Well, Christmas Eve is less than 6 hours away and perhaps folks are now rushing to the stores, brick n' mortar or online, to get their last presents for folks. It would seem that in Japanese popular music, there may be a subgenre of sorts within the J-Xmas circle which could be called the "Sad Christmas Eve" songs. To explain, I have encountered some tunes which are lyrically centered around a very blue time for the protagonists on December 24th due to being alone instead of being with that significant other thanks to a lovers' spat or just not being lucky in love.
A couple of good examples of those are "Christmas Eve" by Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）and then Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）"Kimi ni Merry Xmas"（君にMerry Xmas). Both of them have wonderful melodies of the season but the lyrics may have certain listeners heading for the bottle.
I discovered another one recently and it's by someone that I've only found out about within the last year. Back in June, I was introduced to singer-songwriter Toko Okabe（岡部東子）and her "Vacancy", the lead track from the second of her two albums "Stay the Sun" which was released in October 1989, and it seems like Okabe had wanted to try some R&B or late 80s/early 90s City Pop for that album.
However, with her debut album earlier in February that same year, "Amnesia", there is this second track "Kata ni Fureta Christmas Eve" (Christmas Eve on My Shoulder). It's actually quite a lovely and poignant ballad written and composed by Okabe and arranged by Tadashige Matsui（松井忠重）about not only being alone during the Yuletide (which is seen as the second Valentine's season of the year in Japan) but simply unable to get across her feelings of love to a certain someone. In comparison with "Vacancy", "Kata ni Fureta Christmas Eve" has more of an ethereal pop flavour which reminded me of singers such as Chicaco Sawada（沢田知可子）and a 1990s Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）. Maybe in a way, there's even an underlying layer of 70s soft rock balladry in there as well.
Ah, I did find out that "Kata ni Fureta Christmas Eve" was actually released as a debut single for Okabe in 1988, according to her page on "Idol.ne.jp".
Hi, J. I picked up a copy of this a few months ago. I couldn't find a video at the time, but I was getting a bunch of other singles and there was a sale going on so I figured it was worth the risk. It was definitely worth the cost.
ReplyDeleteHi, Scott. Good that you got a copy. It's always nice when you can find a few gems here and there.
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