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.
Wow! Those were the days back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Bubble Era was about to burst like an overripe grape. Yet, the good times were still rolling on Japanese TV with all sorts of fluffy trendy dramas showing young beautiful folks celebrating the good life but not quite hitting the mark in the romance department.
I don't know which trendy drama was being played in the above video although I can recognize at least early 80s aidoru Iyo Matsumoto（松本伊代）. And at the same time, I'm wondering whether this Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）song "Kanashi ma nai de" (Don't Be Sad) was the theme song. I hadn't done this one before although as soon as I heard the playful piano tinkling in the intro, I could recognize it as a Nagai tune, and Nagai was quite the sassy and brassy lass during that turn of the decade.
"Kanashi ma nai de" was the coupling song to Nagai's April 1989 single"Ready Steady Go!" I have yet to hear or re-recognize "Ready Steady Go!", but "Kanashi ma nai de" is the perfect Nagai vehicle for its stupendously upbeat arrangement involving a friend helping another friend out of the blues. Listening to this a few times will probably get anyone in a funk doing a jig on the floor. Lyrics were by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）under her pseudonym Airin（亜伊林）and the melody was by Mamoru Taniguchi（谷口守）. The single itself went up to No. 32, and it was only some months away before Nagai got her first Top 10 hit in "Miracle Girl"（ミラクル・ガール）.
It's interesting when I go down an especially deep and winding rabbit hole, figuratively speaking. This time, it's led me to a 1970 movie called "The Strawberry Statement" which was an American comedy-drama revolving around the 1968 Columbia University protests. It starred a couple of folks who I've usually associated with sci-fi: Bruce Davison who I've always seen in much later movies as these smarmy corporate/political types such as in the very first "X-Men" as Senator Kelly, and Kim Darby who had earlier guested in the first season episode "Miri" of the original "Star Trek". Never thought I would see a young Davison playing an idealistic good guy.
Well, what led me down to the burrow in the first place was this song titled "Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido" (The Strawberry Statement One More Time) that I heard performed on either "Uta Con"（うたコン） or "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）recently. It's a folk-rock song that was first recorded by the folk group BanBan（バンバン）as their 5th single in August 1975. And just to hold you off the pass for a minute, this isn't the other sibling folk duo Billy BanBan（ビリーバンバン）that I've spoken about in the past on the blog. Yep, same genre, similar name and same time period but BanBan and Billy BanBan are two different entities in the music industry.
Anyways, BanBan was actually a trio consisting of Hiroshi Takayama（高山弘）, Hiroshi Imai（今井ひろし） and Hirofumi Bamba（ばんばひろふみ）. Bamba has been on the blog ever since KKP's inaugural year due to his 1979 solo hit"Sachiko", but BanBan is getting its first due here. Incidentally, the name of the group came about from Bamba's own nickname. The group had been kicking around since 1971 and Bamba had been a popular late-night radio DJ but he was wondering about the state of his band since it wasn't making any hits. As a last resort before deciding to break the band up, he decided to see if up-and-coming singer-songwriter Yumi Arai（荒井由実）could create a song for them because he had been entranced by her works and he'd seen her as a one-of-a-kind. So, he pulled every string and met up with Arai's future husband and musician Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）who then had Bamba and Arai meet up.
The result was a song that, in Bamba's words, extended BanBan's lifespan by at least a few more years before they officially called it a day in 1977. It's a melancholy and bittersweet tune about a man seeing that his local movie house was showing the aforementioned "The Strawberry Statement" once more and then reminiscing about going there with a now ex-girlfriend during a pretty successful date. Personally, it's probably the most different Yuming（ユーミン）creation that I have ever heard although that may have been due to Ichizo Seo's（瀬尾一三）arrangement. There's quite a bit of rock in there that I wouldn't have expected a Yuming song to have. And the ironic thing is that Bamba was much more of a rock guy than a folk guy; in fact, according to the article on the song, he had found folk musicians to be no better than country hicks which led him to found BanBan just to supposedly show them how it's really done.
"Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido" occupied the top spot on Oricon for about six weeks near the end of 1975 which probably meant it was quite the slow burner considering its release back in the summer. It ended up as the No. 13 single for the year and then at the end of 1976, it was even ranked No. 31. It sold a little over 750,000 records. It was also the lead track on BanBan's 2nd and final album"Kisetsufuu"（季節風...Seasonal Winds） which came out in November 1975.
Yes, the above video was so soothing that despite its ten-second run time, I almost got hooked into its sneaky clutches. Beware the glitter!
But you should be totally OK with this video showing singer-songwriter Yuko Sugita's（杉田優子）"Kira Kira" which coincidentally enough means "Glitter". For one thing, "Kira Kira" was written and composed by Sugita herself and despite what the title might imply considering its release in 1978, it's not a disco number at all. In fact, I'd say that it belongs more on the farm with its most congenial and cheerful arrangement of country, although I can still hear the synthy haze effect of City Pop and some other electronic keyboard stuff. The song was a track on Sugita's album "Monsoon Baby" along with "Senritsu"（旋律）.
Unfortunately, I have to start this week of KKP with another fuhou（訃報）. She wasn't a singer...at least, not a professional one, but Tamao Nakamura（中村玉緒）had been an actress and entertainer since 1953. She had also been the wife of the burly actor Shintaro Katsu（勝新太郎）who didn't suffer fools gladly and suffered media and medical experts even less apparently. Nakamura passed away on June 9th at the age of 86 from pneumonia.
However, I got to know Nakamura through her appearances on commercials and variety shows where she usually played the role of a sweet-tempered kimono-wearing lady with a slightly dotty personality. And the main show that I knew her from was TBS'"Sanma no Super Karakuri TV"（さんまのSUPERからくりTV...Sanma's Super Tricky TV） which lasted from 1992 to 2014. Broadcast on Sunday nights, it was basically the big Kansai comedian, Sanma Akashiya（明石家さんま）, talking trash with his regular panel of tarento including Nakamura while various segments played out on the telly.
Nakamura would often be involved in some of those segments herself with the usual humorous results as her personality would allow.
As would be the case for any long-running variety series on Japanese TV, "Sanma no Super Karakuri TV" had its fairly long list of ending themes. The first one of those was "Iezu no I Love You" (The "I Love You" That I Can't Say) by the late singer-songwriter KAN who left this mortal coil about three years ago. Released in March 1992 as his 12th single, "Iezu no I Love You" was written and composed by the singer with Akihiko Matsumoto（松本晃彦）handling the arrangement. It's an adorable and slightly jazzy tune that would have a lovably hangdog expression as a face...which matches with KAN's visage.
It reached No. 13 on Oricon and was a track on KAN's "Girl to Love" album which was actually released in June 1988, so I gather that "Iezu no I Love You" was a very belated release from that LP. The album did quite modestly by scoring a No. 86 ranking, but that was before the singer hit the big time with "Ai wa Katsu"（愛は勝つ）a few years later.
In any case, my condolences to Nakamura's family, friends and many fans.
Circus Town is one of my favorite albums of all time, and one of my top five favorite Tatsuro Yamashita (山下達郎) albums. As someone who’s been to New York, I think it captures the aura of the Big Apple very well. It’s got some well-known bangers like the title theme, “Windy Lady,” and my personal favorite, the doo-wop classic “Last Step.”
Although, in my opinion, the most underrated song is easily the closing number, “Natsu no Hi” (夏の陽). It has that typical ’70s folk-rock sound, but the ethereal backing chorus, combined with Tat’s signature belting, gives it a whimsical touch
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Unfortunately, it’s nowhere near the first song you think of when you talk about Tats, so color me surprised when I found out that the theatrical jazz-pop band Stardust Revue did their own a cappella cover of the song in 2008 for their album Always. This might be my favorite version.
