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.
I'd been ready to treat this song by the late great Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）as one of her originals, but thanks to some checking back within the archives, I've realized that this is actually a cover by the Queen of Kayo Kyoku. Good to do that from time to time.
Jazz was one of Misora's go-to genres during her long career as a singer so it was natural for me to assume that "Futari de O-sake wo" (Let's Have a Drink Together) was one of her own as she cheerfully fronts all of that Dixieland jazz. However, the fact is that she was giving her rendition of the original by Michiyo Azusa（梓みちよ）which was released all the way back in March 1974, and listening to the original again, it was definitely more in the swinging kayo vein.
I couldn't find out when Misora had recorded her "Futari de O-sake wo" although it was a track on her 2007 "Cover Song Collection"（カバーソング コレクション）, coming out some eighteen years following her untimely death. The songwriters are of course the same: lyricist Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）and composer Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）.
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.
Well, it's been quite a day already although I'm typing this before noon. The Winter Olympics are on, the Super Bowl will probably upstage that later tonight, Japan's Lower House elections have resulted in an LDP steamroller, and our long-awaited and long-suffering LRT here in Toronto finally launched about six years late. All a little overwhelming on a Sunday to be sure and I wouldn't mind a little solace right now.
I haven't posted a Sing Like Talking article for well over a year although Chikuzen Sato's（佐藤竹善）group is one of my favourite bands, and with all of the attention on singers' career anniversaries in last year's Kohaku Utagassen, SLT, which I believe has yet to be seen on NHK's Shibuya stage on New Year's Eve, celebrated its 40th anniversary last year. Unfortunately, any celebrations were probably muted to a great degree due to the passing of SLT guitarist Tomohiko Nishimura（西村智彦）in June 2025.
The other surprise is that I have yet to put up an Author's Picks on my favourite Sing Like Talking tunes. And this one was difficult because the band is so smooth in a number of genres, whether it be funk, AOR, straight pop, etc. and they've had a lot of great songs in my estimation. But I've got my five favourites here...although realistically, they are four favourites by SLT itself and one by Sato from his "Cornerstones" album series (it is too cool to pass up).
Although I saw and enjoyed the first series of "Kimetsu no Yaiba"（鬼滅の刃）, I'm generally not one for supernatural horror or sorcery, but when doing my due diligence for this song, I discovered that it had been used as the theme for an NTV show based on a manga titled "Hyakki Yagyō Shou"（百鬼夜行抄...Excerpts from The Night Parade of One Hundred Demons） which was televised back in the late nights starting from February 2007.
From what I could glean from its synopsis, it's not so much about good battling evil between the physical and supernatural realms; it's more about different spheres of life so I gather that things are somewhat more peacefully enacted and contemplative.
Certainly the ending theme for "Hyakki Yagyō Shou" reflects this feeling. A few months ago, I introduced a duo that had a run in the 2000s called Fonogenico and enjoyed their 2007 "Orange no Suna"（オレンジの砂）. Vocalist/lyricist Naoko Takayama（高山奈帆子）and keyboardist/composer Masaru Kawaguchi（川口潤）came up with this ending theme at the same time that the show aired called "Negaigoto" (What I Wish For) as the title track for their mini-album. It's a lovely piano pop ballad that almost sounds as if it could have come from a couple of decades previously. In fact, I like the song so much that I was surprised that the mini-album only hit a ranking of No. 259 on Oricon before it disappeared from sight. But then again, its attachment to a late-night niche drama and the observation that there may have been a lot of contemplative ballads being released at the time possibly nullified any impact.
Sunday evenings at 6 pm in Ichikawa usually meant dinner time for me. Television choices varied almost as much as my cooking at that time. Fuji-TV was always "Chibi Maruko-chan"（ちびまる子ちゃん）, but there was also a program on TV Tokyo at the same time called "Drive A Go-Go!"（ドライブ A GO!GO!）.
