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.
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.
I was never in the situation that the protagonist for this song has found themselves in. During my Japan days, whenever I found myself missing the final subway of the night on a Friday, and that was surprisingly easy back then because transit closed up shop tragically early for a cosmopolitan city like Tokyo (and even now, I think folks from other big cities on the planet may find the final trains and subways in the megalopolis coming and going at a little past midnight somewhat scandalous), I had little choice but to get a taxi. For the record, I've had no problems with cabs or cab drivers. The service is absolutely safe, clean and polite but the fare can add up, and I often had to compete with several dozen other folks who missed their own trains home. However, I was never alone; I just had to be patient.
Well, in singer Chocolat's "Uchuu no Tunnel" (Space Tunnel), the person involved here has just missed their easy commute home one night: all of the taxis are occupied and there's nothing at the bus stop so it's time to light up a cigarette there to figure out next steps. Somehow, though, the idea gets into the protagonist's head that the entrance to the subway downstairs is the portal to space. Methinks somebody may have hit one too many Lemon Sours at the izakaya.
Still, "Uchuu no Tunnel", the first track on the singer's 2nd album"Hamster"（ハムスター）from August 1999, is great fun to listen to. Written by Chocolat and her husband, Akito Katayose（片寄明人）of GREAT3, and composed by Takaki Horigome（堀込高樹）of Kirinji（キリンジ）, the song sounds like a magical carpet ride through the Shibuya-kei filter and going from a mundane subway entrance into the Twilight Zone. I think that there is also something rather kid-like about the whole thing in that the out-of-luck adult gets changed into a ball-of-energy child once they have penetrated the barrier. It may all be drunken fantasy but I've heard of worse ways of spending the night than conked out on the bus stop bench.
The brothers of Kirinji themselves did their own cover of "Uchuu no Tunnel" in their 2002 album"Omnibus" (while J-Wiki says 2002, other sites such as Amazon say 2007). Their jazzier take is more on the adult side with some more of the old sci-fi creeping in via a 70s-sounding synthesizer, a good extra dollop of groove, and the more button-down vocals, but the high tempo is also present so that carpet ride can still be had. Perhaps this version of "Uchuu no Tunnel" is more appropriate for the earlier hours of the night when transit is still active.
Earlier this afternoon, I wrote up another article on the band GREAT3 for their song "Ruby" and remembered that when I penned their first article for "Summer's Gone", one of the members, Akito Katayose（片寄明人）, is the husband of model-turned-singer Chocolat. I also actually remember seeing her quite a lot on television in my early years in Japan doing commercials and performing songs so there is some of that nostalgia factor. From her J-Wiki article, her real name is Masako Katayose and she hails from Tokyo and apparently, she got her stage name of Chocolat from the fact that she shares the same name for the current Empress of Japan, Masako whose Yorkshire Terrier was named Chocolat.
Certainly not wanting to leave anyone out of the family, Chocolat is here tonight and here I have a song, "Blue de Happy ga Ii BLUE MINT BLUE" (Blue and Happy are Good) from her debut single (more like a semi-album considering that there are five tracks), "Chocolat A La Mode"（ショコラ・ア・ラ・モード）, released in May 1997. Written and composed by Hideki Kaji（加地秀基）, it's a nice sunny slice of Shibuya-kei which is the singer's regular genre. Perhaps listeners can be just as at home taking a comfortable stroll in Paris as they can doing the same thing in Tokyo. Through Kaji's lyrics, Chocolat lets it be known to a loved one who is feeling blue that the colour can also signify a lot of good things as well such as through clothing and the sea.
Just some warning with the music video...it cuts out briefly for a couple of seconds at around :37 but no worries. Anyways, the swinging guitars and harmonica and crackling percussion arrangement remind me of a Tomoyo Harada（原田知世）single that had been released in the same year, "Romance"（ロマンス）, and I think the music videos featuring both Chocolat and Harada are pretty similar in that they are enjoying a pleasant outing in the sun. Chocolat's debut peaked at No. 69, and a couple of months later in July, her 2nd single was basically another go at "Blue de Happy ga Ii BLUE MINT BLUE" with just the song and then the karaoke track.
One last piece of family-based trivia before I finish for the night. Chocolat has a twin sister named Heaco who was also a singer and a model. I will have to take a look at her discography as well in the near future, although it was a brief time in the recording booth...just between 1998 and 2000.
It's been one of the more unusual Hump Days in recent memory. Along with the pandemic stuff, the entire world seems to be on tenterhooks about the aftermath of a certain election, but let's keep that out of the way since I want to keep things nice and copacetic here at "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Feel free to relax and bliss out.
Perhaps we can start things off with a group that I'm introducing onto the blog. Mind you, I've known about GREAT3 for a very long time...over a decade, to be exact, since this was one of the authors' recommended bands on "Japanese City Pop". In fact, whenever I leafed through the pages of my City Pop bible, I always saw GREAT3's debut 1995 album, "Richmondo High" pop up at the end. However I assumed that they had never shown up on YouTube since they were rather obscure.
Little did I know. Actually, there are quite a few songs up on the site by this band which, according to their Wikipedia article, was born after a previous band, Rotten Hats, broke up in 1994 with some of the members going on to form a new outfit Hicksville. Well, guitarist Akito Katayose（片寄明人）, drummer Kenichi Shirane（白根賢一）and bassist Kiyoshi Takakuwa（高桑圭）branched out to form GREAT3, and the name of the band wasn't created to arrogantly show off but to illustrate the fact that the three of them were (relatively) tall, ranging in height between 176 to 187 cm. All of them write their songs and also act as lead vocalist.
From their aforementioned "Richmondo High" album, here is "Summer's Gone". Despite my first sight of them in the pages of "Japanese City Pop", I don't quite think that this particular track is City Pop; it actually comes across as an appealing slice of straight-ahead pop with a hint of Shibuya-kei and somewhere in the middle, there's an even bigger sensation of 1960s sunshine pop. But in the J-Wiki article for them, they've been categorized as being fluent in rock, alternative rock, funk, pop/rock, psychedelic rock, indies pop, dream pop, folk rock and AOR. If I were thinking comparisons with other bands, I think that there's some similarity of GREAT3 with Original Love.
As for "Richmondo High", it peaked at No. 66. GREAT3 had an initial run of 10 years between 1994 and 2004 with 14 singles and 7 albums under their belt. Then after nearly a decade apart, they came together again in 2012 with another single and a couple of albums. During their time together and away from each other, they were busy helping other artists individually such as daoko, Bonnie Pink and Chara in terms of writing and production and performing.
Bassist Takakuwa didn't return to GREAT3 when the band decided to get back together in 2012 but has since become the solo performer Curly Giraffe who has also joined up with guitarist Shigekazu Aida（曾田茂一）to form the duo HONESTY. Takakuwa's replacement was jan whose mother happens to be singer/photographer Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）. By the way, jan fits the requisite height for the band at 187 cm which just happens to be Takakuwa's height as well. Not sure if any of them bring a tape measure during auditions.
To finish off with even more family-based trivia, guitarist Katayose is married to model/singer Chocolat, and in 2000, they formed the duo Chocolat&Akito and released a single "Veranda".
