J-Xmas Songs Without Anything Overtly Christmas-y In The Title

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to December. Not sure how it is meteorologically where you are, but here in Toronto, we woke up to a wind chill factor of around -7 degrees Celsius and a slight frosting of snow on the ground. Not surprisingly, the department stores and malls are in Christmas mode with the appropriate music, and sure enough, even KKP has entered the Yuletide spirit.

Of course, Christmas songs such as "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas" are famous all around the world. And even the ones whose titles don't have a "Christmas" or "Santa Claus" or "Jingle" or "Eve" are well-known for their Xmas cheer including "Sleigh Ride" and "Little Drummer Boy". Now, in Japan, where Christmas has been taking hold of the population like icing on carrot cake for years and years and years (aside from the fact that it isn't a statutory holiday over there, and really shouldn't be), as we all know in "Kayo Kyoku Plus", many J-Xmas tunes have been created during the better part of the past century. And I'd add that perhaps around 90% of them have those special key words that I've mentioned above that would provide the big hint that Christmas is on the way. There are those tunes such as "Christmas Eve" and "December 24" that pretty much give the show away.

However, the remaining 10% don't have any of those Christmas-y buzzwords in the title. Therefore, for those listeners who have just gotten into Japanese popular music and are starting to discover the Xmas section of kayo kyoku and J-Pop, as a public service, I've decided to start December off with some of those J-Xmas songs that don't overtly include anything Christmas-y in the title. Perhaps they can make for some delightful discoveries for some. So without further ado:

(1985) Akiko Kobayashi -- Stardust Memories

(1988) Kazuo Zaitsu -- Fuyu no Main Street（冬のメイン・ストリート）

(1990) Crayon-sha -- Tokyo Yakei（東京夜景）

(1991) Miho Nakayama -- Tooi Machi no Dokoka de （遠い街のどこかで）

(1997) Caoli Cano & Hiroshi Takano -- First Flight

(2004) Masatoshi Hamada & Noriyuki Makihara -- Chicken Rice（チキンライス）

Crayon-sha -- Tokyo Yakei（東京夜景）

 

In the "slipped my mind" department, I have here a CD single by a band called Crayon-sha (クレヨン社...The Crayon Company) that was released in November 1990. Surprisingly, in these 10 years of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" and especially during the Christmas period, I hadn't actually written about this particular song.

Crayon-sha is a duo consisting of singer-songwriter Yukie Yaginuma（柳沼由紀枝）and composer/arranger Hideki Kato（加藤秀樹）, both from Iwaki City, Fukushima Prefecture. During her high school years, Yaginuma went to a music shop to enter a song contest with a demo tape where she met Kato who had been working there. Kato took a liking to her lyrics and soon afterwards, Crayon-sha was born. Yaginuma would also end up working at a department store while continuing to work on her music. Their debut single, "Itami"（痛み...Pain）, was released in July 1988.

Out of some whim, probably the lovely cover of the CD single itself, I bought Crayon-sha's 5th single "Tokyo Yakei/Christmas no Chikai Hi" which is partly the subject of this article. A piano-and-synth combination underlie Yaginuma's vocals singing the bittersweet "Tokyo Yakei" (Tokyo Night View) about a woman having to return to her hometown after her five years in the megalopolis. She certainly isn't going back happily and for some reason, a romantic relationship has to be sacrificed. As part of their final Christmas together, the soon-to-be former couple decide to take in a view from Tokyo Tower, a place that the lass had never visited. 

I guess that the emphasis here is more on the bitter than the sweet judging from Yaginuma's vocals which sound as if she herself is about to break into tears and the solemn, funereal and holy arrangement of "Tokyo Yakei". This definitely falls into the heartbreak category of J-Xmas songs rather than the hearty party category.

Regrettably, I couldn't find "Christmas no Chikai Hi" (クリスマスの近い日...The Days Leading up to Christmas) but I do see some other Crayon-sha songs on YouTube which I will have to investigate into the new year, especially because J-Wiki has labeled them a rock and New Wave pair. To date, the duo has released 8 singles and 7 albums.