Japanese TV will never fail to fascinate me when it comes to the breadth and depth of ideas and new angles to apply to programs based on edutainment. "Drive A Go-Go!" was a half-hour travelogue featuring tarento and other celebrities taking a drive together with one of the stars behind the wheel as the gang for that week (could number between three and five folks per episode) head for a certain area in Japan to explore and nosh. The above video is labeled as a 1998 episode and that's when "Drive A Go-Go!" began as it went through its odyssey of eighteen years. The duo above (if it doesn't get deleted) is the late singer-songwriter KAN and former aidoru Wakako Shimazaki（島崎和歌子）.
Of course, a long-running TV show like "Drive A Go-Go" will have had lots of ending themes by various bands and singers, and sure enough, somewhere in the middle of its run, the program had the duo metro trip come up with one such ending theme. I've already spoken on metro trip back in October when I introduced their tune "BABYBABY" from 2006. "Driving" hails from metro trip's 2nd and final album"Lovers" which was released in July 2007. Written and composed by one-half of the duo, Taka Aoki（青木多果）, it's a suitably breezy and funky piece for the highways and byways.
Man, I hope the Xmas revelers are enjoying really hot cocoa and nothing radioactive above. But it is indeed the season.
Of course, one of the great Christmas musical chestnuts out there is "Winter Wonderland" which was first recorded in 1934 by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith, according to Wikipedia. Since then, the song has been covered by so many artists everywhere, and of course, that includes Bing Crosby. It wouldn't be a KKP Christmas without Der Bingle. And so, he came up with his version in 1962. The snazzy one with the cool video above may be the 1962 version or any subsequent version by him but let's just go with that year, shall we? His baritone will always be welcome in my ears at this time.
I've had this version of "Winter Wonderland" on the backlog for quite a while now, and I figure that it must have come from one of Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu" episodes, since I could never imagine a ska version of the classic. But here we are.
akiko is a jazz singer who has been on the blog before with her 2003 take on "Good Morning Heartache", originally performed by Billie Holiday. Well, she provides her jaunty collaboration with The Ska Flames in "Winter Wonderland" via her 2007 release "A White Album". The band has been around since 1985 and has released six albums and eight singles up to 2020.
I'd never heard of the 2000s duo Fonogenico before but when I encountered their May 2007 3rd single"Orange no Suna"(Orange Sand) some weeks ago, I figured that I had to put it up here on KKP. For one thing, the arrangement sounds so much like very romantic Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）and readers probably have already cottoned to the fact that I'm a fan of his, especially with those silky strings. It's quite the soulful pop ballad about a young lady holding the hand of the guy she's fallen for for the first time. Awwww!
The Kansai-born Fonogenico formed in 2002 with vocalist/lyricist Naoko Takayama（高山奈帆子）and keyboardist/composer Masaru Kawaguchi（川口潤）as they did live events and their songwriting. In the following year, they debuted as the duo Fonogenico and made their major debut in 2005 with their first single coming out in 2006. In total, they released four singles and a mini-album. Kawaguchi pulled out of the duo in 2008 and Takayama continued on as a solo act before calling it a day herself in 2010.
I was watching the Saturday night news on NHK and noticed a feature on anison Bon Odori（盆踊り...Bon Dance）. Yes, tis the season for vacations and summer festivals, and of course, almost all of these will include the traditional folk dance en masse. Apparently now though, fans of anime and anime theme songs can dance to those Bon Odori style.
Mind you, you might be looking at the above and wondering in some horror about how a mass of folks can dance that packed together during the notoriously torrid summer that Japan is enduring. Well for one thing, the above video was actually taken a few months ago when the temperatures were still reasonable and for another, not many people will turn down a Bon Odori opportunity especially when favourite songs are involved and in the above, the fans are dancing to stuff including "Kibun Jojo"（気分上々↑↑）, "MatsuKen Samba II"（マツケンサンバ II） and "Bling-Bang-Bang-Born".
Perhaps the reason behind anison Bon Odori is that over the decades, a number of anime may have spawned their own festival songs of summer. I've written about a couple of them at the very least. One is Mami Koyama & Columbia Yurikago Kai's（小山茉美・コロムビアゆりかご会）"Arale-chan Ondo"（アラレちゃん音頭）in "Dr. Slump"（Dr.スランプ）from 1981 and then even earlier, the venerable franchise "Doraemon"（ドラえもん）came up with "Doraemon Ondo"（ドラえもん音頭）in 1979 with the title character's longest-serving seiyuu Nobuyo Ohyama（大山のぶ代）singing that one just when she first started voicing the genius earless cat.
