I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
Considering the title of this song, it's perhaps a tad early especially because I'm typing this after Saturday Lunch (which consisted of a couple of hot dogs, a blueberry muffin, and yogurt). Still, it's a fine opportunity for me to show off this photo of my breakfast at the famous family restaurant Royal Host in Japan. Good golly, they like making their toast nice and thick over there.
Once again, Nash Music Library cordially brings over their menu of whimsical musical delights including "Sunday Breakfast" from their February 2024 collection known as "Morning Chill". It sounds like a very languid version of Burt Bacharach style as if good ol' Burt were waking up way too early after a large night and stumbling about in the kitchen trying to make the usual Sunday breakfast. Perhaps he was only successful in making a cup of coffee by the end.⛾
The first time I ever saw Shigeru Izumiya（泉谷しげる）on television was years and years ago when he still had that fully black hair and full beard and moustache. Unlike the usual entertainers who were goofing and gabbing about, Izumiya rather scared me with his grumpy countenance and angry outbursts, and though it's hard to remember specific incidents at this stage in my life, I think he really was annoyed with his fellow entertainers, but that was his stock-in-trade and I believe that he was standing up for those viewers who were getting tired of the usual shenanigans.
It wouldn't be until years later that I found out that Izumiya hadn't been hired to be the Grumpy Old Man of the geinokai. He actually started his career as a folk singer in the 1970s. And earlier this morning, he had appeared on NHK's annual "Live Yell"（ライブ・エール）music extravaganza which has been treated as a summer version of the year-end Kohaku Utagassen. My impression is that it's an even more heartful music special dealing with specific issues of the year and for 2024, the show was addressing the tragic earthquake in the Noto Peninsula on New Year's Day and the growing isolationism among young people.
My impression of Izumiya is that he's mellowed out considerably and his frequent annoyed utterances are now delivered with a bit of a wink and smile. He performed his 2nd single from April 1972, "Shunka Shuutou" (Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter) with words and music created by him. Describing a man coming from very humble circumstances, he still invites the listener over for a bit of counseling and that although hard times have come in the past and may still come in the future, it's not the time to give up. I'd say that "Shunka Shuutou" is the perfect song for "Live Yell".
Not sure how long this video will stay up, but this is the actual performance by Izumiya on "Live Yell" today. "Shunka Shuutou" was also the title track for the singer's debut album which came out in the same month as the single. Izumiya made his first appearance on the aforementioned Kohaku in 2013 to sing this song with the purpose of giving his good tidings to all those getting their start in the working world in 2014.
"Dreaming Love" is a sweet soul ballad that is right up the alley of soul freak Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）and makes effective use of the electric sitar. As soon as the arrangement was done in the manner of Thom Bell who had helped produce The Delfonics and The Stylistics, there was probably no one in Japan who could match Tats. And within that, the horns and strings arrangement along with the precise positioning were magnificent.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised"(2020).
Looks like Kayo Grace has gotten dolled up for a night in the big city. Meanwhile, someone else has chosen to try out a hotel on the beach.
Well, specifically "Nagisa Hotel"(Beach Hotel) by aidoru Mayumi Hara（原真祐美）. This was actually the B-side to her 5th single from April 1984,"Wakatte My Love"（わかってマイ・ラブ...Understand Me, My Love）, and this one is a rather interesting tune in terms of the key and chords. Plus, there is this combination of the disco strings and 80s rhythm that skirts with City Pop. Written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Hiroshi Shinkawa（新川博）, Hara gamely sings in a soundscape that has its dramatic and doubtful verses which shift into a hopeful pre-chorus before things revert to a determined and perhaps heroic chorus. It sounds like one of those gang girl dramas on TV centering on one lass trying to get out of the life but having to literally punch her way through to the light.
As with my previous Hara outing, "Yuugure wa Love Song"（夕暮れはLove Song）, "Nagisa Hotel" was also a track on her 2nd album"Vert Clair"（ベール・クレール）from February 1984.
Kenji Haga（羽賀研二）is a long-standing tarento on Japanese television whom I've seen go through all sorts of trials and tribulations, and certainly a lot of his media exposure was due to his romantic relationship with fellow tarento and model Anna Umemiya（梅宮アンナ）beginning from the 1990s. What I hadn't known until I was well into doing the blog was that he basically got his start as one-third of the Ii Tomo Seinen Tai（いいとも青年隊...The Ii Tomo Youth Brigade） , the first group of song-and-dance men to perform on Fuji-TV's long-running noon time variety show "Morita Kazuyoshi Hour - Waratte Ii Tomo"（森田一義アワー・笑っていいとも....The Kazuyoshi Morita Hour: It's OK To Laugh) . Apparently back then, he used to put on the glasses to show off that intellectual beefcake look.
Eventually with his rising profile in the geinokai in the 1980s, one of his powers-that-be probably gave the order "OK, Kenji, you gotta cut a record!" as usually was the case with any entertainer. And indeed, Haga released a number of singles between 1982 and 2004 but with only two albums in 1984 and 1985. The first album was "Kouha Bigaku"（硬派美学...Hardline Aesthestics） and the glasses-less Haga looked all of fourteen years old (he was well into his twenties) on the cover. Maybe it was a Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）syndrome or something.
Anyways, one of the tracks on "Kouha Bigaku" is "City Alone" (and the above version seems to have been truncated). Haga appears to have taken on that bespectacled dandy-esque character from the top video when he recorded this one. His vocals sound a bit like crooning Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）while the City Pop melody by Kingo Hamada（浜田金吾）provides the atmosphere of the big, bad and lonely if fascinating metropolis. Yumi Yoshimoto（吉本由美）was the lyricist here.
Took a while to track this down. It was nine years ago that I posted "Refrain"（リフレイン）by Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）which was the B-side to the song of note for this article.
