FIELD OF VIEW -- Totsuzen（突然）

Welcome to November 2019! Yup, once again time seems to have snuck up behind us and surprised all of us with the penultimate month of the year. The snow didn't come at us as Halloween trick-or-treaters had feared but according to one of my friends on Facebook, some of the white stuff did hit his neighbourhood briefly this morning, although I doubt that there was any accumulation.

As much as I poke a little fun at the contemporary aidoru groups such as AKB 48, SKE 48 and NGT 48 by calling them the alphabet idols, I also fondly remember a lot of the bands from the early 1990s as the Scrabble or Scramble groups since they had names that looked like they had been formed by randomly selecting alphabet tiles from a pouch. I'm thinking of B'z, ZARD, ZYYG and REV.

But there was one band from that time which had a unique name to be sure but at least it did come out as a coherent phrase, FIELD OF VIEW. Starting as view in 1992 under the Being label, the quartet of vocalist Yuuya Asaoka（浅岡雄也）, drummer Takuto Kohashi（小橋琢人）, guitarist Takashi Oda（小田孝）and keyboardist Jun Abe（安部潤）put out their first 2 singles which didn't exactly light any fires. However with a style change of doffing their casual wear for some smart suits, and picking up two more words to their name, FIELD OF VIEW made a re-debut in 1995.

Their 4th single, "Totsuzen" (Sudden) was released in July 1995 and became their best hit chart-wise when it peaked at No. 2 on Oricon. It's a song that brought instant recognition to me after so long, mostly through its use as a commercial tune for the drink Pocari Sweat. With lyrics by Izumi ZARD Sakai（坂井泉水）and music by Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）, a couple of song-smiths that were prolific during the 1990s, "Totsuzen" relates the story of a guy who may have been given a second chance at a relationship due to a sudden letter from his old flame. I also noticed a certain musical riff in there which reminded me of part of the melody in the SMAP super hit, "Sekai ni Hitotsu dake no Hana" （世界に一つだけの花）.

Selling 1.2 million copies (and perhaps truckloads of Pocari Sweat), "Totsuzen" managed to finish the year as the 22nd-ranked single for 1995. It also made it onto FIELD OF VIEW's debut album "FIELD OF VIEW I" released in October of that year and hit the top spot on the album charts and even became the 43rd-ranked album within those last three months.

Keyboardist Abe left the band following their 5th single to be replaced by bassist Kenji Niitsu（新津健二）. FIELD OF VIEW would release 22 singles and 5 original albums. Their last three singles up to mid-2002 would have the band picking up a definite article so they were known as the FIELD OF VIEW before finally calling it quits.