Young 101 -- Kaiju no Ballad（怪獣のバラード）

 

Earlier today, I wrote on Fuyumi Sakamoto's（坂本冬美）newest single, "Saikai Sakaba"（再会酒場）, and did a little mention of the expanded version of "Uta Con"（うたコン）tonight while wondering what the reason behind the special 70-minute show. Well, it turned out that a chunk of the broadcast was dedicated to commemorating the originating network NHK's 70th anniversary this year, and not surprisingly, the Kohaku Utagassen's first televised broadcast back at the end of 1953.

I've seen my fair share of music shows on NHK and the other commercial networks including "Uta Con" but there are many that I never got to see, and one of them which did get featured during the retrospective was "Stage 101"（ステージ101）on the national broadcaster. Although obviously, there were weekly music shows that came onto NHK dating back to the 1950s, "Stage 101", which lasted between 1970 and 1974, was touted as the first music show directly aimed at the younger audience. It was titled that way because the show took place at the network's CT-101 studio in Shibuya which had once boasted the largest such space in East Asia.

"Stage 101" had a changing group of hosts which included Tetsuko Kuroyanagi（黒柳徹子）, a former NHK announcer herself who would gain far more fame later as the host of TBS music ranking show "The Best 10"（ザ・ベストテン）. Plus, it had a group of dancing and singing men and women known as Young 101（ヤング101）who kinda looked like a massive group of The Partridge Family. Strangely enough, Young 101 had future soloists Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）, Akira Kushida（串田アキラ）and Hiroko Taniyama（谷山浩子）as members.

A number of original songs came from "Stage 101", one of them being "Kaiju no Ballad" (Ballad of the Magic Dragon) which was written by Fumiko Okada（岡田富美子）and composed by Osamu Shouji（東海林修）as this Sunshine Pop feel-good tune which probably became a mainstay for high school glee clubs everywhere in Japan. The lyrics have a caravan of happy people inviting a dragon to not just lie in the desert but to join them for a trip to the wondrous ocean. The dragon apparently accepts. "Kaiju no Ballad" was released as a single in September 1972.

To finish off, "Stage 101" was replaced by "Let's Go Young"（レッツゴーヤング）the following month, another music show for the younger generation which had a much longer run.