And this A-side was "Nagareru Mama ni ~ Rakka Ryuusui" (As It Flows ~ Mutual Love), Kokubu's 2nd single from April 1986. A ballad that was used as the theme song for the movie "Kizu darake no Kunshou"（傷だらけの勲章...Scarred Medal）, this is a Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）composition and it sure sounds like it: the soft flugelhorn and the wailing guitar solo; maybe the new thing is the additional flute. I can imagine Hayashi's other major client, Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）doing their own version of the song. Singer-songwriter Kumiko Aoki（青木久美子）provided the lyrics. Incidentally, the footage above is probably not from "Kizu darake no Kunshou" since the movie didn't star the whirling dervish that is vivacious actress Yuko Tanaka（田中裕子）as seen in the video, but I'm not complaining.
An 80s Hayashi ballad is always welcome here. Both "Nagareru Mama ni" and "Refrain" ended up on Kokubu's reissued "Steps +2" album from 2014 (the original had been released in 1987). And guess what? I see that I already put in my two cents on "Nagareru Mama ni" in that one, but hey, I can exercise my prerogative to take another look at it. And of course, I can simply mutter to myself about how my long-term memory is starting to deteriorate again.
Hello there. It's J-Canuck with Part 3 of the translation of music journalist Toshikazu Kanazawa's（金澤寿和）liner notes for Tohoku Shinkansen's（東北新幹線）one-and-only album"Thru Traffic" from 1982. Today's excerpt goes over the actual production of the album.
After Yamakawa’s entry into Yamaha, she joined Hiroko Taniyama’s（谷山浩子）band as a keyboardist just when Taniyama had debuted as a singer-songwriter. A little later, she also joined Junko Yagami's（八神純子）band because she was recognized for her ability to sing with a similar voice to Junko's. Later on, Narumi, who had become a university student by then, was starting to come to Yamaha frequently, and came to support the bands for Taniyama and Yukio Sasaki（佐々木幸男）. It was around this time that Makoto Matsushita（松下誠） (of the band AB’S and so forth), who was like a senpai to Narumi, began to notice him and gave him an electric guitar (up until then, Narumi just had the acoustic guitar). Then, Kazuo Nobuta（信田かずお）, who had provided support for singer-songwriter Akira Inaba（因幡晃）, had been an instructor at Nemu Music Academy (Yamaha Music Foundation’s original name) and Seiko Matsuda’s（松田聖子）first arranger, brought Narumi aboard for the recording by the band that Matsushita and Nobuta had formed, Milky Way. This was Narumi’s first official involvement in a recording. His strong admiration for guitarist David T. Walker, someone who the connoisseurs would know, came from Matsushita.
One day, there was an opening in Yagami’s band which Narumi filled at Yamakawa’s recommendation. Close in age and musical preference, Narumi and Yamakawa were influencing each other and they gradually came to lending a hand in the stage arrangements while both were in the band. A Yamaha director who was watching this suggested the following: “How about the two of you become a duo?”. This launched Tohoku Shinkansen.
The musical concept would be mostly based on AOR and Black contemporary music of the time. First and foremost, the aim was high-quality and refined urban music. Basically, they were looking at Gino Vannelli, Bobby Caldwell, Earth Wind & Fire, Quincy Jones, George Benson and Eumir Deodato. As well, the two of them, who liked the addition of chorus, shared an admiration for the jazz chorus group The Singers Unlimited. Moreover, neither of them loved songs with simplistic progressions and preferred something with cool tension chords.
Narumi:At the time, rather than us writing the songs, the melodies and the arrangements just seemed to materialize at the same time. For something like the first track, “Summer Touches You”, the song was born right from the intro.
Yamakawa: “Up and Down” was showing its influence from Earth Wind & Fire. Listening to it now, I think that part when the sound clicks out is a bit unnatural but I thought I sang it well.
Narumi handled all of the guitar playing. To him, this album was his starting point as a guitarist and for him to play the instrument on all of the tracks was a great source of confidence. Even on the instrumental track “Spell”, his David T. Walker-style of play was on full display. He would always use Walker’s favourite guitar, the Gibson Byrdland, which revealed an emotional depth of play that couldn’t be imagined within someone who was in his mid-20s. As well, he handled some of the keyboards where he showed some extraordinary prowess. Yamakawa was in charge of all of the keyboard arrangements as well as those for the horns and strings. While the basic arrangement was done between the two of them, Narumi was more than happy to rely on Yamakawa when it came to the score since that was her strong point. However, the biggest strength that the pair had together was their harmonizing. What showed that to its maximum was the jazz ballad version of “September Valentine”. This track was the only one created by a different artist, J-AOR singer-songwriter Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）. The song had been chosen as one where they wanted to make it sound like something by The Singers Unlimited. It had originally been recorded by Yukio Sasaki, and Narumi, who had been his support band member, was the first to notice the song. Kentaro Haneda（羽田健太郎）played the piano for the Tohoku Shinkansen version.
As well, bassists Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）and Kenji Takamizu（高水健司）, drummer Hideo Yamaki（山木秀夫）, percussionist Motoya Hamaguchi（浜口茂外也）, saxophonist Jake H. Concepcion along with several other famous musicians participated, but it was Yamakawa and Narumi who discussed and set the lineup, and it was through the former’s personal connections that the number of session musicians grew. Junko Yagami herself also joined in the backing vocals. A singer by the name of Chrissy Faith who was on backing vocals had been a backing singer for Rupert Holmes, an AOR artist who also provided Yagami with a song, “Koi no Magic Trick” (恋のマジックトリック...Magic Trick of Love) on which Yamakawa and Narumi also joined in on. The duet track “Tsuki ni Yorisotte” (月に寄りそって...Getting Close to the Moon) with its faintly wistful feeling sounds just like a Yagami song.
