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.
A couple of years ago, I posted "Onna no Gakko"（女の学校）, a 1970 kayo kyoku and debut single by actress and singer Reiko Ohshida（大信田礼子）who had been in the popular action series "Playgirl"（プレイガール）. "Onna no Gakko" was a slithery and sexy song of the night that also probably summed up Ohshida's character in the TV series.
Ohshida released seven singles up to the middle of 1973 with her penultimate one being "Dousei Jidai"(The Time of Living in Sin) which came out in February that same year. Composed by Shunichi Tokura（都倉俊一）and arranged by Hiroshi Takada（高田弘）, the melody sounds a whole lot more peaceful and innocent but the lyrics by Kazuo Kamimura（上村一夫）are quite the downer as a couple discovers that they can't live with each other and yet they can't live without each other. In fact, at one point, the woman had even considered killing her paramour and then killing herself. Talk about words and music going into opposite directions!
Interesting piece of trivia is that Ohshida actually ended up getting married to composer Tokura the following year, although she had apparently not gotten along with the man during the production of "Dousei Jidai". The marriage didn't last too long, however, since they divorced by 1978. As well, Ohshida had been classmates with Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）from elementary to high school in their native Kyoto.
Not only did I hear "Just One Look" on the radio but I also heard plenty of it as a commercial jingle for cars. I just forgot it was for the Mazda. By the way, the actor speaking in the ad ended up becoming a doctor at "General Hospital". In any case, "Just One Look" renditions by different singers and bands were used in other commercials; that title was just perfect for selling.
But the first time was on radio. Didn't know at the time that this wasn't even an original by Linda Ronstadt but a cover version done by her, but it has been the one that I will always remember. Released as a January 1979 single, it's a tune that starts off country congenially but then becomes progressively buzzier with the rock edge. I also didn't realize that the main chorus is only heard once and at the end of this fairly short song at just a little over three minutes. Ronstadt's cover did modestly well on the Canadian and American charts by posting somewhere in the 40s but in the former's Adult Contemporary chart, "Just One Look" placed in at No. 4 while on the latter's East Listening chart, it had a No. 5 ranking.
The original "Just One Look" was recorded by singer-songwriter Doris Troy for release in May 1963 with Troy and Gregory Carroll creating the song. It's an even shorter tune with the main chorus basically acting as a fadeout coda.
We have here the Top 3 singles of Oricon for January 22nd 1979, a day before Ronstadt's cover was released.
Hello, folks. J-Canuck here and usually when I put up the apple pie photo, it means that I have an APB on an unknown song that we are searching information on. But this is not that sort of article but I needed to have something up, so I chose the apple pie.
Anyways, I wanted to inform readers and fellow bloggers on the Blogger platform that I received a message from KKP contributor Oliver Ebisuno92. Apparently for the past couple of days, there has been a rash of blogs getting flagged or even locked out due to Blogger automated systems going on a misguided search-and-freeze operation. From what I've read of some of the comments, it looks like any blogger on Blogger who has recently made any changes to the basic template may get smacked unfairly, although actual postings won't trigger anything. You can take a look at the actual announcement here.
A little over a year ago, I put up "The First Day of Summer!", an Author's Picks consisting of all of those summery tunes with the explanation point being that all of the song titles contained the word "summer". Well, I figured that I would go for another similar posting but I've relaxed the rules slightly by also allowing the Japanese term for summer, "natsu". So, without further ado then, get into that hammock and pull up a citrus-y cocktail.
Welcome to Hump Day! And yeah, it feels even more like a Hump Day than usual. For one thing, I've been noticing for the past three days that our household has suffered micro-power outages of less than a second at around the same time in the morning. Now as I said, they are very short in duration so the power is back on lickety-split but it's enough to require me to wait five minutes for the Internet to return and I have to reset all of the clocks. Very annoying. I've sent our electric power company a letter of inquiry and complaint for which I've received a reply stating that it may take up to five days for a proper answer.
In any case, I've learned that people having a bad day tend to be more productive at work, presumably because they want to focus on anything other than the source of the bad day. Well, I'm focusing on this one here. And it has to do with a couple of observations regarding recent Japanese society. The first one is that Japan may have one of the larger populations of centenarians in the world and the other is that when the patriarch of the family retires from decades of work, he may tend to just lounge around the house with nothing to do all day which can aggravate the wife and perhaps even the children to no end.
