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.
The last time I wrote about Chie Yokoyama（横山知枝）was for her "For You" which was a cover of Ami Ozaki's（尾崎亜美）soft love song from her October 1979 5th album"Little Fantasy".
I gather then that a couple of years later, it would be logical for me to write about "For Me" from Yokoyama's discography which ended up on her debut album"Bloomin'" from 1992. Not surprisingly, both "For You" and "For Me" are side-by-side trackmates with the latter also being written and composed by Ozaki. The difference is that "For Me" is a fairly bouncy 90s synth-driven number although it has quite a bit to do with love as well. The intro reminded me a lot of the one for DEEN's "Hitomi Sorasanai de"（瞳そらさないで）from 1994.
For that matter, a song by Yokoyama that I first heard years ago when I used to watch the Fuji-TV variety show "Yamadakatsutenai Terebi"（やまだかつてないテレビ）, "Happy Birthday" starts off "Bloomin'". For all intents and purposes though, this was the only album by Yokoyama with a much later album "Furano Chapel Concert"（富良野チャペルコンサート）in 2000 being a commemorative compilation featuring different singers including Yokoyama who was then going by the name of Chiemi.
Hearing the name Chie Yokoyama（横山知枝）, I'm always going to think of her as the more petite half of Yamadakatsutenai Wink（やまだかつてないウィンク）, the parody pair on the then-very popular aidoru duo of the late 1980s, Wink. But Yokoyama also had a modest career as a pop singer between 1991 and 2000 while she was trying to get her MBA as I mentioned in the article for her solo debut single, "Happy Birthday".
Her 2nd single is an update of singer-songwriter Ami Ozaki's（尾崎亜美）"For You" and I think that she acquits herself well with her take on this love song. Released in November 1991, her vocals drift quite nicely between those high tones and a lower whispery timbre. The keyboards bring back that nice 1990s nostalgia.
Ozaki's original "For You" is the lead track on her October 1979 5th album"Little Fantasy", and speaking of nostalgia, it's also nice to hear those soaring strings and country-style piano of the times. Just from what I've read on the J-Wiki article for the album, Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）was on guitar and Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）was on bass while Ozaki was on all of the keyboards.
As much as I was a dedicated must-see-Thursday TV watcher when it came to Fuji-TV's comedy-variety show with the nutso duo of The Tunnels, the network also had my eyes and ears on Wednesday nights as well due to Kuniko Yamada's（山田邦子）"Yamadakatsutenai Terebi"（やまだかつてないテレビ） program at 9 p.m. The show also had an even bigger troupe of tarento helping the comedienne out such as singer-impressionist Hiroko Moriguchi, comedian Tsutomu Sekine and eye candy Saki Takaoka.
Then as I mentioned in the article for the duo Yamadakatsutenai Wink（やまだかつてないWink）,Yamada was looking for a partner with at least a passing resemblance to aidoru unit Wink half Sachiko Suzuki（鈴木早智子）to create their own ersatz Wink for the show. Through a contest, 16-year-old Chie Yokoyama（横山知枝）of Hiroshima Prefecture won the top prize and the opportunity to get into show business. I don't remember much about the contest itself, but I do remember seeing this new and very petite addition to the Yamadakatsutenai family standing side-by-side with Yamada as they did their own Wink-like songs such as "T-Intersection" in 1990.
And the year after, Yokoyama even got her chance to go solo as I saw the ending credits roll by to her debut, "Happy Birthday" with her smiling within a gently waving golden field. It was a pretty nice song to start with...a relaxing and pleasant aidoru tune written and composed by Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）; darn fine credentials backing Yokoyama up. The song was released in June 1991.
Once the show ended its run in 1992, Yokoyama entered Asia University to study in the Faculty of Business Administration. In the years since, she was popping up to sing at various events including a 1-day-only reunion of Yamadakatsutenai Wink in 2005. However, she finally called it quits in 2011 after an event in Shimo-Kitazawa, Tokyo, and is taking care of her family of husband and two kids.