Yamakawa:Back then, we were together 100 to 200 days out of the year and we all got along so it’s no surprise that we naturally sounded like each other. Obviously, when we were in the backing chorus, we made an effort to follow each other and so we got accustomed to that.
Narumi:For “Last Message” (the final track), the lyrics came out first and as we read through them, our image for the song expanded, and we nailed down the melody within 3 minutes. Etsu sang this for us since they were a woman’s lyrics.
Toshikazu Kanazawa
September 2007
Next week will have the fourth and final part of the liner notes.
In reading up for this posting, I noticed that Hitomi Penny Tohyama's（当山ひとみ）album"Munasawagi"（胸さわぎ...Premonitions） has two different years that it was released depending on the website: either 1988 or 1992 which is quite the discrepancy. The person taking care of the Japanese-language site "90's City Pop Record Book" has given the theory that the 1988 was the original year for the LP while 1992 was the time when the CD version was put out onto shelves. Heck, I'm good with that.
One reason that I'm going with 1992 as the source year for "Munasawagi" is the second track "Itsu kara kashira"(Since When, I Wonder?) because the song doesn't sound like either the City Pop or the funky R&B that Tohyama was famous for during the 1980s. I've listened to it a few times already and I think that the song is a groovy light pop tune overall with an arrangement that sounds quite familiar for a lot of Japanese female singers back in the early 1990s. Megumi Ayukawa（鮎川めぐみ）was the lyricist here while Yukio Sugi（杉征夫）was the composer. In a way, it's kinda like Penny leaving the nightclub with the sun coming over the horizon and a morning on the way.
Well, the usual occupational hazard has happened again on KKP where I mention that I will follow up on something soon enough and actually years go by. Mind you, it's not quite Rip van Winkle time but I wrote up on Side A of the original classic LP "The Stranger" by Billy Joel from September 1977 back in March 2022. Cue ahead almost 26 months later...
"The Stranger" is one of those albums in music history where virtually every track is a winner, loudly or quietly, and I'm happy to finally show off Side B.
Maybe those 26 months were due to the fact that I'd been waiting for the official music video (only released two weeks ago) for "Vienna" which starts off Side B. It's one of the more unusual songs by Joel because I hadn't heard it as much as I did the title track "The Stranger" and "Just The Way You Are" on the radio, and for the fact that it does have that accordion-like instrument in there to hint at that trip to Vienna which young William had taken years back. In the Wikipedia article for "The Stranger", I noticed that both "Vienna" and "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" were mentioned in the same sentence and that fit for me since the former has that similarly wistful tone as the latter although "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" is on a much larger scale. What I hadn't realized was that "Vienna" was an analogy for Joel's wish as to how the elderly should be allowed to spend their last stage in life, so it's no surprise that the song has gained greater recognition as the years have gone by.
I was surprised to hear that "Only the Good Die Young" had been released as a single in May 1978 since the first time I heard it was as a B-side on one of Joel's other singles, interestingly enough. And the crazier thing is that I swear that I'd actually heard it for the first time as a jingle for some commercial although what the product was I can't remember at all...it probably wasn't one for the Catholic church, though. The concert video above has Joel introducing the song with a bit of snark that the lyrics have something to offend everybody and yep, Catholic groups weren't impressed (which has something in common with last week's ROY tune) by Joel's message that Catholic girls were the party poopers of adolescent oat-sowing. But dang, it's a fun song to listen to.😎
"She's Always a Woman" was yet another single from "The Stranger" and unlike "Vienna", it did get onto the radio quite often. I've paired "Vienna" and "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" together and so I can do the same with "She's Always a Woman" and "Just The Way You Are" in terms of the ardor that Joel's protagonists express for the women in their lives. However, "She's Always a Woman" has a bit more of a folksier bent as Joel sings about loving a woman not only in spite of but also because of her flaws.
"Get It Right the First Time" is one of the two final songs that never got a single release and never really seemed to get onto the radio. I first heard it years ago when an enterprising radio station finally opted to show off some of Joel's more unknown numbers, and "Get It Right the First Time" is a high-energy pop-rock tune about making sure one's ready for a first-time confrontation which could span between an intra-neighbourhood spat and a presidential debate.
"Everybody Has a Dream" is the final piece in "The Stranger" and it's a gospel pop song that I hadn't heard Joel tackle before. If the entirety of "The Stranger" was used for a concert performance and each track was performed in order, then this is the song to finish things off properly and satisfyingly see off the audience back home. Mind you, encores would be inevitable, though.
Now, for something as legendary as this album, I can only do the comparison with Japanese music by having the Top 3 albums of 1977 via Oricon underneath.
1. Hi-Fi Set Love Collection
2. The Eagles Hotel California
3. Kei Ogura Tosagaru Fuukei（遠ざかる風景）
And how about that? I've made this post just a week shy of The Piano Man's 75th birthday!
This isn't a Reminiscings of Youth article though that will be coming up soon enough. However, when I heard that Duane Eddy had passed away a few days ago, I felt like I needed to do some sort of tribute to the guitarist with his gift of twang.
Now, I know that the musician originally from New York State has had his own string of hits over the decades, but when I hear the name Duane Eddy, I'm always going to think of one song: "Peter Gunn". The original Henry Mancini version with John Williams pounding on the keys was one of the first songs that I remember hearing and internalizing forever but it was when Art of Noise did their hit cover of the song in 1986 that I got to hear Eddy for the first time and that got me to his own solo cover of "Peter Gunn" in 1959. In a way, it was Eddy's take with its more slithery rock n' roll vibe (including that sexy sax) compared to the Mancini swing jazziness that sounded even more dangerous and therefore more fitting in the world of detective Gunn.
