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.
Happy Monday! The last time I wrote about contemporary aidoru and singer-songwriter Emiri Kanou（加納エミリ）was just a little over a year ago when I encountered her nifty collaboration with New Wave dandy Makoto Francis Ori（小里誠）, "Sabakaru Emiri"（裁かるゝエミリ）from 2023. However, it still feels as if an eternity has gone by since that last one.
Well, I've decided to start this KKP business week with another Kanou song, but this one goes back all the way to her beginnings in the late 2010s. In fact, this is the opening track from her debut album"GREENPOP", which was released in November 2019. "Koi se yo Otome" (Fall In Love, Maiden) is fully in love with 80s synthpop and the music video makes sure everyone knows that this is no coincidence. That intro even reminds me a tad of Madonna's "Borderline". Kanou took care of both words and music.
Have you ever thought about Steely Dan covering Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）iconic ballad "Sweet Memories"?
Nope, neither have I. And yet, here we are. Indeed, back in 2019 when singer-songwriter Yoshitaka Minami（南佳孝）came up with his 2019 album of covers"Radio na Kyoku-tachi Ⅱ"（ラジオな曲たちⅡ...Radio Songs 2）, he included one of "Sweet Memories" as the final track. Yup, the jazziness and meticulous chords are there in lyricist Takashi Matsumoto's（松本隆）and composer Masaaki Omura's（大村雅朗）tune for Seiko-chan. The original 50s or 60s girl pop stylings have been turned into urban and urbane radio-friendly grooviness for your evening pleasure.
We're kinda getting close to the end of the work week once more so perhaps a little zip in the music here might help in the anticipation toward the weekend. Over here, there is even more significance since we have a long weekend coming up with Victoria Day happening on Monday.
Nice to have the good folks at Nash Music Library helping out again. This time, the music maker has come up with a synthesized version of swing jazz via The Andrews Sisters. Titled "Astro Swingin' Sisters", I think it's well named although there is no singing here by any sisters but the feeling is there, and I can imagine a sorority trio in spacesuits harmonizing out there while this is playing. The song comes from the August 2019 album"Sparkling Brass".
I gather that Golden Week has reached the halfway point so according to NHK this morning, the U-turn rush has already begun with the cars heading back to Tokyo stuffing the highways rather than the opposite.
As of 2007, May the 4th became known as Greenery Day in Japan so I'm not sure whether there are (or were, as of this writing) any horticultural events throughout the country but hopefully, the plants and trees are growing luxuriantly. In Japanese, Greenery Day is translated into Midori no Hi（みどりの日）so I thought that it would be nice to have an Author's Picks on some of those songs sung by ladies with the given name of Midori.
Well, at least it's brilliantly sunny out there with the temperatures actually above zero degrees Celsius. Still, snow is everywhere of varying colours and conditions although we are waiting avidly for the arrival of spring.
Today, we're starting the usual Urban Contemporary Friday with something more recent. And this time around, a couple of music makers from other collaborations are being brought here together on KKP for the first time. I first introduced Fukuoka-born singer-songwriter kiki vivi lily last year when she worked with Cosmic Funk duo KAGAMI on the 2025"Friends". A couple of years ago, I got my first encounter of singer-songwriter and trackmaker Hiroyuki Ikezawa（池澤寛行）, aka SUKISHA, when he was collaborating with jazz and soul guitarist Shingo Sekiguchi（関口シンゴ）on their 2020 "Imaginary Trip".
Well, if we go back even further, we'll find that kiki vivi lily and SUKISHA worked together as well to provide a song called "Blue in Green" in February 2019. With some of that familiar electric piano groove and the singer's buttery vocals, we get launched into some cool and nocturnal urban adventure (mind you, kiki prefers to stay at home in the dark as shown in the official music video below). I do love that dancing bass and the rest of the beats, although things get a little weird in the last quarter of the song.
Some bright lights from the neighbourhood of Ameyoko in Tokyo just to let readers know that I'm starting the Urban Contemporary Friday for at least a couple of songs early on a Thursday because I will be busy tomorrow for a good chunk of the day doing other things. I occasionally have a life outside of KKP.
