Sayuri Ishikawa -- Tablet Boogie（タブレットブギ）

 

Ordering stuff via a tablet has been around for many years in Japan. In fact, when I was still living there, I remember being with buddies at a fairly refined izakaya in Shibuya and we were ordering drinks and food via something that Geordi LaForge would have held on the Enterprise-D. Selecting songs on a tablet at karaoke had already been part and parcel of the modern singing experience.

The photo at the very top was one of my shots when I was having lunch at a kaiten sushi restaurant in Akihabara. It was a fully automated facility so it did feel rather strange being alone having lunch at high noon.

Even here in Toronto, I've gotten very comfortable going through the self-checkout at the supermarket. And yet, when I head back to Japan on a visit, I may be a little nervous paying for stuff at the local konbini because I don't possess a smartphone so no apps to display to pay for any bento and the like.

Maybe that's what enka legend Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）is singing about in her latest single which came out....well, today, on CD although the digital version has been out for a few weeks now. Her "Tablet Boogie" seems to be a direct 21st-century descendant of Shizuko Kasagi's（笠置シヅ子）"Kaimono Boogie" （買物ブギー）in terms of lyrical content and boogie style, although the lyricist is KREVA of Kick the Can Crew and the composer is Seiji Kameda（亀田誠治）from Tokyo Jihen（東京事変）; incidentally, Kameda's wife happens to be singer Satoko Shimonari（下成佐登子）.

Ishikawa has been a very game singer in terms of trying out genres outside of enka, whether it be smoky torch song jazz and even something with dance club beats which I can't quite remember. Of course, there is her start as an early 1970s aidoru. But this time, she's going for the boogie-woogie of the 1950s (with a touch of rockabilly) as she seems to be singing about reassuring folks that the current digital revolution in everyday life is going to be OK and everyone will get used to it swimmingly. Let us hope so.

Spitz -- Hibari no Kokoro（ヒバリのこころ）

Koshy Koshy from Wikimedia Commons

My last posting on the veteran pop-rock band Spitz（スピッツ）was just a few months ago when I wrote on their 48th and most recent single "Mishiranu Ito"（見知らぬ糸）from 2026. I mentioned that even after all those years, Masamune Kusano（草野正宗）and company still retained that ol' Spitz sound which gained them fame and popularity thirty years ago.

Well, this time around, I'd like to go all the way back to their very first single just to see how it sounded. I'm all for investigating anything under the Early Installment Weirdness tag, and Spitz is no different. In March 1991, the band released "Hibari no Kokoro" (The Heart of a Lark). Before I found out what the word "hibari" meant in this case, I'd wondered half-jokingly whether Kusano had a thing for the Grand Old Dame of Kayo Kyoku, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）, but such was not the case.

Nope...from what I could glean, Spitz's first is all about transitions: going from winter to spring, going from melancholy isolation to hope and renewal. And apparently, the lark represents a reawakening spirit soaring high into the sky, fresh and vibrant, ready for new adventures. Kusano's vocals are the reassuring anchor for Spitz fans while the melody by him is a bit more into the jangly rock than I usually hear by the band. Some of the music video includes footage taken from a bus of the Ibaraki Prefecture countryside. MV director Tetsuro Takeuchi（竹内鉄郎）evidently failed to get his credits for graduation because he had been busy on this production, but I've got a feeling that he still did OK regardless. Interestingly enough, "Hibari no Kokoro" would be used seven years later as the commercial song for NHK's coverage of the Nagano Olympics in 1998.

Keiko Mizukoshi -- Meguriai Surechigai（めぐり逢いすれ違い）

 

Singer-songwriter Keiko Mizukoshi's（水越けいこ）may not be the most well-remembered chanteuse of the kayo kyoku age, but I think folks of a certain age will hear her 1979 hit "Hoho ni Kiss Shite"（ほほにキスをして）and get all nostalgically warm and fuzzy on the inside. I guess that would be especially true since the song has a bit of that 50s feeling in there, too.

Well, going to her even earlier days in her debut year of 1978, Mizukoshi released an album and a couple of singles with her second single being "Meguriai Surechigai" (Encounters and Near-Misses) from November of that year. Written and composed by Kaoru Ito（伊藤薫）who would come up with the singer's breakthrough in "Hoho ni Kiss Shite" many months later, "Meguriai Surechigai" sounds more conventionally kayo and a refined one at that; maybe it could have been a theme song for a television drama. There is that plunky piano in there and Mizukoshi's vocals zip smoothly over the staff until they suddenly go up into the stratosphere at the end of each chorus.

Compared to her more modestly-ranking debut single which topped off at No. 72, "Meguriai Surechigai" managed to switch the digits and get up to No. 27. In fact, it did even better than "Hoho ni Kiss Shite" which peaked at No. 33, so go figure on that. The former song is also included on Mizukoshi's debut album "Lady" from December 1978 which ranked in at No. 17.

