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.
Welcome to the final day of July...pretty much halfway through summer. And hopefully, your entry into August and the latter half of the hot season will be a good fun one.
Despite the title of this sparkling Chiyono Yoshino（吉野千代乃）song, "1985-nen no Koibito"(Lovers in 1985) was actually something from 1987 when it and the rest of its track mates were released in the singer's June 1987 3rd album "Say Goodbye". Not sure about why the focus on lovers in that specific year but...and I say this tongue in cheek...with the signing of the Plaza Accords in 1985, perhaps lovers realized that they pretty much had carte blanche when it came to dating and having fun in Bubble Era Japan.😊
But I digress. "1985-nen no Koibito", which was written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）and composed by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）, is a very upbeat slice of sophisticated pop with a wedge of happy-happy samba on top which launches with some pounding bass and keyboard. It practically demands listeners to get into a conga line on the Lido Deck of some cruise liner. Strangely enough, the footage in the video above comes from the 1990 trendy drama "Sekai de Ichiban Kimi ga Suki"（世界で一番君が好き....I Love You The Most in the World), one of the first such dramas that I watched on Fuji-TV when I arrived on the JET Programme some months before. Its theme song is of a much different genre, though.
I never expected to see her name up on television but recently I saw that veteran lyricist Fumiko Okada had received some sort of award for her decades of work via an NHK report. From that, I thought that it would be time to post a Creator article regarding her.
But first a bit of background from her J-Wiki file, Okada hails from Hiroshima Prefecture. When she gradated from university, her parents pressed her to get a job at television broadcaster TBS working as a timekeeper for music programs. However, knowing herself as someone who never really enjoyed the rigors of an average job or career, she was pretty miserable. Also, she developed insomnia but one night, she gained the urge to write poetry and found out that the words flowed out of her surprisingly easily. Then one day, after amassing her poems into a collection and having some faint interest in becoming a songwriter, she was noticed by the manager of a famous arranger at work. Noting how unenthused young Okada looked, he asked her what she really wanted to do for which she replied "I want to become a lyricist". A mere few days later, that manager suggested Okada to a record company as a rookie lyricist. At least, one song with her lyrics got into a music festival and that apparently was all she needed to write...literally. She started getting requests for her words, something that has been continuing for her for close to 55 years.
Whenever Okada's name is mentioned, I will always first remember Fashion Music specialist Ruiko Kurahashi's（倉橋ルイ子）songs since the lyricist provided a number of her works to her.
Green tea! Green tea! Green tea! Pickled ginger! Picked ginger! Pickled ginger!
In contrast with the elegance of Kurahashi's signature song, the raucous "Sushi kui ne!" comes under the catchphrase of "Okada wrote this one?!". She must love her sushi.
(1987) Kiyomi Suzuki with Rats & Star -- Lonely Chaplin (ロンリー・チャプリン）
Lonely Chaplin
Time passes...and even if you fade away
I will always wait for you
Smile like the little boy you are
You want to come home
Into my arms, don't you?
As long as your dreams are unfulfilled
Oh, do what you wanna do again
Oh, do what you wanna do again
Man, didn't know that Chaplin was that lucky a guy!
It's been said that Level 42's"Something About You" from 1985 remains as the band's biggest accomplishment, and I couldn't disagree since it was the first song that I heard by the English group on the radio and it really grabbed me by the shoulders and has never let go. However, having said that, I think Mark King and his guys released a lot of other great tunes as well, some of which I'll be writing about on this week's Reminiscings of Youth...this time as an album, namely their March 1987"Running in the Family".
Buying the LP and then recording it onto audiotape, "Running in the Family" became one of those go-to albums that I played whenever I had to pull an all-nighter during university. In fact, it was one of three LPs that I put onto tape, the others being Hiromi Iwasaki's（岩崎宏美）1986"Wagamama"（わがまま）and "Uchuu Senkan Yamato Kanketsuhen Tehma Ongakushuu II"（宇宙戦艦ヤマト 完結編 テーマ音楽集Ⅱ）, one of the soundtracks for the 1983 anime movie "Final Yamato". Yes, it's a rather eclectic musical triumvirate but I was playing these guys non-stop while typing away to desperately get my thesis done and keep away that bothersome gnat called sleep. The cups of green tea helped as well.