I was going to post up an article regarding punipunidenki's（ぷにぷに電機） "Zurukunai?"（ずるくない？）from 2021, only to find out that I had already jumped the gun on that one a couple of years ago. I was slightly deflated there but I was then able to find this one by the Neo-City Pop songstress which goes even earlier into her discography. June 2019, to be exact.
"Kimi wa Queen"(You are a Queen), which was written and composed by punipunidenki and given additional songwriting credits by composers Mikeneko Homeless and Shin Sakiura, is pretty much as advertised. It's a bouncy urban tune about someone liking and then lusting over a lady in Tokyo. Not surprisingly, the singer herself is taking a walk throughout the bright lights and big city of one of the world's largest metropolises while her singing is happily tripping the light fantastic on those streets.
Before I forget completely, I would like to wish a belated Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the United States. At this point, most of you have already devoured a good chunk of turkey with all of the trimmings. Perhaps those of you reading this may be doing so through bleary eyes from sleeping some of that digestion off. Keep the stomach open for dessert, though. You can't miss that!
I guess with this article, we've done a round trip between Tokyo and Rio de Janeiro. Well, we're back in Tokyo again via singer-songwriter Anna Takeuchi's（竹内アンナ）"Tokyo Nite" from her January 2019 album"at TWO". It's been around three years since I posted an article about her on the blog so let's welcome her back.
In terms of her discography, this is the earliest I've gone back and "Tokyo Nite" is a fascinating track because it seems to be trying to be a Long Island Iced Tea of genres with the intoxicatingly sweet taste, to boot. It's got the groovy Neo-City Pop, some hip-hop rap, bossa nova and maybe even a touch of ska in the beat. The song comes across as the type of musical background a Tokyo modern of the 21st century would like to have while driving through the megalopolis on a Friday night.
Didn't quite believe that I hadn't ever put up such an Author's Pick before. I've probably got some sort of Favourite Anison list out there but just haven't come across it in some time. However, such as it is, I did want to get a list up there showing how some of these anime themes can get under my skin to have me bust a move...or a hip because they are so funky and catchy.
I can't say that I have seen this in Hollywood movies recently but once upon a time, if a high-concept blockbuster premiered on the big screen, a similar movie using the same concept would appear. That was the case in 1998 while I was living in Japan. We had the asteroid/comet disaster movies "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon" arrive within a couple of months of each other that year. I did see the former at the theatre but never bothered with the latter (despite Seiko Matsuda having a very brief cameo in "Armageddon") although I did catch it on DVD a few years later.
Strangely enough, I came across this mellow tune by the band Uwanosora（ウワノソラ）a few months ago called "Inseki no Love Song"(Meteorite Love Song). A track on their June 2019 3rd album"Yogiri"（夜霧...Night Fog）, I had first thought that the song was a ballad about a couple seeing shooting stars in the night sky. However, going through band guitarist Hirohide Kadoya's（角谷博栄）lyrics (he also provided the melody and arrangement), it's actually quite the romantic apocalyptic number about a couple trying to keep things light and lovey-dovey before a gigantic meteorite crashes onto Earth, most likely killing everyone. The music is indeed very calming and reassuring (no real hint of City Pop)...just the tonic before that first disintegrating blast wave hits.
From the recent article on Mariya Takeuchi's（竹内まりや）"Plastic Love", I've received a number of comments (as I'd been expecting) regarding the popularity of certain Japanese bands, singers and songs around the world, and one such band has apparently been One OK Rock (pronounced One Oku Rock). For me, I've only known the name of the band but otherwise that's about it as for my knowledge. Commenter Brian Mitchell was kind enough to give me a primer along with a few recommended songs.