That seems to be the premise of the Japanese comedy movie franchise "Oshûkatsu Jukushun! Jinsei, Hyaku-nen Jidai no Sugoshi Kata"（お終活 熟春!人生、百年時代の過ごし方...The Final Years: The Golden Years of Maturity—How to Spend Life in the Era of the 100-Year Lifespan） that started in 2021. A third movie was released at the end of May this year. As to why I'm talking about this, well....last night, singer-songwriter and tarento Masashi Sada（さだまさし）appeared on "Uta Con"（うたコン）to sing this old-time jazzy number called "Kamisama no Iu Toori" (As God Says). I've heard Sada sing folk and City Pop but this is the first time that I've heard him sing anything jazz and this is where I found out that "Kamisama no Iu Toori" was the theme song for the third movie. Written and composed by Sada with Toshiyuki Watanabe（渡辺俊幸）handling the arrangement and the conducting of the orchestra, it's a sweet nostalgic tune that had Sada doing a bit of Vaudevillian soft-shoe on the stage and maybe the movie characters dancing cheek-to-cheek on the floor.
I really couldn't find an image that I already had on file that would match the tone of this song and it was quite the adventure to even find something appropriate on Wikimedia Commons. Finally, though, I could get this one by Spinnmaster for his Mutasect Core Ventus.
Considering my previous article based on the movie that I'd seen earlier today: "Spider-Man: Brand New Day", I figured that it was time to check out the good folks at Nash Music Library if they had something with a battle theme...considering there are quite a few of those in the Marvel flick.
Well, it didn't take long to track one down. And I have to admit that even though NML has covered a lot of genres in its huge storehouse of music...everything from jazz to disco, this is the first time I've come across "BATTLE X" with its arrangement that reminded me of many a magical girl anime with battle scenes. Specifically, I was thinking of the "Pretty Cure" franchise with their music directors' love of injecting some thrilling rock shreds into their battle music. Not sure whether Michael Giacchino would do so, though. In any case, this piece comes from their 2003 album"Dead Heat".
It's been a long day and one reason that I'm doing my two articles rather late tonight is that I was out for most of the day today. Yep, I caught "Spider-Man: Brand New Day". And I have to say that this may not only be the best of the "Spider-Man" franchise (up there with the second Tobey Maguire movie) but one of the best Marvel movies, period. It certainly stands out and away from the first three Tom Holland movies. But that's all I'm going to say.
Now, I had thought I gave my tribute to the movie through the official theme song commemorating the release of "Brand New Day" in Japan, Mrs. GREEN APPLE's"Brand New" back last Saturday. However, I wanted to see if I could find one more Japanese pop song that had an association with Your Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man. Of course, I've already covered the opening and ending theme songs for Toei's own "Spider-Man" show from 1978.
But scrolling down the J-Wiki article for the show, I also found an insert dance song that had been used in Episode 7 of the one-season series. Apparently, some band named Kotaro Kobayashi（小林幸太郎）& BB5 came up with "Spider-Man Boogie". With lyricist Shozo Uehara（上原正三）and composer Chuumei Watanabe（渡辺宙明）creating the rollicking rock and roll number, it's short and sweet. And one other YouTuber wanted to add a little more to the song in terms of visuals.
Hey, Maguire had his time on the dance floor...er, street. And of course, Holland has his background in dancing. Andrew Garfield...where are you?
Well, now that we're in early August 2026, I might be introducing this song a month late. After all, the Tanabata festival is an early July event in Japan. But still...better late than never.
Yukiko Haneda（羽根田征子）is a singer that I first introduced back in 2020. The reason I found out about her was due to her 1989 cover of the late great Hiroshi Sato's（佐藤博）"It Isn't Easy" from his 1982 "Awakening" album. That particular cover can be found on Haneda's 2nd album"Sora", which was produced by Sato. I've also found another really pleasant track from that one, and it's called "Milky Way". Again composed by Sato and written by Yui Masaki（真沙木唯）, it's an urban and urbane synthpop number with a touch of bossa nova. Haneda's strong and silky vocals are given some backup by Sato himself.
Looking at the above public domain-friendly photo from Wikimedia Commons, he's got considerably less hair and he's got more of a paunch but he'll always be Billy Joel to me (ha, ha). Yup, the Piano Man turned 77 a few months ago but I will always see him in that work-a-day suit tickling the ivories.