Alongside Boz Scaggs' "Lowdown", I think "Peter Gunn" is the song to accompany you and your buddies if you're cruising down the nighttime streets of the city. My condolences to Eddy's family, friends and fans.
Although Torontonians learn never to say never when it comes to seasonal events such as snow, and yes, snow has fallen here in May, I think that we can all finally breathe some relief and perhaps do things such as change our snow tires back to summer ones. If you are Torontonian and you read this article, knock on wood firmly...just to be on the safe side.😉
Now, this is a song that I heard a few months ago on the "Weather Music" segment of "Weathernews Live" when snow was still all too real a thing in my neck of the woods. "Nagori Yuki" (Winter's-End Snow) has been a favourite of mine when I first heard it by 70s aidoru Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）on the 1982 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen and then heard the most famous 1975 cover version by folk singer Iruka（イルカ）. The original version was by folk band Kaguyahime（かぐや姫）and placed on their 1974 4th album, "Sankai Tate no Uta"（三階建ての詩...Three-Floor Poem).
The "Weather Music" segment had singer-songwriter Motohiro Hata（秦基博）perform his own take on "Nagori Yuki" and it still retains that wistful and woodsy flavour of the 1970s versions. There is nothing over-the-top here...it's Hata and his guitar for the most part, and that is all that is needed to send the emotion out to people. Hata's version was a track on an extra CD that was only available in the first pressings of his October 2010 3rd album"Documentary" which hit No. 3 on Oricon.
Welcome to Hump Day! Indeed, Wednesdays can be rather blah but over here at least, considering that we had a very waterlogged April, I'm happy that May has come in blazingly sunny and not too cold either.
A few years ago, I was once jokingly accused by a relative on whether I had become a hikikomori (a shut-in). I didn't counter too forcefully since, yes I admitted, I never really did go all that much and the pandemic was putting a major curb on person-to-person socialization. Plus, my room often appeared as if a mini-tornado had ripped through the place. But as it is in 2024, outside of the odd invitation to lunch, a movie or dinner, I'm usually as snug as a bug on a rug staying within the neighbourhood and writing out my two articles a day at least on "Kayo Kyoku Plus".
Recently, I came across this short and sweet video by singer-songwriter MAO,（眞魚）aka Tomoe Kurohata, a self-described outlaw and nerd. Titled "Hikikomori no Mainichi" (The Daily Life of a Shut-In), her song came out in the last couple of months, and I had been expecting something akin to technopop. Instead, it's a mix of rap and old soul delivered in a smooth velvety voice while MAO is sticking around in her room. Basically the attitude is "Heck, I'm done with the speeches...I'll be in my futon".
Looking at the video, I confess that MAO has one up on me in her circumstances. She at least seems to have a more modern and comfortable swivel chair than I do.🪑
I was doing my usual maintenance of the various articles on KKP recently when I came across the September 2016 article I did for LanLan Suzuki's（鈴木蘭々）EPO-penned bossa nova"Kimi to Boku"（キミとボク）. Now, as it turns out, that had been the one-and-only posting I wrote for this tarento that had once been all over television in the early years of my Tokyo/Chiba stint as an English conversation teacher.
In the crowded world of Japanese entertainment with its tarento, singers, thespians and comedians, Suzuki could stand out on her looks alone. She had that short but thick pile of hair, eyes as big as an anime character's, and a quirky personality. For all of her appearances, she had a brief and perhaps uneventful part of her career as a singer although her penultimate single "Kimi to Boku" is a very pleasant tune for the whole family. I did wonder what she was up to in the last twenty years or so and I'm happy to see that she has her own YouTube channel as is evident above. I also read on her J-Wiki profile that she released her first BEST album last year to commemorate her 35th anniversary in show business.
Well, seeing that I've only had the one Suzuki song represented on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I guess it's time to bring another one of her other songs to the fore. Instead of one of her last singles, I'm bringing aboard her debut single from August 1995, "Nakanai zoe" (Ain't Gonna Cry) which sounds like one cheerfully defiant tune with a hint of Motown written by Suzuki and Shin or Makoto Morizono（森園真）. The composer was none other than the late great Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）. Not sure whether that "zoe" at the end of the title is a childish suffix or some dialectal affectation but I wouldn't be surprised if Suzuki had said something like that on one of her shows sometime somewhere. "Nakanai zoe" was used as the theme song for a variety show, "Imada Koji no Shibuya-kei Ura Ringo"（今田耕司のシブヤ系うらりんご...Koji Imada's Shibuya-kei Rear Apple[?]）.
As for the romanization of her first name, I've come across either RanRan or LanLan so I gather that the lady has been rather liberal about how her stage name is read. Her real name is Tomoko Suzuki（鈴木智子）, by the way.
I failed to mention this yesterday but April 29th is part of the Golden Week holiday season in Japan and it's currently known as Showa Day. It had been celebrated as Emperor Hirohito's(the Showa era emperor) birthday until his death in early 1989 and then it was known as Greenery Day until 2007, when it was given its current name (Greenery Day is now May 4th).
Since there has been some nostalgic attraction for the culture of the Showa era (1926-1989), that's how I've usually seen Showa Day...not so much for the veneration of the late emperor but for what the times and trappings were like for ordinary people in Japan. Apparently, there is a Showa era museum in Aichi Prefecture as you can see above via MEGULOG's video. My particular examples of Showa era culture that regularly pop up in my memories are the old public phones of different sizes and colours, and the old-style kissaten as you can view in Mikki Café & Life below. Personally, my Showa era café will always be Café Renoir, the long-running franchise.
