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.
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.
It's been several years since I posted a Yuuto Tatsumi（辰巳ゆうと）song onto KKP and he's done some evolving over the years at least from what I've included in his file on the blog. I started with his 2nd single from March 2019, "Otoko no Junjou"（おとこの純情）which was a straight-up enka and then followed up with his 3rd single, the more Mood Kayo"Sentimental Heart"（センチメンタル・ハート）, a March 2020 release.
Well, six years have whizzed by and the young lad has become a man with a change in hair colour, to boot. Tatsumi appeared recently on NHK's "Hayauta" with his latest from March 2026, his 10th single"Lonely Generation", and to be honest, I'm having the Dickens of a time trying to categorize this one. Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）, who usually composes Junretsu's（純烈）songs, took care of this one.
As a brief aside, when I was looking through the KKP Miyuki file, I noticed that I had completely forgotten to add the music genre to Junretsu's "Futari dake no Himitsu"（二人だけの秘密）, probably because I couldn't really nail down an ultimate genre; in the end, I put it down to pop (of the kayo kyoku style).
I was having the same slight dilemma with "Lonely Generation" which was arranged by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）and written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）. With those veteran guys behind it, there is something old-fashioned if very jazzy about this one. It's definitely not enka anymore although it may be a mix of some Neo-Mood Kayo and jazz/rock fusion. So, why not give it the New Adult Music tag although I've also thrown in the pop tag here, too, because it can perhaps fulfill the Neo-kayo kyoku feeling.
As the title states, the song is about isolated young folks struggling to make connections while not admitting to the loneliness. I would usually think Shibuya would be the setting for this sort of song, but the music makes me think more Akasaka and Roppongi. Maybe young Yuuto is making like an employee of the month at a host club there.
It's been an interesting decade and a half since I got back from Japan for good since at about the same time, Japanese gastronomy as it applies to my hometown really started to evolve. During my childhood, it was all about the generalist Japanese restaurant which covered everything through courses such as the teriyaki course, the tempura one and the sushi one. But then from around 2011 or 2012, various ramen chains that started from Vancouver made their way across Canada to Toronto starting with Kinton and that made a huge splash. Then, it was the izakaya boom, Japanese cheesecake and then more specialized fare including udon and tonkatsu.
At least some of these restaurants have also been aware of the Japanese pop culture scene. Kingyo, when it was a full izakaya at the time, decorated its walls with pachinko machines and used to play anime on its back wall, and recently as a converted izakaya/food store, it's had a playlist of Japanese music coming through the speakers.
In the past year or so, there's even been a new place that's brought a bit of Japanese into the old-fashioned diner and even it has mentioned its own Spotify playlist. It's quite the bounty and Cafe Citypop has stuff including Junko Yagami's（八神純子）boppy "Jealous" and Kirinji's（キリンジ）snazzy "Hi Zero Wa Game" (非ゼロ和ゲーム...Non-Zero Sum Game). But it's not all City Pop and I was able to find one song in the list that I hadn't heard before.
Akiko Ikuina's（生稲晃子）"Omedetou"(Congratulations) is a track from her 2nd and final album to date, "Nihon "Ikuina" Kikou"（日本「生稲」紀行...Japan "Ikuina" Travelogue） which was released in August 1989 to a No. 33 ranking on Oricon. "Omedetou" may not be a City Pop tune per se, but it sure is catchy and refined. And as soon as I saw the arranging and composing credits belonging to Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）from Tohoku Shikansen（東北新幹線）fame, I knew that I was going to get something infectiously good. It's got the nice slow-to-medium-tempo groove and an effective combo of keyboards in play. Kazuko Sakata（さかたかずこ）took care of the lyrics.
For the first number of times that I saw Akemi Ishii（石井明美）on television and heard her on the cassette player, she seemed to be that young singer who loved some of that spicy Latin sauce in her music through songs like "Cha-Cha-Cha". Then a few singles in, I heard her "JOY" from July 1987 and figured that she could do the straight-up pop song as well.
Well, now I've just heard the B-side from "JOY" and now it's been affirmed that Ishii was able to come up with the odd City Pop song. "Yasashii Hito"(Nice Guy) was written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, quite the golden duo of songwriting, and it's a smoky nocturnal number which includes a bluesy sax solo. I gather that the title is meant to be an ironic one since Ishii keeps singing "You are cruel!" at the end of each chorus. Betrayal in the big city can be a City Pop trope.
