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.
Well, it's a heck of a thing to come up with a summer song when spring here in Toronto doesn't arrive for another several hours. However, I know that Torontonians are absolutely biting their lips at even the slightest opportunity to enjoy the hot season once more after one of the more enervating winters in recent memory.
Unfortunately, I can't bring the heat and the rest of the summer weather but at least we can live a bit vicariously through music. Specifically, I can show another song from the vast discography of Nash Music Library. "Summer Things" comes from their March 2018 collection "Happy Hours" and it's a very skippy and heat-inducing song that even includes a bit of soft rap/vocalese near the end of this short and sweet tune.
Look at all those abbreviations in the United States. Makes things rather compact, don't they? Well, it's time for a bit of whimsy here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" today as this thought came to my mind for the latest Author's Picks. I think they're rare enough but there are some Japanese songs that have two-letter abbreviations in their titles, so why not give a few out?
Hello, Dance for philosophy? Jamiroquai would like to speak with you.
Gotta admit that there's a fair bit of Dance for philosophy's"It's My Turn", the aidoru group's August 2018 8th single, which reminds me of Jamiroquai's"Canned Heat", but that's not a bad thing. I enjoy both songs for their combination of funk and groove and in the case of "It's My Turn", perhaps Jay Kay should actually phone up composer and arranger Gento Miyano（宮野弦士）. Judging from some of his other arrangements for folks like Galali（がらり）and CHiLi GiRL, this guy really likes the nu-disco. The lyrics were provided by Sho Yamamoto（ヤマモトショウ）.
The original single reached No. 7 on Oricon. A remix version called "T-Groove Remix" was created on Dance for philosophy's "Sapiosexual", their 2020 album of remixes. If anything, this version of "It's My Turn" sounds as if it had gotten even more of that 1970s disco groove and a slightly more laidback approach and a great guitar solo. As is shown in the original music video above, this could be a great tune to play "Dance Dance Revolution" to.
I always liked that sunset filter on my old departed Casio digital camera. It was the first one I ever owned. By the way, the above is a shot of West Shinjuku centering on the Cocoon building.
Anyways, this particular song has had me thinking about a typical Friday night in the hustling and bustling areas of Shinjuku and Shibuya. All those masses of humanity streaming in all directions like wayward amoebae looking for food.
I am talking about singer-songwriter Anna Takeuchi's（竹内アンナ）"ALRIGHT" which was included as a track on her first official single "at ONE" from August 2018. Written and composed by the singer, it's got quite the dreamy intro followed by a fairly fast-paced melody which could signify navigating the crowded streets of Tokyo, en route to a restaurant or bar to meet up with good buddies. The instruments used here enhances that feeling of City Pop and other music from decades past.
According to her J-Wiki discography, there was a pre-debut single released in April of that same year titled "alright" in small letters. Not sure if that is the same song with a dramatically different arrangement.
Kiyotaka Sugiyama（杉山清貴）is a singer that I usually associate with his old band Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ） through such City Pop classics as "Summer Suspicion". In fact, I could only see a few entries on KKP where his name was the only one on the byline...one example is his contribution to Christmas, "Saigo no Holy Night"（最後のHoly Night) from 1986.
Maybe it's not fair for me to say so, but I have assumed that Sugiyama and his contemporaries at the time have been doing more in the realm of nostalgia tours or popping up on the odd kayo kyoku TV show to perform their old classics. However, I think now at least a few of them including Sugiyama are still putting out the fresh stuff, and that is indeed the case with the former Omega Tribe leader. Back in May 2018, he released his 26th solo album"My Song My Soul" with one of the tracks being "This Song's For You".
If this song is indeed for me, then I'm honoured. In comparison to his summery and silky songs from those 1980s, "This Song's For You" has him going sophisticated jazz/pop as if he were not traveling alongside the Pacific Coast of Japan but booming through the skyscrapers within West Shinjuku one night. Sugiyama's no longer walking on the beach in an Aloha shirt and flip-flops but is tripping the light fantastic in a bespoke suit as a middle-aged gentleman.
As I type this, I'm approaching the noon hour but this is where I will be ending my Urban Contemporary Friday session, now that I've gotten my six articles done in the last twelve hours and will be facing some busy times in the next several hours.
TENDRE is a musical marvel that I've been keeping my eyes on for a while now. I was charmed by his 2017 "crave" for its cool and funky nature. He even came up with the current theme song for the NHK morning information show "Asaichi"（あさイチ）and the only disappointment there is that it's so short. Happily, there is no such thing with the coupling song to his very first digital single "SOFTLY/RIDE" from May 2018.