But of course, this being a kayo kyoku blog, I wanted to give my own contribution to Showa Day in terms of culture by providing some of the old songs. I'd wondered if I could find some sort of Top 5 list regarding memorable kayo kyoku but really couldn't find anything, so I've decided to come up with my own list of six songs representing each decade from the 1930s to the 1980s (sorry, couldn't remember anything from the 1920s). There wasn't any great research or all-night brain wracking for these songs...they just popped into my head and together they can perhaps show how music changed during the Showa era. So, without further ado...
As I mentioned in my previous article on Masako Oka's（岡雅子）"Yume Zaiku"（夢細工）, Japan has entered its annual Golden Week holidays and so has its television programming. So, this morning, instead of the usual hour-long NHK "News Watch 9", we only got an abbreviated version of the news for half an hour and then for the next hour, we were able to watch a new hour-long episode of "Sekai wa Hoshiimono ni Afureteru"（世界はほしいモノにあるふれてる...This World is Filled With Wants）, the program specializing on the voyages and adventures of Japanese buyers looking for innovative products to place in their stores back home.
"Seka Hoshi" did have a regular spot on either Tuesday or Wednesday but it's now been coming out as the occasional special. I've enjoyed the series as something calming to watch so I was able to lap up the latest trip by co-host Ryota Suzuki（鈴木亮平）as he enjoyed the sights, sounds and food of Italy including the magical city of Venice. I confess that I've never had much of a desire to travel but after seeing the images of the shops, canals and restaurants in the Italian city, some spark of interest welled up within me about this particular place.
Well, I figured that there must be a kayo kyoku about Venice somewhere since Shinichi Mori（森進一）was able to get a hit out of his 1982 song "Fuyu no Riviera"（冬のリヴィエラ）. And sure enough, it didn't take much of a search to discover that another enka veteran, Ikuzo Yoshi（吉幾三）, came up with his own tribute to Venice, "Venezia Monogatari" (Venice Story). A track from his February 2015 album"Ai Arigato"（愛・ありがとう...Love, Thank You）, Yoshi wrote and composed this love-drenched tale of romance within the City of Canals. With the instrumentation and rhythm involved, I have categorized it as a New Adult Music piece (somewhere between enka and pop) but there was still something...probably Yoshi's vocals...that still pulled the song strongly back to the enka side.
Happy Monday! It's just the start of another regular work week here in the Greater Toronto Area although we will be getting our first major holiday weekend for the summer season in a few weeks with Victoria Day. It is the beginning of the Golden Week holidays in Japan, though, and as a result, it feels that way in my household, partially because Jme has gone onto holiday programming with the regular shows going on GW hiatus.
Well, whichever side of the International Date Line you are on, let's proceed with this week's crop of kayo kyoku/J-Pop delights with a fairly unusual single. Masako Oka（岡雅子）doesn't have a particularly long J-Wiki file but she is a seiyuu, singer and radio personality although there is no discography listed there for her music. However, there is at least one of her singles up on YouTube titled "Yume Zaiku"(Dream Work) which was released in August 1981. Written by Man Kuroki（くろき漫）, composed by Koji Shiba（柴公二）and arranged by Tadashige Matsui（松井忠重）, it's a very polished piece of down-home City Pop with a touch of bossa nova, reminiscent of Keiko Maruyama's（丸山圭子）classic "Douzo Kono Mama"(どうぞこのまま）from several years back, and the cover of the single revealing an intentionally foggy photo of the singer giving that thousand-yard gaze seals the deal.
Now, the unusual part happens with a flip of the 45". The B-side is "Mako to Nonko no Gokigen Ikaga 1-2-3"(Mako and Nonko's How Are You 1-2-3) is a wholly different animal as Oka and Noriko Ishiwatari（石渡のり子）, another radio personality, make their tongue-in-cheek debut as rappers, some months following Blondie's "Rapture". Listening to it, I can't really take this song too seriously compared to the straightforward "Yume Zaiku". But it was indeed Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）of Yellow Magic Orchestra at the time behind its composition with Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and the comedy group Snakeman Show behind the weird lyrics. In fact, I'd say that the melody and at least some of the words sound rather familiar to me as I suspect that Snakeman Show may have done a cover of their own work.
Maybe one clue as to how Oka and Ishiwatari got together was the observation that both of them had their time as hosts on different nights for the April 1976-September 1977TBS radio late-night show "Five Sweet Cats"（5スイート・キャッツ）.
At first, when I heard this July 1932 record, "Kokoro no Niji"(The Rainbow of My Heart) by singer Wakako Maruyama（丸山和歌子）, I thought it was the legendary Masao Koga（古賀政男）behind its composition. My impression came by because of that particular guitar plucking in the intro, but the music was actually created by Shigeru Tamura（田村しげる）with lyrics by Koichi Hamano（浜野耕一）.
Maruyama, who was born in the Kanda district of Tokyo in 1905, was known for her especially high soprano, and that's certainly made clear in "Kokoro no Niji", a song about a woman pining for that special someone one night under the moon glowing through her bedroom window. Also because of that Koga reference, I was also left wondering whether "Kokoro no Niji" could be seen as an enka tune although the traditional genre only began retroactively from the 1950s and 1960s, but I can gather that at the time, it was more than likely treated as a kayo kyoku.
The singer started her career on the stage in 1931, but then moved to the recording booth before moving back to the stage again in 1937. According to a music writer's accounts from Maruyama's family, she was killed during the Tokyo air bombings in 1945. However, some 74 years later in 2019, a CD collection of 23 of her songs was released titled "Naicha Ikenai Maruyama Wakako no Heya 1931-1936"（泣いちゃいけない 丸山和歌子の部屋 1931-1936...You Mustn't Cry ~ Wakako Maruyama's Room）.