Well, Ohyama passed the baton over to seiyuu Wasabi Mizuta（水田わさび）in 2005 and evidently, she was assigned to sing her own traditional Doraemon-themedminyo titled "Odore...Dore...Dora...Doraemon Ondo" (Doraemon Traditional Folk Song Dance) which was written by Mike Sugiyama（マイクスギヤマ）and composed by Kan Sawada（沢田完）. For some reason, I keep seeing the 2007 version so we're going to go with that. As would be the case with any traditional folk song that demands group participation, it's plenty boisterous, grand and upbeat. I have to also admit that I liked the little shoulder shimmy that Doraemon does at the beginning there in the above video. Mizuta is also assisted by the Mori no Ki Children's Chorus（森の木児童合唱団）.
The video below was uploaded about a year ago and I have to give my respects to the folks in the character costumes as they performed at Roppongi Hills. As I remember, Tokyo was just as boiling hot back then as it is now. Hopefully, they received danger pay.
The song and dance group trf was a unit that I had always associated with 1990s J-Pop starting with their mega-hit "Boy Meets Girl". For a period of several years as I was getting acclimated to the Tokyo life, YU-KI and her gang were seemingly everywhere on the airwaves and television with their dance-pop hits. But as we approached the end of the century, they seemed to do the slow fade from pop culture.
But recently, I discovered that trf had provided a snazzy opening theme song to a 2007 anime adaptation of the manga "Wangan Midnight"（湾岸ミッドナイト...Bayshore Midnight）...a whole decade after assuming that trf had been relegated to the potential nostalgia tour of pop culture history. "lights and any more" may sound like a rogue dependent clause but its release in July of that year as the group's first digital download single provided a good high-octane boost to the opening credits promising lots of furious racing along Tokyo's Bayshore Route. The song was also a part of trf's 10th album"Gravity" from February 2009 which scored a No. 42 ranking on Oricon.
I don't recall all that well about being driven on Bayshore since getting rides was quite rare during my time in Japan with all of those subways and trains to rely upon. Plus, taxis can really rack up the price. But I can imagine some of the flair and romance of going along the highways and byways of Tokyo from seeing some of the videos.
Over the past number of years, singer-songwriter and musician Ringo Shiina has broken down some walls that I had once constructed around her. In the approximate quarter-century that I've known about her, I had assumed the following things: 1) she was the scariest punk-pop-rock singer that I have ever seen or heard (that psycho stare and the growling r's), 2) she would never show up on the Kohaku Utagassen and 3) she would never agree to a long-form interview on any show.
Let's start with 3). A few weeks ago, Shiina actually appeared on NHK's "Asaichi"（あさイチ）for over an hour to banter with the hosts about her career. That got a ton of viewers putting eyeballs to screen. She even had a belly laugh on camera about one of her friend's remarks. As for 2), she has shown up on the New Year's Eve special several times either as herself or as the vocalist for her band Tokyo Jihen（東京事変）. And for 1), Shiina has more often than not appeared in a kimono including that "Asaichi" interview and she couldn't have been more down-to-earth and polite and friendly. She looked like the graceful owner of a particularly expensive ryokan somewhere in the countryside.
After that special experience on "Asaichi", I figured that I just had to post up six of my favourite Shiina songs. Not surprisingly, some of them are her early jangly hits and the rest are her jazzier/orchestral fare.
In all the kerfuffle of putting up my Author's Pick on Tanabata yesterday, I was also informed that July 7th 2025 was World Chocolate Day because it was apparently the day that chocolate had been introduced to Europe in the 16th century. Now, I don't quite consider myself a chocoholic anymore but I still like the sweet stuff whether it be in cookies, bars, drinks and the like. I've had chocolate beer and chocolate-covered potato chips as the more extreme examples but I'm perfectly at home munching down a Hershey's Kiss or a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup (covered in chocolate, of course).
As such, although I'm a day late, I would like to commemorate World Chocolate Day with some of my own chocolate concoctions whether they be located in the song title or the artist name.
