Japan Billboard: Special Interview with Tetsuji Hayashi, Masao Urino and Toshikazu Kanazawa ~ Unraveling the Origins of City Pop and the Background to Its Popularity (Part 2)

 

Last week, I began the 3-part series on KKP of a translation of a 2021 article involving an interview with singer-songwriter Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, lyricist Masao Urino（売野雅勇）and music journalist Toshikazu Kanazawa（金澤寿和）. There they talked about the origins of City Pop including the term itself. Part 2 will continue this conversation (the link will just take you to Page 1 of the original conversation; scroll down and find "NEXT PAGE" to go to Page 2).

Tetsuji Hayashi: At that time, did you really feel that kind of trend or mood (of City Pop)?

Masao Urino: It was just (Yoshitaka) Minami for me, although in the West, there was Boz Scaggs.

Toshikazu Kanazawa: But in contrast with the literature whiz kid* (Takashi) Matsumoto, Mr. Urino, you had a direct link to City Pop thanks to you creating those slogans.

Urino: Yeah, yeah. It was the world of symbols, after all.

Hayashi: I also thought that Mr. Urino was the right person. Actually before we met, I had read that book about you, "Poolside ni 3B to Staedtler wo Kure" (Get Me a 3B and a Staedtler by the Pool) after which I got the impression that you really lived the City Pop and AOR life. All that stuff about you owning an old Benz and heading out to Oiso (a resort town) on the weekends.

Urino: Ah, you're talking about the Nagisa Hotel. Sorry, but that's all a lie. It's something the author whipped up (LOL).

Hayashi: REALLY?! But I'd thought that it would be really cool to be a lyricist based on the image from that. That was truly the lifestyle symbolized in the 1980s.

Kanazawa: It was the world that the students and the twentysomethings dreamt about back then.

Hayashi: But that world didn't look bad at all.

Kanazawa: That's where the difference lies between now and the City Pop of those times. The young generation of today is pragmatic and they have no need for anything like cars. They don't even want to become adults. Even if the sound takes us back to the 80s, the lyrics seem like they've gone back to the folk era before then. 

Hayashi: I see. Realism ends up on the page. That's why there is a large number of words crammed in there**.

Urino: There's no space between the lines and the feeling of expression is rather thin.

Hayashi: Whether it was with the lyrics or the melody, the image was entrusted with the listener back then. Nowadays, that comes out directly from the song. It's neither good nor bad, but that's what youth culture is all about today.

Kanazawa: It's also been included in your collection, but what do you think of Junichi Inagaki's "Omoide no Beach Club" (The Old Beach Club) that you co-wrote with Mr. Urino? For that matter, how do you feel about Kiyotaka Sugiyama, Momoko Kikuchi and Carlos Toshiki?

Hayashi: The ambience that symbolizes that era, the lyrics and the sound are all urban, but within all that, there is a sense of basking in that afterglow.

Urino: Even with Yuming, although her lyrics had that realism, I feel that there was that little bit of refinement. Triangle Production's (the music entertainment agency that Suigyama et al had belonged to at the time) output under director Koichi Fujita was trending in that direction as well, and he gathered the right staff for that. There was Mr. Hayashi, Chinfa Kan and then I came along a little later (laughs).

Kanazawa: Did Triangle songs stress lyrics more?

Hayashi: They stressed melody more.

Kanazawa: And the images and keywords were coming from Triangle?

Hayashi: They were particular about the lyrics when it came to the singles.

Urino: Oh yeah. First with the melody, the basic policy was that if it wasn't cool then it wasn't going to be made. When the song was completed and Mr. Fujita was inspired by it, it was at that point that the images came up and then we lyricists went into discussion. Wouldn't it usually be the case that the lyricist thinks up the title? However, he himself took on that prior step and then he met with the lyricists. So, if there was a good idea, our meetings could get very long (laughs).

Kanazawa: It was the age of the tie-up songs which was also very 80s.