Earlier this morning, Scott from "Holly Jolly X'masu" cottoned me onto this very short-lived Group Sounds band known as The Sherries（ザ・シェリーズ）. Not surprisingly, because of the brevity of their existence, there isn't any J-Wiki page devoted to them but I was able to find one site which did feature them. Apparently, the band was formed from the remnants of another short-lived folk rock group called The Black Stones（ブラック・ストーンズ）which came out with one lone single.
Well, bassist Yutaka Miyagawa（宮川豊）and drummer Michihiro Tani（谷迪弘）formerly of The Black Stones got some new band members, including vocalist Tatsuo Kimura（木村達男）, to form The Sherries and as with their previous incarnation, they were able to put out just one single called "Omoide no Sherry" (Sherry, Come Back) in November 1967. Written and composed by the band with Kunihiko Suzuki（鈴木邦彦）arranging everything in what must have been one of his earliest assignments, it's very much along the lines of a GS tune but I also think it sounds fairly rough as if the five members were still in the act of gelling. Well, as it turned out, they never did gel due to some internal strife and that one single was all she wrote. The Sherries never did come back (thank you, I'll just see myself out).😁
One piece of trivia that I did find from the above site is that The Sherries, while they were still getting along, decided (or their manager decided) to perform the A and B sides from"Omoide no Sherry" continuously on stage somewhere for 32 straight hours. The gimmick paid off in the single becoming a minor hit.
One of the people I follow on Twitter put this 1986 song up a few weeks ago and wondered why it didn't get much more in the way of respect or rankings. To be honest, after listening to it myself, I'm also left in askance. Unfortunately, I've forgotten which person it was who made the initial call so let me know so I can give credit where credit is due.
I am talking about actress Miki Yamazaki's（山崎美貴）"Namida no Ato ni Kuchizuke wo" (Kiss After the Rain), and I note that the above profession is the only one listed for Yamazaki right off the bat and that her career origin year has been put down as 1988. However, looking further into J-Wiki, I found out that the Yokohama native who had won the White Cinderella contest while in high school in the early 1980s and then scouted in Harajuku got into show business as a magazine model. Then, she joined the late-night TV show "All-Night Fuji"（オールナイトフジ）and ended up joining two other girls to form the short-lived aidoru trio Okawari Sisters（おかわりシスターズ）in 1984 with four singles and one studio album going up to early 1985.
Yamazaki had an even shorter career as a solo singer with two singles and one album under her belt beginning in 1985. Her second single was the aforementioned "Namida no Ato ni Kuchizuke wo" which was released in March 1986. To me, it's the quintessential aidoru tune of the latter half of the 1980s with the singer surrounded by a creamy yet bopping keyboard arrangement thanks to composer Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）that has always been catnip for my Japanese pop-loving ears. Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）was the lyricist, and with those two behind its creation, I can say that it was most likely put in as aidoru material.
The song did moderately OK by scoring a No. 56 ranking on Oricon and that was the end of her singing career apparently, although I think her vocals were quite pleasant and pure. But perhaps with so many aidoru songs taking on that certain arrangement, the competition was probably a little too crowded and fierce for Yamazaki the singer to make much headway, so into acting she went a few years later.
Hopefully, you viewers out there are enjoying a far better and sunnier weekend than what we're getting right now in Toronto. It's pretty dreary out there and we just got the news that Southeast Asian hammerhead worms with acidic skin have invaded our province of Ontario which ought to make playing outside with the kids that much more exciting.
It was just a week ago when Takao Tajima（田島貴男）, aka Original Love, made his special appearance on NHK's morning show "Asaichi"（あさイチ）alongside the Friday episode guests Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra so that they could together give a rousing performance of "Mekureta Orange"(めくれたオレンジ). I bet any viewers were no longer groggy after that, especially fans of both acts.
Well, coincidentally, a few days ago, I came across this early Original Love song from their July 1991 debut album"LOVE! LOVE! & LOVE!" when the band was more than Tajima and had a few more members. The first thing I noticed about "Love Vista" is that it's over twelve minutes long! Not that I haven't encountered songs with epic times before...Chaz Jankel's original "Ai no Corrida" is around the 10-minute mark and one of his other tunes on his first album times in at around 15 minutes, but I think "Love Vista" may be the first Japanese pop song that I've heard that has gone into the double digits in terms of time.
But, hey, it's Tajima, so I gotta dive in. Right from the beginning, I get that beatnik psychedelic private underground party feeling from the mantra-like scatting by Tajima and the hypnotic rhythm including the percussion. The cover for "LOVE! LOVE! & LOVE!" seems just perfect for the song since I could imagine the vocalist and his guys sitting cross-legged with the ladies as they all zone out to "Love Vista".
A lot of the song is instrumental but the lyrics that Tajima provides weaves a story of some guy's intention to love a girl cell by cell. Looks like things are going to get really hot and bothered tonight. However, the music by the band is just as sultry and sexy and smooth as it mixes in jazz, soul and maybe some of the more placid take on psychedelic rock. I was kinda wondering about Shibuya-kei as well but that genre is more of a very extroverted sunny-side type of music out in the cafés and parks, and as I mentioned above, "Love Vista" has more of a secret basement vibe with lots of smoke from cigarettes and other paraphernalia and not a lot of light. And besides, I do remember the rumour of Tajima yelling at one concert, "I AM NOT SHIBUYA-KEI!".
Listening to "Love Vista" with all of those influences, I'm reminded of another song that invited in a few genres to its party with great success: Boz Scaggs' "Lowdown".
Listening to "Travelin' Heart", I thought of this as a resort tune reminiscent of the Fifth Dimension's"Up Up and Away" when right in the middle of the song, the chorus of "Up Up and Away" popped up! Through Tomofumi Suzuki's（鈴木智文）meticulous production and Noda's（野田幹子）classy vocals, this is a refreshing song to the ears and it's reminiscent of the resort pop at the time of her debut which had a fresh impression even in the 1990s.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
Yes, once again, we have Kayo Grace Kyoku tripping the light fantastic at the good ol' disco somewhere probably in Tokyo.