Groovalicious is another made-up adjective that I love to apply to TENDRE's stuff and that includes "Ride". I'm happy to finally see the guy in the music video while he is strutting his stuff on those overnight streets (just hope he didn't get mugged). It feels like a ride through the 1970s and 2010s at the same time with all of that smokiness and coolness. I also love the video's use of Monty Python-esque animation. In April 2023, TENDRE provided a slightly more oomphed-up version of "Ride" in his digital EP "Beginning".
Of course, tomorrow is Halloween in every place that celebrates the Jack O'Lanterns, ghouls, goblins and Trick or Treat. So, I figure that I should put something to commemorate that fact and tradition. I'll have to see what Shibuya Scramble Crossing looks like on YouTube tomorrow morning.
Anyways, I've got one track from Nash Music Library's contribution to October 31st, the 2013 "Halloween". Above is "Spooky Creepy Monsters", an appropriately eerie piece meant to send shivers up and down your spine...if you're in a haunted dance club. The one below comes from a sequel album "Halloween 2" from 2018, "Horror Nights Street" which has more of a vibe reminiscent of an All Hallow's Eve march led by Danny Elfman.
During my browsings through YouTube, I encountered this September 2018 single, "Kimi to Tsuki to Cider"(You and the Moon and Cider) by the unit Neco Asobi because of its spacey 1980s technopop leanings; I also picked up on some urban groove in there, too. I suddenly got all of these memories of skinny ties, techno cuts and Day-Glo neon from over forty years ago.
There's not much information on Neco Asobi (which translates as "Cat Play") but apparently the duo, which started with the vocalist Yuniko Takano（高野ユニコ）and trackmaker TAOISM, launched in 2018 and went on until 2023 when they opted to go on hiatus. New vocalist sino entered the scene and TAOISM changed his moniker to u.u. By the way, the below video was actually filmed at a Shimo-Kitazawa live house in June 2025 so I'm assuming that it's sino singing alongside u.u.
Here's hoping that your weekend has gone off to a good start. My whole family was out for shopping at the local J-Town earlier today where I pulled the trigger and bought bottles of Peach Calpis and Kirin Milk Tea so we're laden down with the sugar. I had a good tall glass of the former and suffered a bit of a sugar crash.
But there's nothing like a really sparkly and catchy song to get back on track. It's been quite a few years since I've had seiyuu and singer Sumire Uesaka（上坂すみれ）on the byline. Only recently did I discover the title track from her August 2018 4th studio album"No Future Vacances" and it's quite the banger. It feels like Neo-City Pop with some disco and shiny and gleaming synthpop. And listening to that arrangement made me wonder who was behind the words and music.
There was something especially Especia about it. And whaddaya know? Uesaka was behind the lyrics but the composer/arranger was Toshin Resonant（東新レゾナント）, aka Schtein & Longer, the same fellow behind all those Especia songs. I also found out that songwriter's real name is Yuki Yokoyama. "No Future Vacances" feels like hitting an Ibiza disco floor with one foot in the past and one foot in the future.
I've also noticed that the album "No Future Vacances" contains "Koi suru Zukei (cubic futurismo)"（恋する図形）, a song that had the influence of another group of technopop wizards, TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN FUND.
Seeing that we are less than a fortnight away from summer (hopefully), perhaps it is time to post something a little more seasonal.
Singer-songwriter Manaho Mori（森真帆）is someone that I've gotten to know only recently. Although I have very limited knowledge about her history and discography, I believe that she did have her City Pop phase in her early years such as her collaboration with the late Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）, "Desire", from his "Around the Thru Traffic" album.
In 2018, Mori released a single titled "Natsu no Kumo"(Summer Clouds) which was written by her and composed by Tatsuya Takidera（滝寺達也）as this very gentle and earthy pop song that pretty much demands that listeners go outside, lie on a hill and stare at the title (not a bad therapy actually). In a way, listening to this song and then remembering her early works, I'm reminded of Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）who started out as a City Pop singer herself in the 1980s but shifted to a quieter style in the mid-1990s.
Happy Victoria Day to my fellow Canadians. Yes, it's a holiday Monday here in the Great White North and it usually signals the first big long weekend of the summer along with a few blockbusters on the way. I think we're getting the final "Mission: Impossible" entry coming out later this Friday, for example.