I just wanted to feature my three favourite tracks from "Running in the Family" although the entire album is great. These three were all released as singles with arguably the most famous one being "Lessons In Love" that had actually been released almost a year before the album itself. The album, by the way, has been categorized as a sophisti-pop creation which I'm not sure about. Sophisti-pop is something that I actually think has plenty of champagne-clinking strings and brass along the lines of Swingout Sister. "Lessons In Love" certainly sounds more like funk-rock plus pop, and it's an infectiously fun piece either in its original four-minute-and-change form or the longer extended take, and I think it was the latter where I first heard "Lessons In Love" which was another grab of my shoulders. I got to know more about the famous King slap-bass technique through this one, too.
"Lessons In Love" reached No. 14 in Canada and No. 12 in the United States while it reached No. 1 in nations like Denmark, Finland and Spain.
The second of my favourites is the title track. "Running in the Family" is a cheerful melodic treatise on the average family with average rambunctious kids. In a way, although the band's description of the family is not really dysfunctional, I've often wondered if this could have made for a pretty cool theme tune for a movie on a really dysfunctional family such as "The Royal Tenenbaums". The blasting synth riff will always live rent-free in my head. The single was released in February 1987 and it was also hitting the Top 10 in several countries including the band's own UK.
"To Be With You Again" starts off on Side B of the original LP and it has such a great intro that I was always looking forward to it on the tape to get my eyes and brain fully awake once more in the overnight hours. It's quite the soaring piece and I have to mention here that I've always liked the vocal combination of keyboardist Mike Lindup with his high voice and King's deeper and grounded tones. The song was also the first single from "Running in the Family" to be released after the album's release by coming out in April 1987. It did more modestly than the aforementioned songs although it did come in at No. 6 in Italy and the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, the album reached No. 6 in Canada, No. 23 in America and No. 2 in the UK. I haven't done all-nighters since the first George Bush was US President but wouldn't it be nice to place that audiotape into the machine again (although I'm still worried about Jaws!)? Then again, I have a perfectly benign record player that can handle the LP.
So, what were three singles in Japan that were being released in the merry month of March 1987?
A friend of mine went to Japan for vacation about a month ago. Last time we spoke he was on the train headed to Osaka. While he was planning his trip he had asked me to hook him up with a Osaka playlist for when he got there. Of course I included the essential hits by Masaki Ueda, but I also found him some other great artists like Takajin Yashiki, and Masahiro Kuwana. One common theme I find with Osaka music is that they really love the blues. Which makes sense since I'm pretty sure they had a big Blues Rock scene back in the 70s, spearheaded by bands like West Road Blues Band, Funny Company, and Ukadan. Here's some of my favorites, let me know if I should have recommended others.
Osaka Big River Blues (大阪ビッグ・リバー・ブルース) by Ukadan
Sweet Home Osaka by Funny Company
Your Osaka (あんたの大阪 ) by Hako Yamazaki (She's from Oita Prefecture but its still a nice song)
Since coming to Osaka (大阪へ出て来てから) byJunji Ariyama (有山じゅんじ) and Masaki Ueda 上田正樹
おそうじ Obachan by Ukadan
As a bonus, here's an updated version of Since coming to Osaka from 2007. much jazzier while still retaining the honky-tonk nature.
Whenever the name of the actress Isako Washio（鷲尾いさ子）comes to mind, I always think of those vitamin drink commercials she did, complete with her own jingle. They were quite popular during my time in Japan on the JET Programme in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
What I hadn't been aware of though is that Washio had already been releasing music since before that big Tekkotsu Inryo（鉄骨飲料）commercial. Although "Tekkotsu Musume"（鉄骨娘）was her debut single in 1990, Washio had released her debut album all the way back in October 1987. Titled "Kanojo no Kaze ~ son vent a elle"（彼女の風...Her Own Wind）, there was definitely an effort on the producers' part to bring some Gallic flavour into the proceedings since a number of the tracks were covers of French songs by France Gall and Francoise Hardy.
One such cover was "Mes amis, mes copains", translated into Japanese as "Onna Dooshi"(Among Women). The original had been sung by pop singer Annie Philippein 1966, with Jean Hebert Leccia and Andre Raymond Pascal as the songwriters. Translated by Youta Shichino or Nanano（七野洋太）or Masumi Kawamura（川村真澄）depending on whether you go with the JASRAC database or J-Wiki respectively, Washio's cover is a bit more synthy and haunting. It feels like dancing a slow waltz in one huge and foreboding castle in France. Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）was responsible for arranging all of the tracks on the album.
As I've mentioned before, I found a lot of the songs created for aidoru and other young pop music ingenues in the late 1980s were especially lush and beautifully crafted to surround their voices which may not have been of the highest quality.
