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.
Last night, I was watching "Matsuko no Shiranai Sekai"（マツコの知らない世界...Matsuko's Unknown Worlds）on TV Japan. The premise of his show is that guests come on showing off their most beloved hobbies, no matter how unusual. I've seen folks coming on with their grand collection of things including bookmarks, designer scotch tape and Hello Kitty, and when it comes to food, some of these fellows show off their favourite restaurants and even having some of those dishes come straight onto the set to be sampled by host Matsuko Deluxe（マツコ・デラックス）.
It rarely happens, but once in a while, a celebrity or former celebrity even shows up to surprisingly reveal his or her own obsession. The episode that I caught yesterday featured the vocalist of the 90s band DEEN, Shuuichi Ikemori（池森秀一）, and his huge love of soba. In fact, he proudly boasted that he eats the famed Japanese noodles almost 365 days a year, and of course, he gave his recommendations of various soba restaurants around the nation and even demonstrated his own particular way of cooking soba.
As such, I just had to feature a DEEN song today. So this is "Mirai no Tame ni" (For the Future), the band's 7th single from June 1995. Remembering their style, the uptempo song is very much DEEN and even reminds me of some happy TUBE tunes.
With that title and the nostalgically happy vibe, I figured that it just had to have been a theme song for some TV drama. Well, I wasn't 100% correct; it was never a theme for some romance-comedy, but it was used as the campaign song for NTV's baseball telecasts that year. In fact, Major League Baseball manager Bobby Valentine, when he first came to Japan to skipper the Chiba Lotte Marines back then, became a fan of the song.
Ikemori and drummer Naoki Uzumoto（宇津本直紀）composed the song while the former took care of the lyrics. "Mirai no Tame ni" became DEEN's 2nd No. 1 hit after "Hitomi Sorasanai de"（瞳そらさないで）from the previous year and ended up ranked No. 66 on the yearly charts. It also showed up on the band's "SINGLES+1"BEST album from 1998, which was another No. 1 hit for them. That compilation managed to come in at No. 34 for the year.
I was just writing last night about a singer who seemed to specialize in the summer beach side of things. Of course, there are plenty of other singers who have also brought their fair share of the hot season such as TUBE and Anri（杏里）.
While DEEN may have not gained the same level of lasting fame that TUBE and Anri, a couple of their songs at least have guaranteed themselves some fond memories for fans who were growing up and living in the 1990s. One is "Hitomi Sorasanai de"（瞳そらさないで）which will always be my favourite DEEN tune and the trigger for my Pavlovian response of Pocari Sweat.
The other song is something that I have heard on occasion by them and know it as one of their signature tunes. However, "Kono Mama Kimi Dake wo Ubaisaritai" (I Want to Steal You Away Just as You Are) is a DEEN hit that I had assumed all these years was a single that came after "Hitomi Sorasanai de", when in fact, it was the band's first single from March 1993. For one thing, I never really knew the title...only just the song itself as it was performed which would explain why I kinda threw out the song in the article for "Hitomi Sorasanai de" without even mentioning it by name.
Actually, DEEN showed up on NHK's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）the week before to sing this very song which got me to eventually write about it here. As much as "Hitomi Sorasanai de" is this high-tempo summery tune, "Kono Mama Kimi Dake wo Ubaisaritai" is a wistful summery ballad. Usually when I think of the careers of bands, I had assumed that it would be the uptempo tune that would get them on the map followed by the love ballad. Not so here. I also have to admit that DEEN's performance on "Uta Kon" was the first time that I got to hear the entire song and realized how good it was. Well, as I always say, better late than never. Ah, before I forget, the song was written by Sho Uesugi（上杉昇）from the band WANDS and Tetsuro Oda（織田哲郎）.
It was quite the auspicious splash for DEEN as the song hit No. 2 on the charts and just missed out on being part of the Top 10 singles for 1993 by coming in at No. 12. It did break the millions barrier as well. "Kono Mama Kimi Dake wo Ubaisaritai" also was a track on the band's debut album"DEEN" which was released in September 1994. That release did even better by scoring a No. 1 and becoming the 8th-ranked album for the year. Plus, the single became the campaign song for a DoCoMo commercial for beepers (the Neanderthal communications technology compared to Modern Man's cellphone).
I've never written anything Japanese music before. It's become something fundamentally important to me, something that allows me to feel a sense of euphoria. Well, it's always been there, even though I've barely been listening to it for two years.