One of the first points of information is that the lead singer for One OK Rock is Takahiro Moriuchi（森内貴寛）. And this is where I feel like the usually unsociable guy finally being coaxed out to a school reunion and meeting for the first time since Ronald Reagan was president a couple of former buddy classmates who have since gotten married to each other and had kids. "Wow! You mean your son is a Grammy-winning musician?!" was my somewhat ersatz analogue to my reaction on finding out that Moriuchi is one of the sons of veteran kayo kyoku singers Shinichi Mori（森進一）andMasako Mori（森昌子）. Both of them have fairly long files here on KKP but again, I had no idea that their kid was even into music let alone being part of one of the most popular Japanese bands worldwide. So, now I can place all of the Moris up thee with Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）and Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）along with Ryoko Moriyama（森山良子）and Naotaro Moriyama（森山直太朗）as succeeding generations of Japanese singers (there are many more, I know).
Some other information that I've gleaned regarding One OK Rock is that Moriuchi and the band have been around since 2005, and have covered subgenres of rock ranging from alternative rock to pop punk. One of the songs that Brian recommended to me was "Wasted Nights", which was their February 2019 single that also has a placement on their ninth studio album"Eye of the Storm" that came out in the same month.
I'd probably say that "Wasted Nights" is more of a pop-rock piece created by Moriuchi and looking at the stylishly grainy video, I had initially assumed from it and the title that the band had wanted to give a grand lament about kids wasting their nights away doing nothing and neglecting the future. Kinda sounds like a Mom and Dad sort of message. However, in actual fact, Moriuchi is exhorting his song as a grand anthem about not wasting those nights away and savoring every moment with your buddies and living every moment to their fullest since they will not return again. The video is there to help safeguard those precious memories. As a fellow who's not too far away from getting his pension, I can probably try to hammer that home to my niece's generation but I've got a feeling that "Wasted Nights" would be more effective.
And it did send the message home well. "Wasted Nights" became the most popular song on Japanese radio in the first half of 2019, according to the Wikipedia article on the song, and it peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart.
With a stage name like AATA, this singer-songwriter from Tokyo will find herself up high on the Labels list. Her real name hasn't been revealed on J-Wiki, but her genres are pop and hip-hop. She began music by taking up the acoustic guitar and songwriting during high school. She then became half of the duo Pandaful Life（ぱんだふるらいふ）before going solo in 2013.
AATA began releasing singles and albums in 2019 with her first album"Blue Moment" coming out in December of that year. One track was written and composed by Cunimondo Takiguchi（クニモンド瀧口）of the band Ryusenkei, "Tropical Playboy". I'd probably say that the song seems to be far more into the Neo-City Pop vein than hip-hop but then again, Takiguchi was the composer so the genre is a given. It's quite the fast-moving groovy tune with AATA's voice sounding like that of a 1970s Motown chanteuse along the lines of a Minnie Ripperton.
Although she had never been on KKP until today, the name Emiri Kanou（加納エミリ）has rung a bell for me for some reason that I can't really fathom. She's an aidoru from Hokkaido who has done everything by herself including the creation of her own songs and choreography. According to her J-Wiki profile, when she was in elementary school, she admired the works of Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）and wanted to become like her as a singer but realized that wasn't really her style and instead worked on her own way. Later on, she got into electronic music as a high school student, and now considers electropop, New Wave, City Pop and indies rock to be her genres.
In February 2019, she produced and released her very first 7" single titled "Gomen ne"(Sorry). Those 500 singles sold out nationwide. I first came upon it when I was browsing YouTube and saw the music video for "Gomen ne" which included the comment of it being "New Order kayo"! Well, that was quite the statement to a guy who considers the band New Order one of his favourites from his dancing days at the disco, so I was more than interested in giving it a whirl.
"Gomen ne" doesn't go quite as hard as the typical New Order song although I can hear elements in there. And after all, she's an aidoru so there's gotta be the cute and bright twinkles through the synthesizers to reflect that. To be honest, I hear some more of that Stock-Aitken-Waterman Eurobeat in there and the general 80s atmosphere which also permeates the video itself. In fact, watching Kanou perform, I was reminded of a young Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）in her early performances, physically if not vocally.
Speaking of the video, I was wondering who the older fellow was. Well, it's possible that it is her father, Shigeo Mihara（三原重夫）, who used to be the first drummer for the 1980s rock band Rosa Luxemburg. To further pile on the celebrity news, she only got married a few months ago to actor Kuu Ijima（伊島空）.
Kanou's first official single"Friday Night" came out a month after "Gomen ne" in March 2019.