Speaking of disco, Rocket Brown let me know about this tune by vocal group The Gospellers（ゴスペラーズ）several weeks ago. "Fly Me to the Disco Ball" is the group's 49th single from February 2017. Despite the title, it doesn't have a single disco bone in its arrangement, and in fact, I think it's a rather elegant and inspiring soul tune. Written and composed by Gospellers singer Yuuji Sakai（酒井雄二）with a co-composing credit given to Shoichiro Hirata（平田祥一郎）, the J-Wiki writeup on the song noted Sakai's comments that "Fly Me to the Disco Ball" is reflecting the human desire to fly in spite of being bound by gravity.
The music video certainly has folks in the late evening trying to slip their earthly bounds and reach for the stars...or the disco ball. Or maybe that's simply the booze talking. Regardless, "Fly Me to the Disco Ball" made it to No. 14 on Oricon and can also be found on The Gospellers' No. 5-ranking"Soul Renaissance", their 15th album which was released a month following the single.
The song was also used as the theme for the amusement park Yomiuri Land's"Jewellumination"（ジュエルミネーション） display.
The above is Chikuzen Sato's（佐藤竹善）first foray into his "Cornerstones" set of solo albums which first came out in 1995, so if he's going to be releasing another one next year, the lead singer behind Sing Like Talking will be celebrating his 30th anniversary with his pet project of cover tunes. Unfortunately at this point, I only have his first one.
His eighth album from the series, "radio JAOR ～Cornerstones 8～" was released back in October 2022. I was able to find this one track which is a cover of Junichi Inagaki's（稲垣潤一）1982 debut single"Ame no Regret"(Rainy Regret) which was written by Reiko Yukawa（湯川れい子）and composed by Off-Course member Kazuhiko Matsuo（松尾一彦）.
The arrangement isn't all that different from the Inagaki original (and I just posted something about him yesterday) aside from some steelier synthesizers, and I think Sato may have tried to emulate Inagaki's delivery to a fault. I've been accustomed to the laidback crooning of Inagaki but Sato is one singer who I've known and admired for his boppier and soulful vocals so to hear him fairly drone out that first verse was a tad jarring, I have to admit. However by the end, it was the good ol' Sato making himself heard again. The album, by the way, reached No. 22 on Oricon.
If I'm not mistaken, the above shot is from one of the Sumida River ferries heading from Asakusa down to Odaiba in Tokyo Bay. Always putting up those condo buildings there.
Let's go further into Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP with "For a Week Story" by the pop duo sister act Milk with Ritsuko and Rie Miyajima（宮島律子・宮島理恵）. This was the first track on their 1987 album"Milk" and it was the A-side for the "For a Week Story" EP which also contained the previous song I posted, "Manazashi ni I feel so love"（視線にI feel so love）.
"For a Week Story" starts the vibe off for Milk's album and it takes off on a cool but also calm and collected strut down the street...kinda like Slow Jack Swing rather than New Jack Swing. I like the boogie beat and the beefy saxophone that accompanies the ladies on their night on the town. Rie Miyajima was in charge of words and music here.
Hello again. This is J-Canuck and continuing on from Part 1 of a translation I'm doing for Toshikazu Kanazawa's（金澤寿和）liner notes from Tohoku Shinkansen's（東北新幹線）"Thru Traffic" album from 1982, I'm providing Part 2 which will begin the original 2007 liner notes when the classic City Pop release was put onto CD for the very first time. This part mostly covers the history of Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）and Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）up to the point where they met at the Yamaha Music Foundation.
Tohoku Shinkansen’s genesis can be attributed to the Yamaha Music Foundation known for its Popular Song Contest (abbreviated as Pop Con). The first one of the duo to enter Yamaha was Etsuko Yamakawa, born in Kyoto, growing up with classical music and majoring in vocal music at university. During elementary school, Yamakawa listened to Group Sounds music and then also got into Western pop hits. From an early age, she was able to learn music by ear and played it on instruments like the piano. From high school, she aimed for a career in music and even participated in Pop Con at the recommendation of a friend, but it was from that point that she preferred to be an arranger rather than a performer.
While attending university in Tokyo, Yamakawa managed to get a part-time job at the Yamaha Music Foundation. At first, she was doing office work and serving tea while getting to know the staff in the Creative Work section in the company, also known as the Lab. It was there that she met the big-time arrangers such as Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）and Osamu Totsuka（戸塚修）. As she was doing her routine tasks, she would sneak a peek at the scores they had written, and little by little, she would pick up on their methods and techniques. Before long, she would get involved with the popular radio show “Cocky Pop” sponsored by Yamaha and that is where she first met Hiroshi Narumi. Narumi had still been a high school student at the time but his innate talents had already been recognized and it was one of his compositions that had been used as the theme song for the radio show. She eventually got a copy of his demo tape and his transcriptions.
“This guy’s amazing for a high school kid!” she said.
On Narumi’s homemade tape, he had recorded his own overdubbed chorus onto his performance by piano. And when she listened to the sound of his beautiful music, there were these complex chords everywhere that she had never heard before. That was the first step for the two of them.
