Seikima II -- Rouningyo no Yakata（蠟人形の館）

 

Looks like Episode 7 of "Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!!"（ガンバレ!中村くん!!...Go for It, Nakamura!）is now in the record books. This time, it used the well-worn anime plot device of having the main characters go through a scary place...and for this episode, it was the school after dark. From the few excerpts available, it appears that Nakamura-kun was able to turn the tables on good ol' Hirose for once. 

As has been the case with every episode, the ending theme for Episode 7 was again another throwback to the past. Furthermore, as was the case with Episode 4's ender, Barbee Boys' "Makeru mon ka"（負けるもんか）, this one is also a song that I had never heard before.

For one thing, it's a heavy metal tune and I don't really listen to the genre. Mind you, Seikima II（聖飢魔II）does have representation on KKP via its "EL-DO-RA-DO" and I'm going to add its second entry here with "Rouningyo no Yakata" (House of Wax) which supposedly ended Episode 7, and yeah, why not end this scare-themed entry with a song titled after a famous horror movie from the past? 

Released as Seikima II's debut single in April 1986, the former Demon Kogure（デーモン小暮） plays his role perfectly as one of Satan's best right down to the delivery of his terrifying warnings. I have to say that his singing voice is quite pure...almost angelic, but don't tell him that. The single managed to reach No. 17 on Oricon. Words and music were provided by Damian Hamada（ダミアン浜田）.

To continue to show that Demon Kogure now Demon Kakka（デーモン閣下）is really a fairly mellow guy, here is his interview with British talk show host Jonathan Ross. 

Wow! I can actually say that this is a trailer that reveals nothing of the movie itself. I actually caught "House of Wax" at the theatre when it was given a re-release during my university years.

Sachiko Nishida -- Acacia no Ame ga Yamu Toki（アカシアの雨がやむとき）

 

I heard this one last night on "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）for the first time, and it was originally sung by Sachiko Nishida（西田佐知子）. "Acacia no Ame ga Yamu Toki" (When the Acacia Rains Stop) was Nishida's 13th single from April 1960 with Kaoru Mizuki（水木かおる）as lyricist and Hideyuki Fujiwara（藤原秀行）as composer. Delivered in a sad and resigned tone by Nishida, it recounts the story of a lady whose paramour has suddenly left her bereft of love and hope. The horns led by a crisp trumpet sound forlorn and melancholy.

Strangely enough, through a 2003 magazine article via J-Wiki, the story goes that "Acacia no Ame ga Yamu Toki" was the song that a lot of young folks protesting the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty ran to like a buddy giving solace when things didn't go their way. Perhaps they were crying in their beer as this song was playing in the bars and izakaya. Another tidbit from J-Wiki is that Nishida had been struggling with singing the song until lyricist Mizuki helped out by saying that it had been based on famed author Kojiro Serizawa's（芹沢光治良）1947 novel "Paris ni Shisu"（巴里に死す...A Death in Paris）. Nishida would then record it while thinking of images from the City of Lights.

Eventually, "Acacia no Ame ga Yamu Toki" would hit the million-record mark in sales by 1968. Nishida would also sing the song at her second appearance on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen in 1962, a year after she'd performed her more famous rendition of "Coffee Rumba"（コーヒー・ルンバ）on the same stage. She also sang "Acacia" on the 1969 edition of the Kohaku. In 1963, a cinematic adaptation of the song was produced which had Nishida in a supporting role.

"Good" Songs

Wikimedia Commons

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

Jun Matsue -- Fatty

Wikimedia Commons

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.

Hidemi Ishikawa -- Hey! Mister Policeman（Hey! ミスター・ポリスマン）

 

One of the more common catchphrases and situations in anime at one point, the "moshi, moshi...keisatsu desu ka" (Hello, is this the police?) was definitely the existential salve for one character to erase the presence of a more troublesome character. If a 911 response in Toronto were only that quick nowadays...

Anyways, the preamble ramble this time is for Hidemi Ishikawa's（石川秀美）5th single "Hey! Mister Policeman" which first made its presence known in May 1983. Written and composed by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）, perhaps she was inspired by The Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman" in terms of the title and the catchy rock n' roll arrangement by Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）. As for Matsumiya's lyrics, I'm not sure whether Hidemi-chan is calling for a cop to stop a particularly pesky (and perhaps wealthy) suitor from following her or perhaps she's asking for the officer to stop the guy himself from moving his eyes to other female targets other than her. 

According to the J-Wiki article for "Hey! Mister Policeman", it was Ishikawa's first single to get into the Top Ten of Oricon by placing in at No. 10. Furthermore, according to the aidoru's then-manager, everyone had been so busy that they didn't have enough time to take a suitable photo for the single jacket. While everyone was wringing their hands at this situation, Ishikawa and company went down to Guam for filming during which they ran into a local police officer, so taking advantage of things, Ishikawa was able to get some cute photos with the cop. There was the bright idea about using one of those Hidemi-and-cop shots as the jacket, but they simply weren't in time for the first production run of the record. Basically, the result was that "Hey! Mister Policeman" ended up with two different single jackets that you can see in the video above. I guess all involved made do with one of those initial photos after all.

Chage & Aska -- TABIBITO（放浪人）

 

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）.

Haruo Minami -- Nobunaga (信長)

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. 

To be honest, Haru-san has recently taken a bit of a back seat, what with Hachi and Mr. Nakano usurping the majority of my attention. Wading into rokyoku territory and watching the odd narrative-singing show live, usually at Asakusa's Mokubatei theatre, has ensured Haru-san got some love outside of his birthday and death anniversary celebrations - it's so hard to love all my bois equally. But even with that said, I've fallen behind on delving deeper into his discography, so Minami Creates dropping Nobunaga on 14th April (the day of Haru-san's death anniversary) was a welcomed present. 

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 naniwabushi (the older term for rokyoku)” (utau naniwabushi) 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. 

For reference, here's Oda Nobunaga

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.

Haru-san had written in one of his books Utagei no Tenchi (歌藝の天地) that one of his wishes was for the world to remember his songs, even if it's been 2 decades since his passing and his name forgotten. The Minami Creates team, helmed by his daughter Miyuki Minami (三波美夕紀), seem to have been working tirelessly over the years to make sure this wish of his comes true. Well, suffice to say that, 25 years after his passing, the name "Haruo Minami" is still remembered alongside his chohen kayo-rokyoku.