As I mentioned in that Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）article yesterday, I was kindly treated to some Salvadoran fare for lunch and it was my first time (on the cusp of 60, no less) to have pupusas, which are these flatbreads stuffed with meat, vegetables and other ingredients. Very tasty and filling, and I couldn't finish the whole thing since there were other items ordered as well. My friend's wife is a big fan of pupusas as well, so she probably was very grateful to get the remainder that I couldn't finish as a doggie bag.
Not sure if Salvadoran cuisine has made it over to Japan but wouldn't it be quite the thing if I were able to get a decent pupusa at a Lawson's or am/pm past midnight? In any case, this has made for a somewhat nice segue into the mellow music of Tokyo Mokuyo Gakudan（東京木曜楽団...Tokyo Thursday Band）. I wrote their first and only article on them (that is, until today) back almost exactly three years ago when I posted their "Mayonaka no Service Area"（真夜中サービスエリア）. Having a pupusa from one of those highway service areas and then noshing on it in the passenger seat of a car driving through the Kanto during the midnight hours may be a nice experience.
As I wrote on "Mayonaka no Service Area",Tokyo Mokuyo Gakudan doesn't have a lot written about them, although I hope that they still get together every Thursday night for their sessions. But I was able to find another short-and-sweet song by them titled "Oyasumi" (Good Night) that is also from 2019 and retains that groovy mellowness in the arrangement. This time though, it starts with some Xmas jingling bells, so I am wondering whether it is Yuletide-themed, but I don't get the impression that the vocalist is relating anything about any impending Christmas. I think it is a well-titled song since after having that loaded pupusa while listening to "Mayonaka no Service Area", I really might go "Oyasumi" for the next several hours.
Back in September, I put up this band onto the blog for the first time. never young beach struck me via their 2020 "Yasashii Mama de"（やさしいままで）as if the legendary early 1970s band Happy End had come back and decided to go the shoegaze route.
Well, I'm even more convinced of that now. In their 4th album from May 2019,"Story", I have their track "Itsumo Ame" (Always Raining) which was created by vocalist/guitarist Yuuma Abe（安部勇磨）. His strumming guitar and then what follows in the arrangement sounds just perfect for a relaxing sitdown on the outside porch while the precipitation is coming down. As for the lyrics, they might be somewhat existential since a couple may be in existence...or not. But I'll let you link over to the translation at Musixmatch.
As I type this, there are less than 48 hours before autumn officially arrives at 8:44 am Eastern Daylight Time on September 22nd, so at least, summer worshippers have Saturday to soak up as much sun and heat as possible.
Then why not bring in another summer City Pop tune into the proceedings? For today, we have SPARKLING☆CHERRY's"Summer Time Magic" which was written and composed by vocalist Cherry. It's got that Neo-City Pop air about it with those brassy synthesizers and Cherry's voice is rather reminiscent of some of the other singers who've performed with duo Blue Peppers. Plus, the song is packed with other singers and songwriters of the City Pop umbrella: Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）, the mentor behind SPARKLING☆CHERRY, is helping on backing chorus with Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）from Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）, and Makoto Matsushita（松下誠） is on guitar. "Summer Time Magic" is the first track on the band's July 2019 album "Roxy".
You can also give their "Mirage" a listen, too. It's the most recent article that I had about them until today.
Doesn't do much for you? Something a really proud farmer would say?
Well, try the Japanese version and say it three times fast: nama mugi, nama gome, nama tamago! （生麦生米生卵）
If you were able to do that without dislocating your tongue, congratulations! You've entered the world of hayakuchi kotoba（早口言葉）. Basically, these are the Japanese equivalent of tongue twisters.
Indeed, Japan has its version of "Peter Piper picked a peck of peppers!". My mother once showed me a picture book filled with hayakuchi kotoba...fairly stumbled around those so I gave up quickly. However, I saw the pros handle it like pros when I watched the comedy group The Drifters（ドリフターズ）and a few guests do them all to a funky beat on "Hachi-ji da yo! Zen'in Shuugo"（八時だよ！全員集合）back in the 1970s.