The title for this song will always remind me of Bobby Van's famous hopping sequence (known as "Take Me to Broadway") for the 1953 musical "Small Town Girl". How the guy did it without needing traction for the following six months is beyond me, but he gets my respect.
When it comes to the Sawayama sister act of SOULHEAD, I will first go to "Like a Queen", their dynamic collaboration with songsmith Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）. Strangely enough though, the first song that I posted about them was their January 2007 13th and final single to date "Dear Friends". The coupling song to the main song was "Feel Like Jumping" which is a whole lot less frenetic than Van's "Street Dance" but it's still a happy and groovy R&B romp with Tsugumi and Yoshika having their own fun time on the town. Wouldn't mind hearing some of these songs coming back in the 2020s. SOULHEAD took care of words and music with OCTOPUSSY helping out on the melody.
Earlier this morning, the local news channel CP24 opted to torture the carnivores and omnivores by having a segment of the annual Vaughan Ribfest show up on the station's doorsteps for an advance taste of their barbequed ribs and other examples of meat freshly grilled. It means that a Southern Ontario summer tradition has begun once more with Ribfest season that will most likely go on to Labour Day in September. Perhaps without too much exaggeration, I'm thinking that at least once a week for the next several weeks, there will be a Ribfest somewhere in the province.
Well, as such, for Hump Day today, I figured that it might be nice to start another broadcasting day on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with a song about the joy of meat. I'd thought that it was going to take some doing to find such a novelty song but actually it was pretty easy. I couldn't find a lot of information about these folks but years ago, there was apparently a podcast titled "Takumi to Satsumi no Castella Fever"（琢磨とサツミの｢キャステラフィーバー｣...Takuma and Satsumi's Castella Fever） (didn't realize that podcasts went all that way back into the 2000s), but hey, naïve ol' me.
Anyways from that podcast came a song titled "Nikujiru Monogatari" (The Story of Meat Juices) that was released in January 2007. Written and composed by co-host Takuma Wada（和田琢磨）and joined by co-host Satsumi（サツミ）, this Mood Kayo-style song is a tribute to the culinary and gastronomical wonders of dinner at a yakiniku restaurant in Japan. Indeed, the song set me slavering over the memories of hitting those good ol' Korean BBQ restaurants in Gunma and Tokyo over the years that I was there. By the way, the version below is known as The Akasaka Supper Club version of "Nikujiru Monogatari" with an elegant piano leading the way.
This last photo is from a group outing to a yakiniku restaurant called Shinta out in the suburbs of Toronto. Wasn't cheap but it was good.
Happy Friday and welcome to another Urban Contemporary session for KKP today. To begin as we have for the last few Fridays, I have the fourth and final part of the translation of the liner notes for Tohoku Shinkansen's（東北新幹線）legendary "Thru Traffic" from 1982 by music journalist Toshikazu Kanazawa（金澤寿和）. This final part goes into the figurative storm clouds that brewed up which led to not only Tohoku Shinkansen producing just the one album before the partnership faded into dust but also how the duo got its name.
Couldn't resist.
Although the recording itself had gone comparatively smoothly, what came after was a nightmare. There was the growing number of directors and engineers coming in and out, and the work slowed down to a crawl. Even the odd name of Tohoku Shinkansen was given to the duo because “it was just like the actual Tohoku Shinkansen bullet train project which kept getting delayed and never launching”. On top of that, there was very little promotion for the album. As mentioned above, only two of the tracks made their debut at Yagami’s（八神純子）concerts. Perhaps part of the problem was that in the midst of the difficulties of releasing the album, Narumi（鳴海寛）, Yamakawa（山川恵津子）and Yamaha couldn’t see eye-to-eye-to-eye. For one thing, Yamakawa, right from the start of Tohoku Shinkansen, had maintained that she wouldn’t participate in any live performances because she didn’t want to be out in front on the stage. Narumi thought that though his partner felt uncomfortable, she should perform if only to promote the release of the album. Then, Yamaha gradually turned the screws onto the two of them to perform. It was from these disagreements that the album only got out to some of Yagami’s fans and Tohoku Shinkansen quietly disappeared.