Of course, we can start this special Victoria Day's version of KKP with some of the good folks at Nash Music Library. Just by lucky happenstance a couple of days ago, I encountered one of their videos "Music is Free" from their 2018 album"Buttopi EDM"（ぶっとびEDM...Blasting EDM）, and I recognized it as the technopop theme song for Japan's "Weathernews Live Morning" 3-hour segment. Yes, it's pretty loud to be heard at 5 am in the morning but isn't it just the aural orange juice to get folks out of bed? The fans love to hear that "voice" in the song and characterize it as the trumpeting of elephants via icons.
And just to show you, these are some of the other theme songs during the "Weathernews Live" broadcast day.
Haven't heard from J-R&B singer Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）in a while, and if I'm not mistaken, he should be approaching his 40th anniversary in show business pretty soon, if it's not this year.
His 41st single is "So Beautiful" which was released in November 2018, and it's amazing how he's been able to keep those high tones all these decades. As usual, he's at his crooning and serenading best with this ballad that he wrote and composed. The song reached No. 38 on Oricon, and it's included on Kubota's 14th album"Beautiful People" from November 2019 which broke the Top 10 and hit No. 8. "So Beautiful" was also used on an ad for KOSÉ Cosmetics.
The above is the official symbol for thunderstorm...it looks like an "R" with an attitude. At one point in my childhood, I had been interested in meteorology and had even created my own book noting down the weather and utilizing those symbols. However, my interest switched over to biology before finally settling on all things Japan in my adolescence...as you all know by this point.
Now this video features our local news channel's morning show with weather forecaster Bill Coulter in the pastel green outfit doing his usual hijinks. The video must have come from pre-COVID days since he's pretty much the only person now still here with a relatively new morning crew around him. But what I found out from him this morning is that today is (soon to be was) National Weathercaster Day.
Let me go back even further...one of the earliest weather forecasters I remember is Dave Devall from CTV Toronto (formerly CFTO). Although he was no longer doing so in the above video, he had been famous for giving the forecast behind a plexiglass screen with an illustration of Canada where he would be able to write temperatures and weather words backwards on the screen (thanks to his experience in the military). Mind you, as a teacher at NOVA, I was soon able to write English words on paper in our crowded cubbyhole classroom upside down, so I guess I took a chip off of ol' Dave.
Of course, when it comes to weather and this blog, I'm always going to refer to Japan's "Weathernews Live" as I've been doing since summer 2022. The weather casting staff has changed over the past few years but the atmosphere has remained friendly and often funny. And at the same time, since this is a music blog after all, I'm always going to think about Nash Music Library's contributions of BGM for the show.
My first article on NML brought in some of the music that has been produced by them and featured on "Weathernews Live". However, this is the first time that I have brought on one of the themes for any of the three-hour shifts, and this particular song "EXtream EXtasy" is the theme for the final shift of the broadcasting day called "Moon" which goes from 8 to 11 pm JST.
"EXtream EXtasy" is a pretty energized technopop piece for a nighttime broadcast but I guess it could reflect folks finishing work and heading out for some play-hard time in the big city. It was first released in February 2018 as part of NML's album"Buttopi EDM"（ぶっとびEDM...Blastoff EDM）. Y'know...I'll have to play catchup and see if I can feature some more of the shifts' theme songs.
Earlier this morning, I saw on NHK News that as of tomorrow, facial recognition gates will be set up at Narita Airport for the Skyliner express trains going into Tokyo. One user said that it worked just fine...it only took 10 seconds to get through. Did I hear that correctly? It would take about ten times as long to get through that gate compared to the usual gate?! I will be very interested in hearing the results of this test.
Well, it's been several months since I've posted a Satellite Young tune. I was looking to put up something technopop for a while and with this one, "Moment in Slow Motion", which was the group's November 2018 single, I got something more. I've always liked music which combines a number of genres smartly, and "Moment in Slow Motion" (whose title reminds me of The Art of Noise) has that mix of technopop, City Pop and that retro-futuristic 1980s vibe.
Enjoy the music video below with the wide streets and narrow alleys of nighttime Ueno, Shibuya and Shinjuku. No special effects here. It is as it is displayed.
Golly! I had never been to a Tokyo book apartment before and I probably never will because the above facility is apparently closed down now. According to some of the images online though, it looked like a stylish and relaxing (and probably expensive) place to browse through those books. When I was in Japan, I used to really enjoy visiting the conventional bookstores including the big brands of Maruzen, Kinokuniya and Yaesu. But I also dropped in on the neighbourhood places across from my subway station on the way home where a lot of office workers shared my idea and were browsing through the variety of weekly and monthly magazines. The staff were always wearing Business Casual with those aprons.