It's always been there in the background- from my grandfather's love for enka to nursery rhymes I learnt as a child, and even the CDs in the car. It was only near the end of 2015 when my mother introduced me to a track from the CDs in the car: "Road" (ロード) by THE TRA-BRYU (THE 虎舞竜).
This track is number eight on the CD that my grandfather compiled. At first, I didn't even know the name of the song, and simply referred to it as "track eight". It was only later that I discovered the song's tragic backstory, about how it was written for a female fan that died in a car accident. It wasn't long before I had the song lyrics with me and the second (DEEN's "このまま君だけを奪い去りたい") and fourteenth track (沢田研二's "時の過ぎゆくままに") caught my attention.
Armed with my newfound appreciation of these three songs, I began to listen to recommendations from my grandparents- a mix of enka and kayoukyoku.
The CDs in the car were replayed over and over again, and I discovered Chage and Aska. In the span of two months I had accumulated a few songs that I liked- but they say growth is exponential. Indeed, it was only another month before I fell fully for kayo, VOCALOID, J-pop, and other genres of Japanese music.
Although I have no CDs (other than two Chage and Aska albums that belong to my mother), I have a proud collection of 7GB worth of music (I hope it'll one day equal my grandfather's cabinets of songs and records).
And that's how I fell into Japanese music- tentatively, and then head first.
DEEN
is not the type of group/band I’d check, even in a million years. However, my
Nihongo teacher kindly gifted me with some of her old singles, and DEEN’s “Tsubasa
wo Hirogete” (翼を広げて)
happened to be one of them.
While
the title track didn’t do anything to me, I liked the coupling song, “Yume no
Tsuzuki......Love in my dream” a lot. That’s probably because of its somewhat
funky vibe, while still mantaining a mellow romantic feeling. Actually, the
song is quite sexy in its own way, especially in how the vocalist Shuuichi
Ikemori (池森秀一) pronounces “girl”. In the end, the
song kind of reminds me of Masayuki Suzuki (鈴木雅之),
even though I'm not too sure if he would be able to own the “girl” line just
like Shuuichi did.
Maybe
I could benefit from grabbing a DEEN’s compilation someday, just to see what I’m keeping away
because of pure prejudice. Also, thanks a lot for the gift, 先生.
The “Tsubasa wo
Hirogete” single was released in July 1993. It reached #5 on the Oricon charts,
selling 570,900 copies. Lyrics and music were composed by Shuuichi Ikemori
himself, while arrangement was done by Takeshi Hayama (葉山たけし).
The late 80s in Japan may have been known for the Band Boom in music, but the early 90s should have been called the Alphabet Band Boom, since there were a number of these acts known for one-word letter clusters such as ZYYG, trf, and ZARD. And there was also DEEN. Back in 1993, the lead vocalist for WANDS, Sho Uesugi（上杉昇）, and singer-songwriter Tetsuro Oda (織田哲郎....behind a lot of TUBE tunes) were searching for someone to sing their song for a DoCoMo pager commercial (the prehistoric age before cellphones that didn't look like bricks), and they found Shuichi Ikemori（池森秀一） from Hokkaido who had come down to Tokyo to start a career in music. Liking what they heard and saw from Ikemori, they partnered him with keyboardist Koji Yamane（山根公路） to form DEEN. With a couple of more additions, that DoCoMo song became the band's 1st single.
However, the song that I will always associate DEEN with is their 5th single, "Hitomi Sorasanai de"(Don't Avert Your Eyes), which came out in June 1994. Also composed by Oda, the lyrics were provided by the late vocalist of ZARD, Izumi Sakai（坂井泉水）, and the song is just a bottle of summer fun. I sometimes have to avert MY eyes from the CD since the tune is so bright and bouncy, and one of my favourite parts is that fast guitar solo near the end. The lyrics themselves are pretty darn optimistic as the guy in question tries to convince his girlfriend that there is still more than a spark in their relationship.
But like that debut song of theirs, "Hitomi Sorasanai de" was also one of the catchy campaign songs for Pocari Sweat, that famous isotonic drink that can be found in just about every vending machine alongside the cans of Coca-Cola. Actress Sae Isshiki（一色紗英）was the face in the commercials during the early 90s, and it's hard to separate her from the product even after a couple of decades. I've often plinked down my coins to get a can of the blue-and-white during those broiling Tokyo summers. The above video, by the way, has the whole series of commercials; "Hitomi Sorasanai de" comes near the end.
The song was DEEN's first No. 1 and million-seller, and became the 18th-ranked single of 1994.