It was at this time that the one-and-only Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）had heard “Thru Traffic” and invited Yamakawa and Narumi to join his tour as backup chorus. Tats’ hit album “For You” was just released and the man himself was on fire, but in the end, Yagami’s tour had already been scheduled so they couldn’t do it. As well, there was a lot of friction between Narumi and Yagami’s director which led to Narumi not only leaving the band but separating himself from Yamaha. Ultimately, a one-time Tohoku Shinkansen concert wouldn’t finally come into being until August 2004, 22 years later when the duo teamed up once more.
But Narumi would soon join Takao Kisugi’s（来生たかお）band, and then become the sound producer for the late Cindy and Kyosuke Kusunoki（楠木恭介）. And after that, he participated as a guitarist for Tatsuro Yamashita’s“Performance ’88-‘89” tour and then recorded the live album “JOY” under a similar framework which greatly raised his profile. Especially through his incredibly soulful play on Tats’ “Soubou”（蒼茫）, Tats’ fans were astonished when they heard it. In 1994, he would fully return to the music scene when he formed the band frasco out of which three albums were released.
As for Yamakawa, she quickly distinguished herself as a composer and arranger and became active in a wide variety of genres including kayo kyoku and aidoru music. In 1986, her contribution to Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）, “100% Danjo Kousai”（100%男女交際...100% Men And Women Dating） earned her a Japan Record Award for arrangement. Her name has also popped up in the chorus for Tats’ “COZY” and Mariya Takeuchi’s（竹内まりや） recordings among other projects, so that she would participate in over a thousand songs.
Yamakawa: When I look back on things now, I think Tohoku Shinkansen was possible thanks to Hiroshi. I had a really great time singing chorus with him and we meshed well. Though we co-produced the album, it was he who took the initiative. When I was thinking about what I should do to bring out Hiroshi, I thought about my position and took a step back.＊ However, I still have strong memories of the staff and everyone else enjoying themselves a lot. Regarding all of it, everyone was so generous and we didn’t think about things such as the production costs and made the album that we had wanted to make. As a result, I could hear very warm and nostalgic sounds. If anyone thought about making something similar now, it wouldn’t be possible at all. It’s on that part that I hope you take your time and enjoy it.
Toshikazu Kanazawa
September 2007
*I put that one statement by Yamakawa in bold since I am not completely sure about my translation there. By chance, if there is anyone out there who has their liner notes of "Thru Traffic" and have tried to figure it out, let me know if it's OK or if I need to make corrections.
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.
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.
Now I didn't forget that March 3rd is Dolls' Day or Girls' Day in Japan but I hadn't been too sure that I could find a song that would befit the Shinto religious holiday. For reference, you can take a look at the above video by GTV Japan to get a primer on Hina Matsuri.
Well, I'm typing this in the last hour before March 3rd becomes March 4th so I'm rushing a bit here. But I was able to find a song that was released all the way back in February 1936. "Ureshii Hina Matsuri" (Happy Dolls' Day) was written by lyricist Hachiro Sato（サトウハチロー）sometime around the time he had given his own daughter a hina matsuri set as a gift and its translation at "Lyrics Translate" pretty much establishes the joy of celebrating the observed holiday. Koyo Kawamura（河村光陽）contributed the melody.
Of course, being a children's song, "Ureshii Hina Matsuri" has been covered by many singers over the decades. For example, the above video has the Hibari Children Chorus（ひばり児童合唱団）performing the song. Their version can be found on the October 2015 compilation album "Uta de Oboeru Nihon no Shiki to Wa no Gyoji ~ Doyou, Shouka, Warabe Uta"（歌でおぼえる日本の四季と和の行事 童謡・唱歌・わらべうた...Children's Songs and Nursery Songs ~ Japanese Seasons and Events Remembered Through Music）. Below we have seiyuu and singer Megumi Hayashibara（林原めぐみ）performing her take on her 2007 album"Hayashibara Megumi: Tanoshii Doyou"（林原めぐみ たのしいどうよう...Fun Children's Songs）.
