The Works of Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）

Last Saturday, I did my article on "Oricon Top 5 Most Commercially Successful Lyricists" and after noting that Yasushi Akimoto was now at the top of the heap, usurping the legendary Yu Aku（阿久悠）, I figured that it was time to talk about some of his creations in this Creator article.

First off, some information about the man himself via Wiki and J-Wiki. Along with his hats of music producer and lyricist, he's also contributed in the production of a lot of movies and TV programs including dramas and anime and has written novels including the horror "Chakushin Ari"（着信アリ）which would become a movie that would be further adapted into a Hollywood flick "One Missed Call" in 2008.

Akimoto was born in the Tokyo area in 1958 and during high school in the 1970s, he was so inspired by a radio program on the Nippon Broadcasting System that he wrote up around 20 pages of notes for the show and caught the eyes and ears of radio personality Koushin Okuyama（奥山侊伸）, eventually becoming his apprentice after hanging around the radio station often enough. He would then become a broadcast writer but after a period of time, Akimoto soon began to feel that this wasn't exactly the thing that he wanted to do for the rest of his career. He was then introduced to music critic and producer Ichiro Asatsuma（朝妻一郎）at what is now the Fujipacific Music Inc. music publishing company which is where he started his new job as a lyricist.

Of course, when anyone who knows about J-Pop hears the name Yasushi Akimoto, the three words which come to mind are aidoru, aidoru, aidoru....and a whole bunch of alphabet letters. The first time that I saw that famous arrangement of letters and numbers, AKB48, it was on the side of a huge truck rolling in Akihabara naturally. I wasn't sure if the code was referring to some sort of drug or something. Of course since then, there have been a whole bunch of other letter-number combinations representing female aidoru groups such as SKE48, NMB48 and SDN48. Basically, Akimoto is to these groups as Tsunku（つんく♂）has been to the girl groups under the Hello Project! banner.

To further hammer in the nail, on his J-Wiki profile, there is a list of all of Akimoto's No. 1 hits. The vast majority of them involve aidoru singers starting with Momoko Kikuchi's（菊池桃子）"Sotsugyo" in 1985. His latest 204th No. 1 was attained less than a couple of weeks ago with STU48's "Omoidaseru Koi wo Shiyou"（思い出せる恋をしよう）. Moreover, he's been married to former 80s aidoru Mamiko Takai（高井麻巳子）.

I've not been a huge fan of the AKB48 and company fare since they began in the mid-2000s but I have enjoyed listening to some of their songs such as "Koisuru Fortune Cookie" (恋するフォーチュンクッキー). However, for this article, I wanted to focus somewhat on his non-aidoru works simply just to let everyone know that he hasn't been all about the teenyboppers.

Akimoto's first assignment was coming up with the lyrics for an insert song on the 1980-1981 anime "Tonde mo Senshi Muteking"（とんでも戦士ムテキング...Muteking The Dashing Warrior）, but unfortunately, I couldn't find that on YouTube. However, I was able to find his first set of lyrics for a musical act, and that was Alfee（アルフィー）. It was actually the B-side, "Kotoba ni Shitakunai Tenki"（言葉にしたくない天気...Weather That I Don't Want to Put Into Words）, to the band's 11th single, "Toori Ame"（通り雨...Shower） which was released in October 1981.

"Kotoba ni Shitakunai Tenki" which was composed by Alfee members Konosuke Sakazaki and Toshihiko Takamizawa（坂崎幸之助・高見沢俊彦）is a fairly bouncy City Pop/AOR number. Akimoto basically wrote a story that a weatherman would probably have loved in which a fellow ends up breaking up with a lady and describes the experience in terms of weather. Yes, every woman has a heart that forecasts sunny with cloudy periods. The melody is fun to listen to since it has that mixture of Billy Joel and down-home City Pop guitar, and who knew that Alfee could pull off that genre?

Speaking of City Pop, Akimoto also provided one of the princes of the genre, Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）, with a couple of his trademark tunes, "Dramatic Rain"（ドラマティック・レイン）of 1982 and then a decade later, "Christmas Carol no Koro ni wa"（クリスマスキャロルの頃には）became one of the most popular J-Xmas songs ever..

In 1983, Akimoto and folk/rock singer-songwriter Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi（長渕剛）worked together on the latter's 11th single "Good-bye Seishun"（GOOD-BYE青春...Good-bye Youth）, a surprisingly uptempo tune about bidding a perhaps not-so-fond farewell to the teenage years after a lot of trouble. The single went all the way up to No. 5 on Oricon. Those Inagaki songs and this one with Nagabuchi helped raised the lyricist's profile.

Akimoto's first brush with a large group of female aidoru was with Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）in the mid-1980s and of course, he and composer Jun Sato（佐藤準）made a huge and notorious splash with the doo-wop "Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide" （セーラー服を脱がさないで）.

The lyricist also had a relationship with the popular comedy duo Tunnels（とんねるず）in the 1980s which included some parodies of enka/Mood Kayo such as "Ame No Nishi Azabu" (雨の西麻布). Then in the 1990s as a new theme song for the duo's long-running comedy show "Tunnels no Minasan no Okage desu"（とんねるずのみなさんのおかげです）, Akimoto and composer Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）came up with "Gajaimo"（がじゃいも）, a song about a heroic spud, which was a No. 1 hit after its release in January 1993 and ended up as the 36th-ranked single of that year. The lyricist really played up the ballad of this titanic tater as he tries to rescue the lovely May Queen from the clutches of evil.

According to J-Wiki, the title was the way that Tunnels' member Takaaki Ishibashi's（石橋貴明）toddler daughter said jagaimo（じゃがいも）, the proper pronunciation of potato.

Going back to 1982 and speaking of Junichi Inagaki, Akimoto was the lyricist on this B-side for his 2nd single "246:3AM". Titled "Gin de Asa made"（ジンで朝まで...Gin 'Til Morning）, when I listen to this and the ones that I've heard above, I think I kinda know why he's been able to slide so smoothly into writing lyrics for aidoru singers. He seems to have enjoyed providing words to those very peppy songs. With Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）behind the melodic equivalent of a high-speed road trip in a convertible, Akimoto weaves a story of a happily feckless guy reassuring a not-nearly-as-happy love that everything will be OK despite an "accident" of sorts and that nothing is so bad that can't be solved with a bottle of gin. Naturally, her parents may beg to differ.

I'll finish off by highlighting what was probably one of Akimoto's most significant set of lyrics and those were for Hibari Misora's（美空ひばり）"Kawa no Nagare no Youni" (川の流れのように). I'm not sure whether Misora or anyone had known at the time when this song was released about how serious her cancer was but even if that hadn't been the case, I can only imagine the pressure that Akimoto and composer Akira Mitake（見岳章）must have felt in creating what would become the grand coda for the Queen of Kayo Kyoku's career and life. Misora's life is still annually remembered and given tribute on the kayo shows and specials, and ultimately "Kawa no Nagare no Youni" is sung by everyone.