I’ve heard a lot of Tatsuro Yamashita covers in my time, but this is one of the few that surpasses the original. Doesn’t surprise me one bit. The American revue-inspired band, hence the name, has a knack for creating excellent vocal harmonies and combining them with music you’d hear in some kind of vaudeville act. Plus, the lead singer, Kaname Nemoto (三谷泰弘), has performed live with Tatsuro in the past. Nemoto, joined by Tats and J-rock star Shōgo Hamada (浜田省吾 ), once performed a live a cappella version of Ben E. King’s “Stand by Me.”
When you get a chance to listen to Stardust Revue, make sure to check out their 2008 album ALWAYS. It's filled with great acapella and acoustic covers of various kayokyoku classics.
I came across this quintessential song by Mood Kayo group Hiroshi Wada & Mahina Stars（和田弘とマヒナスターズ）recently so of course, I was going to post something about it. But for whatever reason, I couldn't find any sign of it on the band's long discography originating from 1958 on J-Wiki. However, when I dug elsewhere, I found Mahina Stars' website via Japan Victor and found out that their discography goes back even further to 1953! Indeed, this particular song "Tokyo no Hito" (Man of Tokyo) was released in 1957.
"Tokyo no Hito", which was written by Takao Saeki（佐伯孝雄）and composed by Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）, has that mournful arrangement that Mahina Stars were especially famous for, thanks to the delivery of the voices and the Hawaiian steel pedal guitar that seems to cry out its melody. Not sure if this is what the songwriters had had in mind, but in the immediate postwar era, a lot of young able-bodied people (perhaps as young as middle school graduates) were heavily encouraged to come from the countryside to the cities to man the engines to drive Japan back to economic prosperity. A certain genre of kayo kyoku played upon the homesickness that many of these urban workers in the factories and office buildings probably felt and perhaps one of those songs is "Tokyo no Hito". A good song to drown out one's sorrows, n'est-ce-pas?
Well, along with the bear incursions, the weather was becoming rather belligerent throughout Japan last week with some very intense rainstorms and hail coming down like meteorites in a sci-fi flick. Some of the footage looked as if a blizzard had suddenly blanketed entire regions.
And with that segue, I give you "Kanashimi no Blizzard"(Blizzard of Sorrow) which was the third single by 80s aidoru Hidemi Ishikawa（石川秀美）from October 1982. The setting is actually a hot summer seaside but young Hidemi's heart is filled with a raging snowstorm after suffering a major breakup with a guy. You can thank Kaoru Asagi（麻木かおる）for the lyrics.
I learned something interesting regarding Ishikawa's beginnings as an aidoru and perhaps this might have been true for many aidoru. Composer Yuuichiro Oda（小田裕一郎）was responsible for Ishikawa's first four singles including the No. 29-ranking"Kanashimi no Blizzard", and apparently, he got the first three done even before the lass made her debut in early 1982. In fact, there were discussions on which of the three would become Single No. 1: a song with a refreshing melody, one with a sentimental atmosphere and one more with a so-called London sound.
Well, the refreshing one "Yousei Jidai"（妖精時代...Fairy Age） became the debut single (I'll have to cover that one soon enough), the sentimental one "Yu-re-te Shonan"（ゆ・れ・て湘南）was the follow-up, and then that London sound ended up as "Kanashimi no Blizzard" (although Oda had preferred Single No. 3 as Single No. 1). I guess that London sound was represented by the (possibly synth) horns although first listening to the song, I would never have guessed it being influenced by swinging London. Overall though "Kanashimi no Blizzard" is quite the peppy and distinct tune with some quick key changes and though Ishikawa's delivery is very "aidoru", it's still quite the fun thing to listen to. In fact, I think it has a kissing cousin in the form of Ginji Ito's（伊藤銀次）"Cherry Night" even though that song wouldn't come out until 1986. By the way, Makoto Yano（矢野誠）provided the arrangement.
