My Heisei by J-Canuck

As I write this, Japan is now in the last 24 hours of the Heisei Era, a period of time that I was happy to have spent much of in Gunma and then Tokyo/Chiba. Of course, being the sentimental and nostalgic guy I am, I've decided to put out a small list of the singers and bands which fairly screamed "HEISEI" to me. I'm not going to so much highlight any particular songs but rather put them up as representatives in this Author's Picks this time around...just the artists themselves. Moreover, this is a personal list; I'm not basing this on Oricon charts and numbers of albums sold. It's all about the affection for certain folks that hit the big time during this time, and to be honest, my picks will mostly be in the 1990s.

1. Wink

"Samishii Nettaigyo" was a title that I couldn't remember or say at all even though this was a Wink single that had just gone gangbusters when it was released in July 1989, a few weeks before my arrival in Gunma Prefecture to teach at the junior high schools there. All I could say was "that WINK song"! With expressions and movements reminiscent of porcelain dolls, Sachiko Suzuki and Shoko Aida struck me as being the anti-aidoru: no smiling and no skipping around. Their time at the top was relatively brief but boy, did they pack their hits in.

2. B'z

As I mentioned in the actual article for "Bad Communication", this was the song that woke me up during my mornings in the first year of my Gunma stay because of Rie Miyazawa in those computer commercials. Takahiro Matsumoto and Koshi Inaba did it fun and did it loud and have continued to do so right to the end of Heisei with other rockers such as "Be There" and "Love Phantom". I always wondered which would win the ultimate battle between Inaba's voice and Matsumoto's guitar.

3. Kazumasa Oda

(covered by Chris Hart)

Still awfully hard to find any of his original solo songs on YouTube but that hasn't deterred me to include the former member of Off-Course on the list since this was an artist who managed to come up with his own sound separate from the one that he and his bandmates created back in the 70s and 80s. "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" was just one example of how he put together those synthesizers and those other instruments to come up with tunes for himself and other singers that would put him up as an urban contemporary balladeer in the last decade of the 20th century.

4. Namie Amuro

I guess for a lot of people that when Namie Amuro announced her retirement from the music business a couple of years ago, they figured that the Heisei Era really was heading for its end. She was one of the first singers that I heard on landing at Narita to start my second stint as an English teacher, this time in Tokyo. She wasn't just dynamic, she was a dynamo! Dancing, singing, showing off her fashion, Amuro started off a pop cultural trend all her own for a few years and I think she was one of the factors in the Komuro Boom that took over J-Pop for the middle years in the 90s. In fact, I still remember being in an Ikebukuro game centre one Saturday night and while my friend was doing his games, I was in a music video capsule watching her "a walk in the park".

5. Ayumi Hamasaki

I wasn't ever a huge fan of Ayumi Hamasaki but as much as Amuro had taken the Japanese pop world by storm around the middle of the 1990s, Hamasaki carved her huge slice of the pop culture pie by the end of that decade and into the new century. There isn't too much exaggeration involved here when I say that ads plugging her next big single and her appearances on "Countdown TV" were basically everywhere.

6. Dreams Come True

This was another band that was making its mark especially in the early 1990s. When I saw that "Music Station" episode on my host family's TV back in 1989 and Dreams Come True make that introduction with a beaming ear-to-ear Miwa Yoshida declaring herself in English, I felt that there was a seismic shift in pop music. I had equated Dreams Come True as a Japanese version of Swingout Sister but that wasn't quite accurate. They also had their own unique voice of sunny uptempo songs and heartbreak ballads.

7. Sing Like Talking

These guys may not have become hugely known on television per se, but I am so glad that I found out about Chikuzen Sato's amazing band and purely by mistaken identity. Cool and urban with plenty of soul, Sing Like Talking was a group that I had thought was another band whose name and output have largely disappeared from my memory. SLT, on the other hand, has stuck with me all these years and I've got a number of their albums to show for it.

8. Misia 

It was through the above video that I first got to know Misia. She among a few others symbolized my opinion that good ol' soul was coming back into Japanese popular music for a while from the late 90s, and that voice of hers was just incredible. One of my wishes that she will participate in the Opening Ceremonies for next year's Olympics...preferably to do a cover of Minako Yoshida's "TOWN".

9. Morning Musume

Just when I thought that the concept of female aidoru had gone onto the pop culture heap of history, Tsunku from Sharam Q took this group of runners-up in a television show singing contest and molded them into the core for Hello! Project. Morning Musume had some successes in their early years, but "Love Machine" in 1999 was the booster rocket that sent them soaring, and for a few years, the hits and the TV shows and the new members kept rolling in. It might be all about the alphabet teams now but for me and some of my contemporaries, Morning Musume was our beloved girl group.

10. SMAP

As was the case with Hamasaki, I was never a dedicated fan of SMAP's music although I did buy a few of their singles such as "Celery" and the super-catchy "Shake". But again, for many years, it just seemed that every one of their songs was destined to reach the top of the Oricon charts or at least hover in the Top 10 for several weeks. It didn't hurt either that all of the members achieved fame in other facets of mass media as well through dramas, variety shows, specials and commercials. I did enjoy my "Bistro SMAP", and wouldn't it have been something if it had still stayed on the air to host The Avengers?

My list is not a complete one by any means but I did want to keep things at 10, and obviously any music memories that you might have of the Heisei Era may be vastly different from mine. So I offer the invitation to commenters and fellow contributors alike...if you have your own Heisei list, by all means, let us know! Meanwhile, let's get ready for Reiwa.