Tatsuro Yamashita -- Endless Game

 This was actually the very first Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）song I'd ever heard when I was in Japan on the JET Programme in the early 90s. For some reason, his tunes either didn't seem to reach my old radio program "The Sounds of Japan" in Toronto or I simply hadn't been aware of them.

As it turned out, "Endless Game" was atypical of the usually sunny and upbeat Yamashita songs of the 80s. It is a somewhat melancholy piece with a lonely-sounding trombone during the instrumental bridge. And that's because Yamashita was pegged to write this song as the theme song for a dark TBS drama called "Yuwaku"(誘惑...Temptation）. However, the B-side for the single was back to the summery Yamashita with "Theme from Big Wave". For the first song, though, Yamashita took care of almost all of the instruments except for the trombone and the drums which were handled by veteran musician Jun Aoyama（青山純）.

Yamashita's 20th single was released in April 1990 and peaked at No. 5 on the Oricon charts. More than a year later, it was one of the tracks on his 10th album, "Artisan".