Maybe I should have caught this 2018 anime "Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san"（ガイコツ書店員 本田さん...Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san） when it had its run near the end of the year. From what I've seen above, it's a pretty hilarious slice-of-life comedy with zany staffers of a bookstore wearing various masks while dealing with some just-as-hilarious situations. I guess it didn't really fit my anime buddy's aesthetics, though. Incidentally, that first foreign customer in the video above made me wonder whether retired NCIS SAC Gibbs had opted to take a vacation in Japan for a few weeks.
I'd also been wondering how both singer-songwriter Hiroshi Takano（高野寛）and the technopop unit TECHNOBOYS PULCRAFT GREEN-FUND have been doing these past few years because I hadn't heard too much from either of them. Well, at least back in 2018, the two acts got together to collaborate on the ending theme for "Gaikotsu Shotenin Honda-san", "Book-end, Happy-end". With lyrics by Takano and melody by TPGF, it's got the plummy and groovy arrangements that I have recognized the latter band for, and the overall tone fits a nice long visit to a beloved bookstore where customers can pick their favourite tomes or manga to flip through for hours.
It's been a while since I wrote anything here and the main reason is because I haven't been listening to much J-pop recently. About a year ago, I decided to leave Twitter and Instagram: I do log in once in a while, but I do not actively use them as before. With that, I stopped keeping up with numerous Japanese idol groups, but I did not go back since. And perhaps more ironically, I got heavily invested into K-pop after leaving the social media sites where it is so prevalent.
The timing of this post coincides with KCON Japan, a K-pop festival organized by Korean media giant Mnet which takes place each year in several countries, with the biggest editions being in Japan and LA. This weekend, several Korean idol groups or Japanese idol groups managed by Korean agencies will be performing in Makuhari Messe. One of these groups is my current favorite, a 5-member girl group called Red Velvet.
Red Velvet is managed by agency SM Entertainment, which essentially opened the doors for the promotion of Korean artists in Japan with BoA in the early Aughts, followed suit by boy group TVXQ, and Japan since became the most profitable foreign market for K-pop, with more recent groups such as Twice and NewJeans becoming as prevalent in Japan as in their home country. SM Entertainment is known by fans to excel at all areas: music, visual arts, choreography... everything except the management of their artists. Most notably, TVXQ underwent a brutal lawsuit by three of their members in 2009, which denounced slave contracts and poor working conditions.
Following the success in Japan of their predecessors Girls' Generation, Red Velvet debuted in Korea in 2014 and had their first full Japanese release in 2018 under avex trax, "#Cookie Jar." The name Red Velvet - besides being, of course, a cake - represents the two concepts of the group, "Red" being energetic pop songs and "Velvet" being softer or darker songs, often dabbing in jazz and R&B. The title track for this Japanese album, "#Cookie Jar," falls clearly on the Red side and is very reminiscing of traditional Japanese idol songs.
Despite the heavy use of English in the lyrics, all members have pretty good Japanese pronunciation, which helps on how much I enjoy this song. A special highlight goes to center member Irene, who is not given as many lines in Korean songs except for rap parts, but I feel like she shines particularly in this song. As a piece of trivia, member Wendy dabbles into at least 4 languages, as she has lived several years in Canada and the US: she is fluent in both Korean and English, and she can also speak some Japanese and French.
I would honestly recommend Red Velvet as a gateway to any J-pop fan who ever wants to venture into K-pop, as they have a great and diverse discography, even within the Japanese-only releases.
I can once again thank the "Weather Music" segment on "Weathernews Japan" for discovering this uptempo and thumping pop tune "Drama" by the duo C&K. They consist of singer-songwriters high-toned Clievy from Tochigi Prefecture and silky-voiced Keen from Kagoshima Prefecture who first got together in the Yokohama-Shonan area. They then made their debut with the single "Tsuyu Ake Sengen"（梅雨明け宣言...Declaration at the End of the Rainy Season） in August 2010.
"Drama" came out as C&K's 16th single in August 2018, and interestingly enough, it was used as a theme song for an actual drama on NTV called "Survival Wedding" based on the romantic short story by Kousuke Ohhashi（大橋弘祐）. The single was able to reach as high as No. 17 on Oricon.
C&K have a wide spectrum of music that they like to dive into for their songs: disco, funk, soul, reggae, folk and 1980s kayo kyoku. And I gather that's been reflected in the fact that perhaps many of their songs are favourites for dancing. The cheerleading squad for the baseball team Hanshin Tigers have gotten onto the bandwagon, for example.
