Ryuichi Sakamoto -- Opening and Closing Themes for "YOU"

 

I have to admit when I heard about this 1980s NHK show "YOU", I was reminded of that hilarious bit in impressionist/actor Kevin Pollak's act about William Shatner promoting a self-help show called "YOU". It starts at about 1:45 in the above video.

Well, as it turns out, NHK Educational TV's (Channel 3) 1982-1987 talk show "YOU" was made as an information program targeting youth. According to the J-Wiki article for the show, a similar preceding effort, "Wakai Hiroba"（若い広場...Young Plaza） which had been on since 1968 was basically on fumes near the end with a rating of basically zero! I think that was a pretty loud-and-clear signal right there and so the powers-that-be ordered an overhaul.

The new show needed to be cooler and jazzier so the concept was laid out that it had to have high school-age kids in the audience in the form of a town hall setting. Popular copywriter and songwriter Shigesato Itoi（糸井重里）was brought in to be a co-host along with co-hosting TV personalities including actress Keiko Oginome（荻野目慶子） (older sister of 80s aidoru Yoko Oginome) and singer Michiko Kawai（河合美智子）. 

"YOU" also had various regular segments such as "Seishun Playback"（青春プレイバック...Salad Day Playback） which featured celebrities showing a particular place like a hometown school that became a turning point in their younger lives. There was even a segment which featured the late great Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）giving seminars in music composition. I would love to see that but alas, I couldn't find any sign of it anywhere online especially since occasionally, his two bandmates from Yellow Magic Orchestra, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and also recently departed Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）, had also joined in.

Not surprisingly, to add to the coolness factor, Sakamoto was contracted to come up with the opening and ending themes for "YOU". It wasn't exactly precedent-setting since The Professor had come up with a theme for the evening news broadcast on the main NHK channel a couple of years earlier. Neither of the themes had official titles but I think that at least for the opener, "YOU" is a good enough title because the second-person pronoun is repeatedly thrown out there by Sakamoto and other background singers. It's a testament to his genius as a songmaker that a simple technopop ditty that he had created 41 years ago and that I only heard for the first time yesterday has burrowed itself deep into my head. As for the illustrations in the opening credits, they were provided by Katsuhiro Otomo（大友克洋）, the creator of "Akira".

The ending theme is similarly technopop but it has that cool-down feeling which would be logical after a session with Itoi and company. It does give me that image of happily coming out from under an eavesdropping after waiting for several minutes for the rain to stop.