Hayashi: That was only natural. There were the traditionalists who never got carried away by trends and there were also the haters, but there were people who emerged at that time such as Chinfa Kan and Haruki Murakami who had that feeling of change and wanted to create new things.

Urino: That's why I intentionally used proper nouns in my lyrics. When I started writing, Ginji Ito was close by and he taught me various ways to write lyrics. So when I put down product names like Coppertone, Volkswagen, Levi's 501 and the Beetle***, they were very popular.

Hayashi: That was the 80s for you. It was just from that urban sensation that the world expanded. It was symbol culture.

Kanazawa: That's also been included in the illustrations of Hiroshi Nagai and Eizin Suzuki, hasn't it?

Hayashi: There were those cassette index cards by them inserted in FM Magazine. They had settings like hotels with pools.

Kanazawa: Mr. Hayashi, how do you see the current boom?

Hayashi: I heard about it from Mr. Urino. I just went "Really?" (LOL).

Urino: I found out online that covers of "Mayonaka no Door" were becoming hits. There was a talk show and I was gathering topics to talk about. That's when I contacted Mr. Hayashi.

Kanazawa: But there were already quite a few covers of "Mayonaka no Door" and it's been a staple for Japanese DJs for over 10 years. The groundwork in Japan had already been established to some extent.

Hayashi: I was told that the 80s stuff was coming back, but there was no big wave...

Kanazawa: But there was in Western music. Bruno Mars, for instance. Tuxedos and the like were showing up in places that were really into it****.

Urino: Oh, really? That's interesting.

Hayashi: I'd assumed that rap and hip-hop wouldn't last too long but they're now mainstream. And making music has changed. From the point of view of the melody maker, there has been a feeling of being neglected. Therefore, I feel that when Bruno Mars performed American music that no longer existed in America today, there were people who were starving for that music and so he cleaned up at the Grammys. Maybe it has something to do with his upbringing.

Kanazawa: He is a Hawaiian who came from a mix of cultures.

Hayashi: I think that he's been familiar with melodious songs since his childhood such as those from the band Kalapana.

Kanazawa: Speaking of Hawaii, it's been said that City Pop has been accepted overseas due to Yacht Rock and Vaporwave. Yacht Rock is known as AOR here in Japan but there was no AOR boom in America so that led to a re-evaluation of the genre. There was a hint of poking a little fun at celebrities through it, but it looked fresh to the younger generation.

As usual, there are some areas as you see above with the asterisks that I wasn't completely sure about and as was the case with Part 1, I wouldn't mind a bit of a peer review especially of those areas.

*「文学少年的な松本さん」I'm not sure whether Kanazawa was being a bit snarky or complimentary but as such, I put it down as "literature whiz kid (Takashi) Matsumoto".

** 「だから言葉数が多くて余裕がない。」Directly translated, it comes out as "That's why there is a large number of words and there's no room" which sounded a bit awkward so I went with "That's why there is a large number of words crammed in there". I believe Hayashi was saying that Neo-City Pop songs or the like have been a little too wordy and there's little room for imaginations to breathe. Yeah, I gather that it's songwriter talk.

***「そこで僕がコパトーンやワーゲン、ビートル、501（リーヴァイス）って商品名を出すと、すごくウケましたね。」I've translated 「ワーゲン」as "Volkswagen" although it's right alongside the "Beetle" which was VW's most famous line of car, although Jisho.org has translated it as the "...Tamiya Sand Scorcher...sixteenth 1/10-scale electric radio controlled car kit".

****「でも洋楽にあったんです。ブルーノ･マーズ。マニアックな所でタキシードとか。」That final sentence was a bit of a corker. I put it down as "Tuxedos and the like were showing up in places that were really into it". I wasn't aware that tuxes were the thing of fashion during the 1980s along with skinny ties and big hair or that they were in again as a retro fad. But maybe someone else can explain this to me.

Anyways, I will complete Part 3 next Friday.