Then, just imagine if the voice belonging to the young lady was pretty darn good. I think that was the case for then-teen actress Mika Muramatsu（村松美香）in the late 1980s. Her career as a thespian only lasted around thirteen years between 1983 and 1996 according to her J-Wiki profile (born in 1969), and she only released one single and that was probably for her 1987 NHK drama "Tabi Shojo"（旅少女...Traveling Girl）.
Yup, it was just the one-and-done single for Tokyo native Muramatsu. Titled "Yume, Hito, Tabi"(Dreams, People, Travel), it starts out rather lovingly fancy and Muramatsu's light and lilting voice automatically reminded me of the vocals of Hiroko Yakushimaru（薬師丸ひろ子）. In fact, the entire song has the pace of a slow and refined waltz and I kinda went "C'est dommage" when I realized that it was just this song and the B-side of this July 1987 single for the recording part of her career. The songwriter here wasn't Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）, though; it was actually singer-songwriter Toshihiro Ito（伊藤敏博）behind the words and music. Ito also had his own hit from 1981: "Sayonara Moyo"（サヨナラ模様）.
Maybe the only other interesting piece of trivia that I could get regarding Muramatsu was that she had attended the famous Tokyo-based Horikoshi High School with a number of her fellow students going the celebrity route including Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）and Mami Yamase（山瀬まみ）.
I discovered this trailer on YouTube for a 1990 thriller movie called "Remains: Utsukushiki Tsuwamono-tachi"（リメインズ 美しき勇者たち...Remains: Beautiful Heroes） although its official English title was "Yellow Fangs". It starred Muramatsu and a young Hiroyuki Sanada（真田広之）. From what I've read on Wikipedia and seen on screen, it seems like a cross between "Jaws" and a typical J-Horror flick.
I was once asked by one of the commenters about an Author's Picks regarding airports. After all, in terms of an old kayo kyoku, the airport serves as a setting for romantic farewells and (rarely) greetings. Plus, they can also be the launching point for adventures abroad. Now, I believe that I had yet to post such a list of airport-themed songs so I'm going with this one today to finish my trio of articles.
Approaching the summer solstice, we only have a few days left of increasing sunlight time so let's make some good use of that by going out with buddies onto the patio for some drinks in the evening, although I'm well aware that the decrease of daylight time will be quite slow into the summer months.
Regardless, let's finish Urban Contemporary Friday on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with a nice and refreshing tune by singer-songwriter Mebae Miyahara（宮原芽映）. She's been known for some eclectic material in the City Pop and pop veins, but this one has got that traveling-to-unknown-climes vibe. "Omocha no Machi ni Samayotte" (Wandering Through Toy Town) is a rather unusual title for this one. One would think that this would have more to do with Christmas, but actually, it's the name for a pretty stylish bossa jazz tune with accordion and saxophone in the mix. Again, cocktail time!🍹
"Omocha no Machi ni Samayotte" is a track on Miyahara's September 1987 third album"Mariposa". It was written by the singer with Kazutaka or Ichitaka Nishida（西田一隆）and Masaaki Kondo（近藤正明） behind the Latin melody.
There are a few Megumi Mori（森恵）songs on the blog, but the one that I will always remember her for is her 3rd single from April 1987, "Tokio Town"（東京街）, which I discovered years and years ago through a Hong Kong-made compilation tape. And that was a cover of a song as performed by a singer named Sarah.
The B-side to "Tokio Town" is quite different in tone. Unlike the busy Eurobeat of the A-side, "Pearl Moon ni Kuchizuke" (Kissing the Pearl Moon) sounds like a contemporized version of a much older-sounding pop song although it starts off with an 80s dance music sequence. The powers-that-be even included a Doobie Bounce in a mere pop/rock tune that doesn't approach anything like AOR. Hiromi Mori（森浩美）provided the lyrics while NOBODY came up with the melody. Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）was the arranger here. The song was also included in Mori's debut album "Shojo"（少女...Young Lady） which was released in October 1987.
I can say that the above looks just like the first telephone that I ever saw in my apartment in the late 1960s. The good ol' rotary phone. Never got to use the even older model where people had to crank it up and yell "Maisie! Is that you? I'm calling Pennsylvania 65000!".