Narumi’s roots were in Beethoven. Furthermore, for three years from kindergarten to Grade 1 of elementary school, he listened only to the master’s “Moonlight Sonata” everyday without fail as if he were a boy possessed, a feat which astonished everyone. But it was this singular experience that nurtured his amazing ear and well-honed sensitivity. His piano playing was described by his elder brother as something by a child prodigy, and it’s said that Hiroshi memorized his brother’s own piano playing completely by ear. And when his brother started taking up guitar in Grade 3, Hiroshi also somehow began picking it up as well; while he was copying what he saw on televised guitar lessons, he was able to play the instrument in no time flat. In junior high school, Hiroshi was turned onto the pop music of Bread, Carpenters, Burt Bacharach, and The Fifth Dimension. Soon after that, his interest spread to Philadelphia Soul, Stevie Wonder and Al Green, and then on radio, he started listening to Sonia Rosa and as he unraveled the riddle behind her mysterious attraction, he came across Joao Gilberto. While his friends got into raunchy rock, he preferred soft pop and soul. He analyzed the skillfulness of the chord progressions and the precision of their arrangements and then embedded them into his own music over time. Then for his original compositions, he did the dubbing over and over by himself at home for his demo tape over many days. Narumi is widely recognized as a guitarist, but he himself believes he’s adept at both guitar and piano. Whenever he went to the piano after getting worked up, the agitation and his soul tended to cool down.
I caught this Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）single on an episode of "Yoru no Hit Studio"（夜のヒットスタジオ）a few weeks ago. To be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to it when he sang it on stage, but listening to the original recorded version paid some more dividends to me.
"Musashino Shijin" (The Poet of Musashino) was Noguchi's 22nd single from January 1977. Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, composed by Noguchi's older brother Hiroshi Sato（佐藤寛...not to be confused with the late City Pop keyboardist and singer） and arranged by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, it starts out for a few seconds sounding like a rock tune but then slides into something more wistful and perhaps approaching the feeling of a City Pop song. Actually, the story of the song was based on Inokashira Park which straddles the districts of Musashino and Mitaka in Tokyo, so I guess with that in mind and along with that funky beat, perhaps it can be a City Pop song. Noguchi was heading in that direction anyways.
Strangely enough though, according to the J-Wiki article on "Musashino Shijin", Matsumoto's lyrics actually refer to Musashino Park located in another area of Tokyo. I can only gather that the name of Musashino sounded better to Matsumoto than Inokashira. Regardless, his lyrics refer to the titular poet as a young man who began, experienced and ended a love affair around the park, and he's rather dramatically dressing it up as a song, poem or scene from a movie. Quite the drama king, isn't he?
"Musashino Shijin" made it all the way up to No. 2 on Oricon, eventually becoming the 33rd-ranked single of 1977. The video below shows Inokashira Park in all of its glory. I only went there once myself during my days in Tokyo. I'm sure that the park is always buzzing with people during cherry blossom season.
I've often called crooning drummer and singer Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）one of the princes of City Pop all these years, and he definitely has the flair for the urban contemporary.
However, I've also realized that Inagaki, through listening to his music, also has a love for the pop inspired from the 1950s and 1960s. I think one example is his "Memory Flickers", the penultimate track from his April 1989 album"Heart & Soul". The No. 1-ranking release has been labeled a City Pop album but "Memory Flickers" feels more like an homage to those earlier decades although the music seems to have been filtered as well through contemporary arrangements and synths.
Written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）, those opening notes of "Memory Flickers" resemble the notes in the intro of Anri's（杏里）classic "Kanashimi ga Tomaranai" (悲しみがとまらない）, and perhaps this shouldn't be surprising since both songs were composed by the one-and-only Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）. Beyond those introductory bars though, Hayashi's arrangements take us through a mix of thrumming keyboards and what sounds like some Motown spice. Urino's lyrics talk about a man reminiscing about a love triangle years or decades ago in which he was one of the corners competing against one male corner for the hand of a female corner. Not sure who won but I get the feeling that the main man is feeling rather bittersweet about the experience. In any case, "Heart & Soul" ended 1989 as the 47th-ranked album.
Welcome to another weekly Reminiscings of Youth article, and indeed, I was one of probably billions of people who managed to catch the real trailer for "Deadpool & Wolverine" a few days ago. Yep, it certainly was interesting alright; I only hope that the movie actually lives up to the hype. I've been burned by trailers from both the Marvel and DC universes recently since a few of their recent movies were somewhat less than what the trailers had been promising.
In any event, pop culture fans have been going ga-ga over the trailer and as a result of one song being used in there, they've also apparently been flocking to Madonna's"Like a Prayer" which was the Material Girl's title track from her March 1989 album. It isn't even one of my favourite Madonna songs but it fits unusually well in "Deadpool & Wolverine" for some reason and not just because one of the two anti-heroes dubbed himself Marvel Jesus (which I truly hope he is for the MCEU).
I still remember the fact that the video for "Like a Prayer" got a worldwide prime-time premiere on television as it dragged a lot of controversy behind it. It even got admonished by the Vatican and other religious organizations for some of the images although today, people would probably be shrugging about what all the tumult was about back then. And yet, the song hit No. 1 in many countries. In fact, it would be easier to list the nations where it didn't peak at No. 1...which included Japan where it only went as high as No. 30. 1989 was the year when I went overseas on the JET Programme and I don't really recall much news on "Like a Prayer" in the remaining half of the year when I was residing in Gunma Prefecture.
NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）had their final broadcast before going on a multi-week hiatus during Golden Week. Now, the annual spate of holidays ranging from the last days of April into the first days of May doesn't begin for a few more days yet, but I figured that I can still provide a few of the songs that got into their "Uta no Tabi"（歌の旅...Song Vacation） theme segment yesterday along with throwing in one of my own choices.
As it stands right now, though, with the Japanese currency plummeting down to 155 yen to the dollar, perhaps there won't be as much tourism from Japan to overseas destinations this Golden Week although Americans, Canadians and other people will be more than happy to fly over to Japan for the next little while. Maybe that's why some of the songs from "Uta no Tabi" were most definitely domestic. In any case, here are the selections.