Not surprisingly, NHK has taken down the footage videos of the 74th edition of the Kohaku Utagassen including the return of Pocket Biscuits and Black Biscuits but at least we have the above video showing the latter team coming together on TV. It was especially good seeing the latter band performing "Timing" once more after so long.
Also, in the "not surprising" department is the fact that the infectious "Timing", originally created by lyricist Hiromi Mori（森浩美）and composer Keizo Nakanishi（中西圭三）back in 1998, has been covered a few times. In fact, I was listening to the usual Weathernews Live broadcast on YouTube when their Weather Music segment came on and this time, I heard Klang Ruler's version of "Timing" which actually had come out as a digital single on Christmas Eve 2021.
I've written about the alternative pop band before and they seem to enjoy covering the old stuff such as Linda Yamamoto's（山本リンダ）"Dounimo Tomaranai"（どうにもとまらない）. I have also enjoyed them covering the old stuff and "Timing" is no exception. It's probably going to be the most chill cover of the song that I will ever hear and I especially like that synthesizer playing during the chorus. The video was also nice to watch especially after they had wrapped up and then tucked into a sumptuous Chinese dinner. Incidentally, it looks like there was a fad of dancing to Klang Ruler's version.
A few years earlier in 2018, singer/dancer/model Meik gave her own cover of "Timing" which sounds closer to the original disco arrangement from 1998.
Considering that singer-songwriter KAN passed away less than a month ago far too early in life, listening to this particular song will come across as especially poignant to the point of tears.
"Go-juu-nen Ato mo"(Even After 50 Years) is a track on KAN's 12th studio album"KREMLINMAN" released in April 1999. A ballad of devotion and hope that a man and his beloved will stay together as long as possible, it's about as quintessential as a KAN pop tune can be with the piano and the down-to-earth arrangement. Cue the waterworks if this is ever played at a wedding reception during the dance of the bridge and groom, although the mention of what if death suddenly comes to one of them in the lyrics may be a deal breaker.
The video below has the original version from "KREMLINMAN" while the above has even more of a classical flavour. This comes from KAN's October 2018"la RiSCOPERTA", his 2nd album of self-covers with a string quartet. As for "KREMLINMAN", it reached No. 31 on Oricon.
What is Eurobeat? Yes, it's a bit of a silly question for me to be asking since we already have had a KKP Label with that name and many songs under that title for years on our blog. Certainly I do recognize the overall sound of it because I used to dance to it back in the late 1980s: y'know stuff like Bananarama's "I Heard a Rumour" and Sinitta's "Toy Boy". But as for the background of it, I had to look it up in Wikipedia's relevant article which stated that it was double-pronged in origin (yes, do stop giggling😁): a) a British variant of Eurodisco-influenced dance pop and b) a hi-NRG-driven form of Italo disco. Of course, I had to dig deeper to get some insights into Eurodisco, hi-NRG and Italo disco. My friend and fellow administrator Marcos V. would be of massive assistance here.
The interesting thing is that within the Wiki article on Eurobeat, Japan has been included as a regional global centre for the genre along with Germany, the UK and Italy (apparently the term to use is J-Euro). In the late 1980s going into the 1990s, Japanese music did have its Eurobeat sector, usually with the singers or bands adapting the original Italian or UK song into Japanese, although Kyoko Isobe's（磯部恭子）"Fujun?"（不純?）may be considered a homegrown version. One of my favourite examples is "Dancing Hero"（ダンシング・ヒーロー）which really put Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）on the map. Recently, there's even been DA PUMP's"USA".
In any case, over the past few days, I decided to see whether there has been any further developments in Eurobeat and although I can't say that it wasn't quite near yesterday, the now-defunct aidoru group Fairies（フェアリーズ）released one of their more successful singles in February 2018 titled "HEY HEY 〜Light Me Up〜". Marcos actually mentioned them for the first time in "Kayo Kyoku Plus" back in 2017 as one of the groups of note in his "Early 2017 Special Selection".
The talent agency Rising Production wanted to cobble together a song-and-dance group that could go up against the best in the world in terms of dancing and singing, so they set out to audition dozens of candidates across Japan before the final selection of seven women was made to debut in 2011. "HEY HEY" was their 16th and penultimate single when Fairies was down to a quintet. Listening to the song and seeing the above music video (which is truncated), all those 90s memories of bodycon dresses, feather boas and Tokyo dance clubs started percolating from my head again. Yup, it was good ol' Eurobeat in the house.
"HEY HEY" hit No. 2 on Oricon. There was just one more single from Fairies before they stopped all activities in June 2020. Not surprisingly, the song was a cover for the 1990 original by Vanessa.