Earlier today, the first article for Urban Contemporary Friday on KKP was Mariko Tone's（刀根麻里子）"Private Number" and that got me thinking that among the many different themes I've had for Author's Picks, one common object that I had yet to highlight was the telephone. And yet, as soon as I put up "Private Number", suddenly all these phone-themed tunes came back to mind. So, to finish my contributions today, I'm putting up my telephone or denwa songs. Not all of them are City Pop, mind you, but enough of them are including the one with City Pop's most famous number.
I heard a rather interesting piece of news last Friday via NHK. Today, June 1st (and indeed, welcome to June 2026!), is the 900th anniversary of the founding of Chiba City, Chiba Prefecture. 1126...what a year! Chiba Station right in the heart of Chiba City was a regular stop for me on Monday afternoons since I had a regular class at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries; I was picked up by the regular company bus at one corner and spent a 20-minute ride to the factories in the suburbs.
I didn't explore too much of the city outside of the immediate station area, but I do recall having a couple of dinners there and having a quick bite to eat at the station hamburger shop (and no, it wasn't a McDonalds) along with buying a few CDs at the music shop...also in the station. Of course, the monorail was always zipping by above me.
Anyways, in commemoration of Chiba's 900th birthday, I'm bringing in some "city" songs: songs that have the word "city" or "tokai" in them. I would have included Anri's（杏里）"Surf City" here but it had already gotten a shoutout in last week's "HANDS Down!" article. So, without further ado:
For the first number of times that I saw Akemi Ishii（石井明美）on television and heard her on the cassette player, she seemed to be that young singer who loved some of that spicy Latin sauce in her music through songs like "Cha-Cha-Cha". Then a few singles in, I heard her "JOY" from July 1987 and figured that she could do the straight-up pop song as well.
Well, now I've just heard the B-side from "JOY" and now it's been affirmed that Ishii was able to come up with the odd City Pop song. "Yasashii Hito"(Nice Guy) was written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, quite the golden duo of songwriting, and it's a smoky nocturnal number which includes a bluesy sax solo. I gather that the title is meant to be an ironic one since Ishii keeps singing "You are cruel!" at the end of each chorus. Betrayal in the big city can be a City Pop trope.
Well, here I was about to post my first Omega Tribe (under their 1986 Omega Tribe incarnation) song in a while and it was to have been on "I'll Never Forget You" from their 1987 album"Crystal Night". Glad I checked though since I actually had already talked about it within the article on the album itself. Unlike the song title, I did forget.😥
However, I am not going to leave Carlos Toshiki and his band in a lurch. I've opted to go with another song and that one comes from their June 1987 album"DJ Special". "Blue Reef", and no, it doesn't really have anything to do with one of Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）trademark songs, was written by Asako Yano（矢野朝子）, composed by Shinji Takashima（高島信二）and arranged by the late Hiroshi Shinkawa（新川博）. Speaking of that arrangement, it is pretty interesting since it sounds like a languid example of the then-novel New Jack Swing. Think Bobby Brown on vacation in Hawaii.
Yeah, I knew that Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）had his City Pop phase going deeper into the 1980s but I didn't realize that it went quite this deep. Armed with a sparkling single cover by Hiroshi Nagai（永井博）, Saijo released his 57th single from May 1987 in the form of "New York Girl".
Beginning with a quiet intro that had me thinking of Earth Wind & Fire's"Fantasy" for a little while, "New York Girl" vaults into sultry urban dance pop action with Saijo yelling out the title throughout the song (bass addicts, you'll love this one, too). It seems the song was created for Saijo right from the start with keyboardist and record producer George Duke and Shalamar member Howard Hewitt creating the song while future AKB48 Svengali Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）came up with the Japanese lyrics. "New York Girl" managed to peak at No. 50 on Oricon. The Japanese version is above while the English B-side is below. Its first appearance on an album was on the December 1987 version of "BEST PACK/Saijo Hideki".
I'm just off by a week here but it was a little over a year ago that I posted "Osaka Songs", a list of Osaka-titled tunes, and crazily enough, in all those 53 weeks since then, I hadn't put up anything called "Tokyo Songs". Little old me had naturally assumed that I'd already done so. Nope, that isn't true. Kinda wild considering that I'd just recently written about Takajin Yashiki's（やしきたかじん）"Tokyo"（東京）. Well, that changes today. Quite the wide range of kayo, too!
(1959) Frank Nagai and Kazuko Matsuo -- Tokyo Nightclub （東京ナイトクラブ）
Welcome to another KKP weekend. It's a little chillier if also a little humid, so I'm more than happy to be typing this while the windows are open.