This cute little ditty, "Christmas, Christmas", by Yamadakatsutenai Wink （やまだかつてないウィンク）is the final track on the album, "Yamadakatsutenai CD" (やまだかつてないCD) released in March 1991, although it was released the year before as a single. It got its fair share of airplay on Kuniko Yamada's（山田邦子） comedy-variety show, "Yamadakatsutenai Terebi". Unfortunately, there are only a few YouTube videos of the actual show and none of them have the Xmas episodes (August 2020:Merry Xmas! Look below). Yamada certainly liked to celebrate the holiday on her show with the cast all dressed up in Santa Red and White, and musical guests singing their seasonal tunes, including this one. Not sure if the real duo, Wink, ever covered it.
The song was written and composed by Senri Oe. It goes down like a mug of hot chocolate with a candy cane in it (well, not quite that diabetic).
Kuniko Yamada（山田邦子）, a homely but hilariously cheeky comedienne, first found fame on the Fuji-TV Saturday night comedy-variety show, "Oretachi Hyokinzoku"（オレたちひょうきん族...We Are The Funny Guys) which pretty much ran for the entire decade of the 1980s. Her specialty was impersonating singers, but I recall seeing her in a segment in which she drew some surprisingly racy stuff in front of the kids. But with her own star rising, Yamada eventually got her own variety show on the same network from October 1989 titled "Kuni-chan no Yamada Katsutenai Terebi"(やまだかつてないテレビ....Kuni's Yamada Unprecedented TV) every Wednesday night. It was part of my weekly viewing routine during my years in Gunma. The comedienne was her usual hammy self in various skits and segments with other regulars, but a number of musicians also achieved a form of semi-regular status on the show.
So, in March 1991, a double-CD pack which resembled one of those cubic watermelons that Japanese scientists had concocted some years back was released titled "Yamada Katsutenai CD"（やまだかつてないＣＤ....Yamada Unprecedented CD). Being a fan of the show, of course, I just had to purchase my own copy. CD 1 has all of the original songs while CD 2 contains the karaoke versions of those songs. Almost half of them have already been profiled: Kan -- "Ai wa Katsu", Mariko Nagai -- "ZUTTO" and the late Kaori Kawamura -- "Tsubasa wo Kudasai".
Kawamura also had another contribution to the show in the form of "Kamisama ga Oritekuru Yoru"（神様が降りてくる夜...The Night The Gods Come Down), a pop-rock tune which was used as the theme for one of the recurring segments: a parodic feature on medieval Japanese court life. The song was created by Ken Takahashi（高橋研）.
During the turn of this decade, the singing duo Wink had become one of the big acts in show business. Of course, Kuniko Yamada, whose talent lay in impersonating singers, just couldn't resist and decided that she needed to impersonate them. So, she incorporated another segment in 1990 titled "Nihon Zenkoku Sachiko Sagase"(日本全国早智子探せ.... Find A Sachiko All Over Japan) in which her Shoko Aida would find the right Sachiko Suzuki. She found her.... Chie Yokoyama（横山知枝）, a high school student from Hiroshima Prefecture. Together they formed the unit, Yamadakatsutenai Wink（やまだかつてないWink), and their first single was "T-Intersection -- Anata ni Modorenai"(T-Intersection -- あなたに戻れない...I Can't Return to You), an uptempo Eurobeat piece whose lyrics were written by Yamada herself and composed by saxophonist MALTA.
In the following year, the ersatz Wink came up with a ballad titled "Sayonara dakedo Sayonara janai"（さよならだけどさよならじゃない...It is and It Isn't Goodbye), which was also written by Yamada and composed by regular guest KAN. It was created partially as a tribute to Yokoyama who was on her way to graduating from high school and onto college. However, it's become a graduation song for just about everyone. It did become a hit, peaking at No. 2 and ending up as the 49th-ranked song of 1991. The entire disc set itself was able to hit the top spot on Oricon as well.
There is also a Xmas song by the duo on the CD, but let's save that for a more appropriate time.
Yamada Katsutenai CD
Discs to help me remember the late 80s and early 90s
