to make this bite-sized (relatively speaking) fusion a reality. From my understanding, he'd already been thinking of some way to make “singable rokyoku” (utau rokyoku) since he restarted his rokyoku career upon returning from Siberia, where he'd been a POW. Despite switching career tracks (rokyoku artist to pop singer) in 1957, this idea began to take shape when Haru-san was given the rokyoku-like Otone Mujo (大利根無情) in 1959. Its massive success led to a him releasing a spate of rokyoku-inspired kayo and kayo that were based on actual rokyoku stars of the past, like Ippon-gatana Dohyo-iri (一本刀土俵入り), Tochuken Kumoemon (桃中軒雲衛門), and Meigetsu Ayataro Bushi (名月綾太郎ぶし). Still, I'd say these were still more kayo than rokyoku at this point.
I believe that it was only in 1962 when Haru-san first experimented with longer forms of this genre with Soga Monogatari (曽我物語). This fresh take on kayo-rokyoku finally came into the limelight in 1964 with the heroic, Chushingura-affiliated drama Tawaraboshi Genba (俵星玄蕃). Since then, Haru-san would regularly create chohen kayo-rokyoku for the next 30 plus years of his life, making Japanese historical figures, folk tales, and rokyoku more accessible to the average pop music listener.
Moving on to the song itself. Nobunaga is one of Haru-san’s many self-written projects, albeit one from later in his life, having been released in January 1992 in an album of the same title. This tune is not to be confused with Oda Nobunaga (織田信長), which Minami created in January 1970. The latter is considerably shorter at 4 minutes, while the latter is twice its length at 8 minutes. Nevertheless, I think Nobunaga can be seen as a plus alpha to Oda Nobunaga. If it's not already apparent, these 2 songs were based on the revered daimyo regarded as Japan's first unifier.
From what I gather, Haru-san mainly focused on the infamous end to the daimyo in Oda Nobunaga, wherein he perished in the Honno-ji temple fire ambushed by his once-trusted retainer Mitsuhide Akechi. The later Nobunaga includes this incident, in addition to listing the efforts the daimyo made to bring the fragmented lands under his rule, which, aside from waging several important battles, included improving transport networks and loosening trade barriers across the Kansai region. One such policy was the raku-ichi-raku-za, which made trade possible anywhere within castle town grounds, as opposed to having it be restricted to designated areas. Music-wise, both of Haru-san's Oda-centred works have proud and heroic-sounding melodies, fitting for an all-powerful daimyo. However, I feel that Nobunaga is elevated by Nobuyuki Sakuraba's (桜庭伸之) fantastic arrangement, which paints a Oda in a more intimidating and powerful light with the thunderous rolling drums; the ko-tsutsumi and flute further draws out an air of ancient grandeur.
My knowledge on Japanese history before the Taisho era is paltry, and I know next to nothing about Oda. So, listening to Nobunaga and its predecessor took me back to my old days. I remember learning about the likes of Taira no Kiyomori and Kinokuniya Bunzaemon through Haru-san's kayo-rokyoku, using them as stepping stones to delve deeper into that the drama of these figures online so that I could get more context to better understand his work.
When it comes to veteran actor-singer Yutaka Mizutani（水谷豊）, I will always think of him as the refined and cultured detective on "Aibou"（相棒）or as a rarin-to-go rookie cop in his younger days. Certainly, the song here would tend to emphasize my opinion.
Ironically, "Futsu no Love Song" (Just a Regular Love Song) wasn't used for a cop show. It was actually used for a 1982 NTV series titled "An-chan"（あんちゃん）which dealt with Mizutani's character who had been a pro wrestling manager and trainer before becoming a head priest and a counselor for troubled youth. But there's no doubting that the theme song sounds quite urban and urbane as crooned by the actor himself; it would sound just as fine as a theme for a regular detective show set in Tokyo. "Futsu no Love Song" was created by the golden duo of lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）.