1980s aidoru Nami Shimada（島田奈美）hit her peak in terms of Oricon when she released her May 1987 single "Uchiki na Cupid"（内気なキューピッド）. It hit No. 7 and so did the follow-up single "Pastel Blue no Tameiki" (Pastel Blue Sighes) which came out a few months later in August. Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）and arranged by Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）, it's a soaring aidoru tune with Shimada's high-toned vocals and it feels like it's describing a fantastical scene involving the lass herself. Couldn't ask anymore from songwriters when it comes to an aidoru song, and heck, she even looks like a chiffon cake in the video below.😁
I think it may have been commenter Brian who recently reminded me of anime's favourite boarding house "Maison Ikkoku"（めぞん一刻）by stating that it had celebrated a recent anniversary. And sure enough, we're all here again admiring Kyoko the boarding house manager. But I come here through a rather coincidental route. Yesterday, I was delighted to find out that one of the new anime for Spring 2026, "Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!!"（ガンバレ!中村くん!!...Go for It, Nakamura!）, has adopted the policy of using some of the Showa and Heisei Era hits to end each episode, and the ending theme for Episode 1 was Kozo Murashita's（村下孝蔵）wonderful "Hatsukoi"（初恋）. Let it make a resurgence, I say!
Well, I've only just discovered that another Murashita single had become the final opening theme for "Maison Ikkoku". I've heard of his September 1987 12th single"Hidamari" (Sunny Spot) but only as something that I probably listened to for the first time on "Sounds of Japan" decades ago. I didn't know of the anime's connection with the song but now I recognize it as being part of the "Maison Ikkoku" family along with Yuki Saito's（斉藤由貴）upbeat "Kanashimi yo Konnichiwa"（悲しみよこんにちは）and Anzen Chitai's（安全地帯）mysterious "Suki sa"（好きさ）.
I figure that if anime fans can enjoy the fruits of "Hatsukoi", then why not lead them to "Hidamari", the opening theme for this classic show of the 1980s? Murashita had been known as a singer-songwriter who flitted between folk and pop with ease, but the really skippy "Hidamari" is definitely in the latter genre as his lyrics talk about one fellow mightily pining for that young lady. Kimio Mizutani（水谷公生）was behind its arrangement as it hit No. 61 on Oricon.
I figure that if I can get a Eurobeat song onto the blog last month, thanks to Yoshimi Yokosuka（横須賀昌美）, I can do so here in March as well.
And this time, it's by the group EVE that seemed to be omnipresent in the music world back in the 1980s since they popped up backing up a lot of other artists in the recording studio. This time, though, the Sisters Shinzato from Okinawa are front and centre with their second single as a group, "Sugar Sugar" which came out in August 1987. Written by two of the sisters, Clare & Leona, with Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）handling the arrangement under his nom de plumeMark Davis (man, he's been a busy man today after providing his services for the song of the previous article), I'm sure that he made Stock, Aitken & Waterman very proud with his Eurobeat tendencies. "Sugar Sugar" peaked at No. 77 on Oricon.
Yes, I realize that I did put up that White Day list last night, but I figure that I have one more related song within me. Besides, I also noted that I was one City Pop article short of the usual five that I post so I'm making amends here.
My Satoshi Ikeda（池田聡）file on KKP isn't too long and what I have on him mostly shows his 90s material aside from his debut single which I featured on The Works of Ken Sato（佐藤健）. Therefore, let me introduce "I Love You" which was the B-side to his second single"Jealousy"（j・e・a・l・o・u・s・y） from January 1987. Composed by Ikeda, written by Hiroko Asano（浅野裕子）and arranged by Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）, it's got synths and guitars crashing with abandon to show off that exciting night in the big city.
Wherever you are in Japan, I hope you and your significant other are enjoying White Day!
Here I was about to start the Urban Contemporary Friday round of songs on KKP with Ginji Ito's（伊藤銀次） percolating "Cherry Night", only to find out at the last minute that I had already provided an article about this track from his 1986 album"Get Happy" back in 2023, almost exactly four years ago. Oh, dopey me!😵
It took some scrolling but I was able to find something Ito and City Pop and it's from the album that followed "Get Happy", his 1987 "Nature Boy". "Heart and Soul" had the same songwriters: composer Ito and lyricist Youta Yumeno（夢野よう太）, but this time, the result isn't overcaffeinated and happy. Instead, it's a more sultry and soulful combination on the side of sophisticated pop, which was a genre that was getting added to the City Pop mix in the late 1980s. Not sure if the song included real horns or synth horns, but hey it's all good.
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