Commenter Rob recently informed me of a couple of bands who had opted to dive into hayakuchi kotoba through song as well. There is the guitar pop-rock band MONO NO AWARE whose raison d'etre is playing around with the sounds and meanings of words, and so this particular song of theirs must have been right up their alley. In fact, their "Kamukamo-Shikamo-Nidomokamo!"(It Might Bite, It Might Bite!) was something that I'd heard on the NHK kids' music segment "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた） some months ago. And yep, pretty much all of the lyrics consist of hayakuchi kotoba so great learning for students of the language. The song was a track on their third original album"Kakegae no nai Mono"（かけがえのないもの...Irreplaceable Things） from October 2019.
MONO NO AWARE is a four-piece band with vocalist and guitarist Shuukei Tamaoki（玉置周啓）, guitarist Seijun Kato（加藤成順）, bassist Ayako Takeda（竹田綾子）and drummer Yutaka Yanagisawa（柳澤豊）. They've been around since 2013 and their band name comes from the Japanese idiom talking of the impermanence of things.
According to Rob, the Osakan pop-rock band Haku（ハク。）also gave their cover version of "Kamukamo-Shikamo-Nidomokamo!" in the last month or so, and may I say that vocalist Ai could have topped Tamaoki at the rapid fire rattling of those twisters. Maybe there could be a battle of the bands involving those two in the same ol' Drifters' way. Many thanks to Rob.
Well, I did have another AI photo of the calico cat sipping iced coffee in that futuristic city to join the one that I used for Mebae Miyahara's（宮原芽映）"Milky Cat", so why not put it to good use. Mind you, I had to convert it from a jfif file to an mpeg. Maybe he can become part of the Kyokuverse and join Kayo Grace as her manager, Mr. Calico.
Now, to be honest, there's been a period of several hours between "Milky Cat" and this song because I had been out to dinner with my good friend Danny and Larry Chan, fellow contributor of KKP articles and co-administrator tonight. We partook of many skewers of yakitori at Zakkushi in the old district of Cabbagetown. And it was made very clear that my once-incredible abilities of chowing down tons of food are now largely gone...for good or bad.
To get to this song, I'm talking about "Closer" by the band shaky. In looking up all the tracks on "City Music Tokyo: Junction" a couple of weeks ago, I managed to find the video for "Closer" just by chance and enjoyed it very much, so here it is. It was released as the band's first digital single back in October 2019 and I'm savoring it as a pleasingly languid number that oozes relaxation and warmth as the main vocalist invites a lover to come over to simply be together.
There's not much information on shaky except that they hail from Fukuoka and it consists of five people who at the time had an average age of 18, so they were basically a high school-aged group. Well, for such a group, they sound very smooth and self-assured in their exploration of the urban and mellow.
Yesterday, I posted Part 1 covering chanteuse Mariko Takahashi's（高橋真梨子）March 1979 debut album"Hitoaruki"(Walking Alone) and so I'm completing it with Part 2 tonight. It's been a nice trip through the genres as the Hiroshima Prefecture-born singer exercises her wonderful chops for the first time as a solo singer.
Seeing that there were a total of ten tracks on the original LP, I'm assuming that Track 6"Oide Summer Holiday"（おいでサマー・ホリディ）which I have already covered in its own separate article (you can click the link in Part 1) starts off Side B. So we go onto Track 7, "Otozure"（訪れ...The Visit） which is a short but very sweet and slightly woozy and boozy bossa nova-inflected song about a visit by a lover which, let's say, is a bit bigger than a pleasant arrival for tea and cake (maybe for breakfast, perhaps😎). Yasuhiro Kido（木戸やすひろ）was responsible for the melody while the lyricist could be a man or a woman named Aki Fukunaga or Kumi Fukunaga（福永史）. According to Jisho.org, the kanji for that first name could be read in different ways.