A few weeks ago, I did a Reminiscings of Youth posting on Level 42' s"Running in the Family" album, one of those EPs that I put onto audiotape as one of the go-to listenings during those times overnight when I just had to get a thesis done or cram for an exam during university. Well, I forgot that Joel's July 25th 1986 album"The Bridge" was another one of those musical energy drinks that I had also transferred to tape. Incidentally, it is a holiday here in Toronto so I'm doing the usual special ROY post.
"The Bridge" isn't up there with Joel's absolute best such as "The Stranger" or "Turnstiles" or "An Innocent Man", and even Billy himself agreed with his critics that "The Bridge" wasn't the greatest work he's created. But I have to state that even a self-professed not-so-great album by Billy Joel is still not a bad thing at all. Having said that, I'm not giving "The Bridge" the same treatment as my two-parter on "The Stranger" in which every track was deserving of some comment.
One reason that I ended up buying Joel's 10th studio album was because of "Big Man on Mulberry Street", a Big Band jazz blast that was the Piano Man's contribution to a "Moonlighting" episode in which Maddie Hayes, played by Cybill Shepherd, dreams an epic old Hollywood song-and-dance sequence starring his love-and-hate detective partner David Addison, played by Bruce Willis.
Yep, you (who are younger than 40) read that correctly...Bruce Willis. As with Joel, he now has less hair and more of a paunch, but back then, who knew that he could trip the light fantastic with a bunch of choreographers? But seeing that sequence and hearing "Big Man on Mulberry Street", the story of a nebbish in New York City who punched way too high above his station in life, I was just so impressed that this 70s pop-and-rock guy could swing jazz as well that I knew I had to get "The Bridge" just for this track.
Tracks from the album did make it out as singles. And I did hear "Modern Woman" and "A Matter of Trust" on the radio all the time, but to be honest, they never really stuck with me. However, if "Big Man on Mulberry Street" was the reason that I purchased "The Bridge", then the first track "Running on Ice" was the reason that I've kept "The Bridge" all these years.
"Running on Ice" is the equivalent of Charlie Brown skating and failing horribly as he takes out every single Peanuts character on the frozen pond and with everyone from Lucy to Snoopy out to get him, he just causes more mayhem. I heard it has been used in a spoof drama on the US version of "The Office" and perhaps it can be used for some sort of comedic ice hockey montage. The drums by Liberty DeVitto are incredible and absolutely vital for the song to work.
I've known that Joel is a singing chameleon of sorts. He's done Ray Charles on "New York State of Mind", Mick Jagger on "It's Still Rock n' Roll to Me" and even Frankie Valli for "Uptown Girl". But I had no idea that Joel was channeling The Police for "Running on Ice". I had been wondering why he clipped his vocals so high on that one and it turned out he was trying to emulate Sting.
The last song I'm featuring here is another jazzy one and speaking of Ray Charles, he finally and successfully got associated with Joel on "Baby Grand". Billy may not have been able to get the legendary Charles to do "New York State of Mind" initially but a decade later, the two of them were having fun with their ballad in tribute to the baby grand piano.
In Canada, "The Bridge" made it up to No. 10 on RPM while it reached No. 7 on America's Billboard. Its highest rankings came in Australia and Japan where it peaked at No. 2 in both nations. So, as usual, let's find out what singles were coming out onto record store shelves in Japan in June 1986.
I was watching "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）last night when I saw the ever-beaming enka veteran Mitsuko Nakamura（中村美津子）appear on stage to perform a song that I'd initially assumed was one of her oldies. As it turned out, it was her latest (her 73rd) single from May this year.
"Jinsei Banzai"(Here's to Life) was released to commemorate Nakamura's 40th year in the music industry and I'm pretty sure when it comes to the annual Kohaku Utagassen, her name will probably be in the Red team lineup. Written by Kyosuke Kuni（久仁京介）and composed by Koji Tokuhisa（徳久広司）, it's a very genki song showing off her satisfaction and gratitude to everyone over the past four decades. The enka is in there of course, but I could hear a rumbling rhythm reminiscent of a 50s Latin-tinged number.