Well, actually, the above photo is of a dreamy sunset in the Koedo district of Kawagoe City, Saitama Prefecture when I was there in 2017. But it's still close enough to Tokyo.😁
Anyways, let's start off the urban contemporary Friday segment of KKP this week with "Tokyo Sunset", the final track on fusion band Casiopea's（カシオペア）37th studio album"Places" from July 2003. It's a lovely jazzy ballad by the band's guitarist Issei Noro（野呂一生）and it's fitting as the final track since there is so much about "Tokyo Sunset" that says Miller Time after a tough week at the office. Mind you, the melody might be more about the white wine rather than the brewski. But I'll leave that up to you.🍺🍷
A few years later, Casiopea put out an intriguing compilation album titled "CASIOPEA Plays Guitar MINUS ONE PLACES" from November 2007 which consists of the original album with only four of the tracks in their entirety and then those same tracks without Noro's guitar. Below is that version of "Tokyo Sunset". Either way, it's a Friday...meet those friends and relax while the sun's going down.
Good heavens! It's been nearly five years since I put up a bona fide Dreams Come True song on the blog. I did go through all of the favourites that I knew and there was a feeling that my DCT file was done.
Then once again through the aegis of the good folks at Weathernews Japan via their "Weather Music" segment, I got to hear the familiar and lovely voice of Miwa Yoshida（吉田美和）a few days ago. It was nice to hear her again and it was through Dreams Come True's 38th single from March 2007, "Osaka Lover".
Written and composed by Yoshida and arranged by her DCT partner Masato Nakamura（中村正人）, it's a story of a young lady in a long-distance relationship who comes to Osaka to meet her boyfriend and undergoes her own sturm und drang about the relationship including whether she can handle the Osakan dialect (the music video does show a happy ending). Yes, I can definitely relate to that last part. The melody is one boppy disco arrangement and it has some intriguing matsuri-friendly percussion banging away there.
"Osaka Lover" peaked at No. 7 on Oricon and went Gold. The song was created in the first place to help advertise the Hollywood Dream The Ride at Universal Studios Japan in Osaka, although while one is on it, I doubt that the first thing that will come to mind is this song. Terror and a need to vomit, perhaps, but probably not the song.
Here I was thinking that I had already put up a ROY article on British-American entertainer Tracey Ullman whose "The Tracey Ullman Show" on FOX in the late 1980s would beget "The Simpsons". But nope, I have yet to post "They Don't Know" which is her most famous song during her brief singing career in the Eighties.
Well, I can put that up during the next major holiday weekend here which is Labour Day. But in the meantime, let's go with her very first single in the United Kingdom in 1983, "Breakaway", although that song actually followed "They Don't Know" in its release history in the United States. I remember the video quite well since it was getting some heavy rotation on Canada's Muchmusic video station and despite Tracey and company having the time of their lives in 1960s fashion singing the decade's girl pop, I had assumed that "Breakaway" was a 1980s tribute to the 1960s because of the then-current rockabilly revival.
But the truth is that "Breakaway" was indeed a 1960s song; part of a 1964 single, to be specific. According to Wikipedia, it was the B-side to Irma Thomas'"Wish Someone Would Care" which ended up becoming her biggest hit. The songwriters were Jackie DeShannon and Sharon Sheeley with DeShannon already getting coverage on KKP a couple of times including for her "What the World Needs Now Is Love"in 1965.
Now, for a brief change of scenery for Reminiscings of Youth this week, instead of the usual comparisons of the song of my youth with what was coming out or ranking in over in Japan, I have opted to introduce a couple of covers of "Breakaway" by Japanese bands. One band was wface, a rockabilly duo, who collaborated with vocalist Tomomi Yoshikawa（吉川朋美）on a mini-album titled "early times" in April 2004. wface consists of Takashi Kamisawatsu（上澤津孝）and Kenichi Yamaguchi（山口憲一）; the two had actually worked together before as Magic between 1988 and 1999 playing their rockabilly and college rock before breaking up and then getting back together again in 2001 as wface. In the 2000s, they released five full albums.
The Milkees are a four-piece band from Kobe that got its start in 2004 with sisters Berry and PECO being joined by another pair of sisters, Petra and Lily. According to their website, they're into rock n' roll, pop, jazz and blues. They've released four albums including the one that contains their Japanese-language version of "Breakaway", "Lover Soul" from November 2007.
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