The next track is "Futari no Monogatari"（二人の物語...Story of Two）, a bittersweet tale of a woman walking alone in the rain, being reminded when it used to be the two of them taking their walks before fate intervened and they split up. Takahashi has also been one of those few singers in Japanese pop music that also reveled in doing the occasional song with that country ballad lilt, and this is one of them. It doesn't always stay maudlin though as the arrangement by Shinichi Tanabe（田辺信一）takes things into something brighter and hopeful in the chorus. "Futari no Monogatari" was written and composed by Kuni Kawauchi（クニ河内）who had created "My Dream" from Part 1.
Takahashi has always had a deep and rich voice and she goes slightly even deeper here as she tackles Track 9, the melancholy "Yoru no Kao"（夜の顔...Face of the Night）. Written by Rei Tsushima（津島玲）and composed by Kiyoshi Hasegawa（長谷川きよし）, the song about what I think is a lady in the mizu shobai industry going about her evening business with a sense of resignation and necessity comes off in the arrangement as being dramatic to the point of being almost chanson. That intro also had me wondering whether this was going to be a Fashion Music tune but the arrangement veers things back into adult contemporary and perhaps a bit of classical pop.
From the heaviness of the previous song, we come to the final track for "Hitoaruki", "Chiisana Watashi"（小さなわたし...Little Me）. It's a love ballad composed by City Pop and jazz songsmith Kingo Hamada（濱田金吾）, and I've found the collaborations between Takahashi and Hamada to be some wonderfully tenderhearted songs such as the one they would do later, "Jazz Singer". Both Takahashi and the aforementioned Fukunaga for "Otozure" worked on the lyrics about a woman who feels warm, safe and beloved in her partner's embrace. The ballad also feels like a lullaby of sorts and I recall that at least a few of Takahashi's other albums ended in the same manner as if she knew that fans would listen to them later into the wee hours of the night so that the final track would help to send them off to la-la land.
In any case, "Hitoaruki" is an album that Takahashi fans probably already have as a must-own, but for those who are starting their exploration into the Japanese pop music of yore that doesn't involve aidoru or enka, I can recommend this one as an album for those who could enjoy the adult contemporary with the foray into the romantic.
As a PS, I have to say that it was listening to "Chiisana Watashi" that prompted me to talk about the entire album. I had originally planned to just write about that final track from 1979 and then also introduce Takahashi's own cover of the ballad in her most recent album of covers, "Mari Covers" from June 2019. The newer version has been fortified with some bossa nova.
My recent strolls through the park of YouTube led me to keyboardist, singer-songwriter and track maker Kan Sano who hails from Hyogo Prefecture. A graduate of Berklee College of Music in New York City where he majored in jazz composition through piano, he's worked with singers and bands such as Sing Like Talking, UA and Chara. Up to this point, he's released six albums and twelve singles.
One album that he's released is "Ghost Notes" from May 2019 and the track here is "My Girl" which begins with a funky trumpet followed by some groovy Fender Rhodes. As well, Sano has a voice with grains in it but it isn't sandpapery; instead it feels like a comfortable shower loofah. It's all meant to sound very cool and clubby and the melody line sounds like something from the 1970s when Stevie Wonder was coming out with some of those legendary albums.
The video was also nice enough to point out the lass in the video. She is model Nanami represented by talent agency Asobisystem（アソビシステム）; the company also represents the song-and-dance group Atarashii Gakko no Leaders（新しい学校のリーダーズ）.
As with the previous article's Vantage & The Myracle and their "Lonely Sunday Night", I also discovered the electro boogie duo Milk Talka few nights ago via a "Japan Times"article that had been published a week ago. Consisting of vocalist Yuqi "Q.i" Shinohara and New Jersey-born multi-instrumentalist Miles "Hair Kid" Ungar, they met back in the middle of the 2010s in New York City and very quickly, they put out their "Plastic New York" as their first song in collaboration.
However, the first song that I've tried out by the duo is "Ah Be Rue" which was released in 2019. The tune, which is a variation on the Japanese verb abiru（浴びる）meaning "to take a shower" or "to bathe in", has a certain leopard-like grace and stealth and hidden power to pounce. I do love the nostalgic funkiness and Q.i's sexy and kittenish vocals.
Immediately below is the music video for "Ah Be Rue" and then at the bottom is a Studio Funk interview with the duo themselves. I will definitely be covering more of their discography going into the new year.
