The Works of Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）

 

In the last few months, I realized that I was doing a disservice to arranger Motoki Funayama by not mentioning him in a large number of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" articles. Although I had long been mentioning lyricists and composers, I never really included arrangers for whatever reason. However, the fact that I kept seeing his name in the songwriting notes for songs and I was reacting with a "What?! He arranged THIS song?" much in the way that I had first reacted on seeing the late composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）in a huge amount of kayo and J-Pop, I figured that the Tokyo-born Funayama had to get his due on KKP. The tipping point was when I was writing up "Oricon Top 5 Most Commercially Successful Arrangers", I discovered that he was the second-most prolific arranger after Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）. Keeping on the Tsutsumi connection, according to Funayama's J-Wiki biography, the arranger had the biggest association with Tsutsumi in terms of songs arranged.

Funayama was born in Meguro Ward, Tokyo in 1951 and from a young age, he had been interested in maps and sheet music, and on entering elementary school, he was on the bass drum in the school band. Jumping to his higher learning days, he attended the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University but kept his music connections by participating in the High Society Orchestra there where he was the concertmaster as he played the saxophone. However, according to the above video interview, Funayama mentions that he was absolutely horrible on the sax due to his inability to improvise...so I gather that jazz musician wasn't going to be one of his titles.

Once he became a junior at Waseda, he began working at the Yamaha Music Foundation including their Popular Song Contest where he learned the basics of music arrangement. Soon after, he dropped out of university and from 1974, he went on the path of a freelance composer and arranger.

(cover version)

According to J-Wiki, the first song that he arranged was "Azami-jou no Lullaby" （アザミ嬢のラライ）for singer-songwriter Miyuki Nakajima（中島みゆき）in 1975. Knowing Nakajima's distinct melodies and singing style, perhaps I can say that Funayama had a good hand in creating that style.

(short version)

Funayama's first big success was Kenji Sawada's（沢田研二）"Katte ni Shiyagare"（勝手にしやがれ）from 1977 for which the song earned a Japan Record Award Grand Prize. That dramatic bullfight intro probably has gone down as one of the more famous in kayo.

Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）"Robot"（ロボット）from 1980 was one of those Tsutsumi/Funayama collaborations and it was another winner for both since Sakakibara ended up appearing on the Kohaku Utagassen because of its hit status. As such, Funayama was also willing to get into the synthpop craze of the time, and it's interesting in J-Wiki that following his stay between 1981 and 1983 in Los Angeles, he decided to purchase a Fairlight CMI synthesizer. He then incorporated some of that computer technology into the music for some of his other clients later into the decade.

One of the songs mentioned taking on that synthpop style is "Romantic ga Tomaranai"（Romanticが止まらない）by C-C-B in 1985. This was another Tsutsumi/Funayama collaboration with Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）as the lyricist. It is one of the band's trademark tunes and the arrangement was impressive enough that techno group Denki Groove（電気グルーヴ）adopted one riff from "Romantic ga Tomaranai" into their kakkoii "Nijuu-ichi Seiki mo Motetakute"（２１世紀もモテたくて）.

However, it wasn't all upbeat music with Funayama. He also arranged Mayumi Itsuwa's（五輪真弓）1980 hit "Koibito yo"（恋人よ） as this epic heartrending ballad dealing with an absolute end of an affair. The version above is fine, but I think the original recorded version with the strings hits the heart best. If there's an image created thanks to the arranger's work, it's that of the saddest person in the world lingering in a French café while the relentless rain represents the tracks of his tears. I wonder if an arranger comes up with those images as well when coming up with a way to illustrate a song to the finest degree.

There's no way that I could ever come close to totally encapsulating the oeuvre of Funayama's work no matter how grand I make this Creator article, so I will just include one more song here, and that would be Wink's "One Night in Heaven" from 1989. I have this one here because the arranger worked on so many of the duo's songs and I gather that his Fairlight CMI was helping out in the work behind this hit.

Anyways, more to search in the blog to see whether I have to put in the Motoki Funayama label. As of the 1990s, Funayama was also working on anison and commercial jingles along with songs by the various Johnny's groups. As of 2019, he has more than 2700 songs to his credit.