Towa Tei -- Nothing Else 2

Well, maybe it's a little early in the week to feature something avant-garde but I couldn't quite help it here. It does bring here some of the old with some of the new.

I'm writing about Towa Tei's latest single from August this year, "Nothing Else 2", which is this cute little technopop piece by the Japanese DJ and musician with help from Bose from the rap group Scha Dara Parr（スチャダラパー）and Oto Fukuhara (福原音). Perhaps Tei's lyrics and their delivery may be enough to get listeners into a trance-like state but the blippity-bloppity music can still poke one into full wakefulness. And then there is the music video which looks like a crazed AI collage of 1960s Japanese rom-com movie scenes instructed to have full fun by themselves. Generally speaking, I think the setting is some sort of onsen somewhere. "Nothing Else 2" is also a track on Tei's latest album "Zambient" from September.

Eri Nitta -- WHO?

 

I was watching a shortened version of "Asaichi"（あさイチ）last night (it was the usual thing that parliamentary deliberations truncated the coverage) and I noticed one of the guests. She was a cheerful young-ish middle-aged woman with a dirty blonde short cut, and then one of the hosts introduced her to the audience: Eri Nitta（新田恵利）! 

Good heavens! I hadn't seen Nitta anywhere on television for decades. The only footage was through old coverage of her time when she was a part of Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）in the 1980s. The lady has obviously aged in the last thirty years but then I recognized those eyes and that smile.

Well, I figured that I just had to begin this business week of KKP with a Nitta song. But not being a huge fan of hers, I had to think about that one. In the meantime, I looked at Marcos' article for her No.1 hit, "Fuyu no Opera Glass" (冬のオペラグラス), and then I saw one comment at the bottom. Though the commenter stated that he/she wasn't a huge fan of hers either, he/she had to admit that there was an affinity for Nitta's January 1988 8th single "WHO?". The commenter even provided an URL to a YouTube video showing her performing it on stage...although the video has since been deleted.

But I've got the recorded version above. Although it's an aidoru tune, "WHO?" also has some Eurobeat pumping blood in there as the lass sings about being rather cynical toward love on the outside but still feeling quite vulnerable and open on the inside. Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）wrote the lyrics while the song was composed by Ken Nishizaki（西崎憲）; he's not only a composer but also a translator who has taken care of the works of Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle (maybe the song title should have been "WHODUNNIT?"). In any case, "WHO?" made it up to No. 21 on Oricon.

Mariko Ashibe -- Hodou no Ballerina（舗道のバレリーナ）

Yahoo.jp

The above is a shot of one of the photos inside Mariko Ashibe's（芦部真梨子）1984 album "Street Scandal ~ Machikado wa Kiken ga Ippai"（ストリート・スキャンダル –街角は危険がいっぱい...The Street Corners are Filled with Danger）. It's nice to get the full title at last. Regardless, I guess Ashibe, which was the name that the Hyogo Prefecture jazz singer was adopting at the time, enjoyed a bit of perilous intrigue back then.

I've already spoken on a couple of other tracks from "Street Scandal": "Highway Dancer"（ハイウェイ・ダンサー）and "Private Friday"（プライベート・フライデー）. For today, let's go with "Hodou no Ballerina" (Ballerina on the Pavement), and maybe that's what Ashibe was trying to attain with her photograph. Considering that the song was written by Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）and composed by Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）, the high-falutin' suspense was most likely guaranteed. The background strings give "Hodou no Ballerina" a touch of elegance and the overall arrangement makes the song feel like a pop adventure among the bright lights of Paris.

City Craft -- Shiroi Ame（白い雨）/Omoide Tsuzure Ori（想い出つづれ織）

 

I started the file on the folk duo City Craft（シティ・クラフト）back in 2021 and I'm still none the wiser on who these guys were although a few of their records have shown up on YouTube in the last little while.

But one thing is true. A lot of their activity happened during the year of 1981, including the revelation of their song "Niji wo Kakete Miseru"（虹を架けてみせる）which was one track on their album released in the same year "Kisetsufuu"（季節風...Seasonal Winds）. Two other tracks on "Kisetsufuu" were flip sides from an 1981 single.

That single was "Shiroi Ame"（White Rain）. I recall posting something on the 1977 "Gin no Ame"（銀の雨）by folk singer-songwriter Chiharu Matsuyama（松山千春）a few days ago. Well, this is the white variety and it depicts a bossa nova rhythm written and composed by Shunichi Tomori（戸森俊一）with Motoki Funayama（ 船山基紀）handling the arrangement. I gather that this is another example of a folk singer of those times pushing past genre boundaries and trying something more cosmopolitan although I think Tomori and partner still manage to retain their folksy delivery.

The B-side, "Omoide Tsuzure Ori" (A Woven Tapestry of Memories), handled by the same songwriter and arranger, is more of a return to folk although one of more dramatism and classical influences. I even hear a bit of Pachelbel and perhaps a bit of The Eagles in there.