Usually a song title containing the word "highway" in it would conjure up the genres of City Pop or rock n' roll in my mind...the latter especially as some lone wolf rides out on his Harley into the sunset on that titular road to nowhere and everywhere.
However, we have Hikashu's（ヒカシュー）2nd single from 1980 titled "Shiroi Highway"(White Highway) which was written and composed by leader Koichi Makigami（巻上公一）. I wrote about the B-side"Puyo Puyo"（プヨプヨ）back in January 2024 and then there was my previous posting on the band which happened to be on their 1979 debut single"Nijuu Seiki no Owari ni"（20世紀の終りに）, so I figured it was time to close the circle, so to speak.
"Puyo Puyo" had that New Wave mixed in with the technopop but the A-side I think is more on the technopop, and strangely enough, Makigami did come up with a story of that loner on the endless titular highway that I mentioned in the top paragraph; there's even a synth version of that famous whistle from "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" coming in at points. Makigami's vocals make the song sound like a heroic tokusatsu theme so that lone wolf vibe is even more enhanced. But instead of a Japanese superhero show, "Shiroi Highway" was used for a car stereo commercial.
When it comes to Yasuko Naito（内藤やす子）, I will always remember her for "Roppongi Lullaby"（六本木ララバイ）from the mid-1980s whether it be the refined urban lullaby version or the one with a bit more of rock kick to it.
However, let's go to her debut single from November 1975, "Otouto yo"(Hey, Kid Brother). From the cover of that single, Naito gave a first impression of someone who didn't suffer fools gladly and could carve flesh out verbally or physically. Even the way the title is displayed, it looks like quite the rough life in the city.
Although nothing of the kind is mentioned in its J-Wiki article, I wonder whether "Otouto yo" could have been an answer song of sorts to folk band Kaguyahime's（かぐや姫）"Imouto"（妹...Younger Sister） which had been released the previous year. Lyrically speaking, and those were provided by Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）, whereas "Imouto" was the touching story of an orphaned young man proudly if sadly giving away her younger sister to his best friend through marriage, "Otouto yo" is the more pensive tale of a young woman trying to get her estranged younger brother back on the straight and narrow path, presumably pleading with him not to end up like herself. The music by Makoto Kawaguchi（川口真）is dramatic and somewhat foreboding, but there's an ever-present ocarina blowing away as if it represents one lone ember of innocence and goodness in the man.
For a debut, "Otouto yo" was an auspicious one for Naito as it broke the Top 10 of Oricon by peaking at No. 8, becoming the 24th-ranked single for 1976. The singer also earned Best New Artist honours at the 5th annual FNS Kayo Festival, also in 1976. The single sold around 650,000 records.
I've seen my fair share of shimmering mirages in the past including the one for a non-existent body of water. Nothing more exciting than that.
Looks like Kahimi Karie（カヒミ・カリィ）was in the middle of a Danny Thomas spit take in that cover photo for her October 2006 album"NUNKI". The track I'm covering here is "Mirage" which doesn't really come across as anything Shibuya-kei, the genre that I've always associated her with. The soft and kittenish French vocals are there but I think there's more of an intriguing indies pop feeling with some adventurous percussion blasting away. Karie took care of the lyrics while American musician and longtime Japanese resident Jim O'Rourke was the composer and arranger.
I bumped into this video purely by accident yesterday when it was released onto YouTube, and I know that the band Mrs. GREEN APPLE has been known for participating in some really snazzy music videos. However, although the song was another supremely upbeat tune by the guys, I was rather marveling at the very ambitious parkour the three were doing all over the city in their latest video.
And then I saw the title: "Brand New". Then, 2+2 started popping up in my head immediately after which I checked the relevant J-Wiki article and sure enough, my rushed suspicions were verified. Mrs. GREEN APPLE's latest digital download single from July 13th was indeed the theme song for the Japanese release of "Spider-Man: Brand New Day". Reading that all three members were big fans of the superhero, they must have had the time of their lives acting like the webslinger.
Written and composed by vocalist Motoki Ohmori（大森元貴）, "Brand New" isn't actually the first time that Mrs. GREEN APPLE has come up with a theme song for people with super powers. I recall writing about another song of theirs that fits the bill years ago. In any case, "Spider-Man: Brand New Day" has come out here and in Tokyo, so I gather that my old movie viewing buddies there are already planning their big outing to see it. I will be catching it myself pretty soon.
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