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.
As I mentioned in the previous ROY article, my family had gone for sushi for dinner over the weekend, and it was at a favored restaurant called Aoyama. We've usually gone there on New Year's night since it's perhaps the only Japanese eatery that's open on January 1st in Toronto, but this time, we decided to try it out over the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend.
The restaurant has a rather interesting setup. There is the main restaurant which isn't too big inside so some years ago, the owner managed to secure space a few doors down and that is now called the VIP Lounge for Aoyama. And so whenever I make the reservation, we get to dine in VIP...the only time in my life thus far that I've been able to boast anything like that.
It used to be the thing that when our family went to Japanese restaurants decades ago, the usual koto classic "Sakura" was playing on the speakers. You might say that it was the theme song for Japanese restaurants everywhere. Nowadays though, and this was also true of Aoyama a few nights back, such places are now playing all kinds of Japanese pop and/or kayo kyoku (and playing ancient Japanese commercials on the TV screens), including some City Pop. Kuri, my old karaoke haunt during my university years in the 1980s, did the same but that wasn't a restaurant but truly a lounge to sing out those hits.
In any case, some of us were playing "Name That Tune" for the songs that came through the speakers at Aoyama. My brother and I did pretty well; if I hadn't done well, I would have had to turn in my blog in shame. Moving forward, this is some of what I heard that night. It's quite the mix.
Happy Monday! I heard this particular song on an episode of "Songs of Japanese Spirit" on NHK's broadcast satellite service the other day and was interested in it enough that I tracked it down to it being one of Rumiko Koyanagi's（小柳ルミ子）singles from the 1970s. There are a number of her songs that I've known for decades such as her early hit "Watashi no Joukamachi" (わたしの城下町）and her 1983 "Ohisashiburi ne" (お久しぶりね）, and perhaps I may have heard this one here sometime in the past. However, for all intents and purposes, I'm treating "Nakinurete Hitori Tabi" (Traveling Alone, Drenched in Tears) as a new Koyanagi treat.
Written and composed by the late singer-songwriter Eigo Kawashima（河島英五）, this was Koyanagi's 26th single from July 1978. Just from the title alone, I could tell that this was another "broken romance, will travel"kayo kyoku that has been popular among singers and songwriters, and it's also deemed as a go-touchi (local or regional) song focused on the cities of Kyoto and Kanazawa. I think what stands out here is that especially melancholy melody spiked with the twangy guitar. Perhaps something in the arrangement can also hint at some enka-ness as well.
"Nakinurete Hitori Tabi" managed to peak at No. 30 on Oricon. Weirdly enough, the song was also used in a commercial for mosquito coils. Perhaps the surviving bugs fled to Kyoto and Kanazawa out of grief for their fallen comrades. 🦟
Commenter Justin, a few days ago, referred me to Xerf Xpec's recent upload, smoky singer Naomi Chiaki's（ちあきなおみ）January 1978 studio album"Amagumo"(Rain Clouds) . She recorded quite the conversation piece since it brings together three musical acts that I hadn't expected would work together. For one thing, Chiaki, someone that I've usually associated with Mood Kayo and regular Japanese pop, has the backup of the band Godiego（ゴダイゴ）, and for another, all of Side A of the original record was written and composed by the late singer-songwriter Eigo Kawashima（河島英五）, the man behind the introspective folk classic and karaoke favourite, "Sake to Namida to Otoko to Onna"（酒と泪と男と女）.
I've heard the first couple of tracks including the title track from "Amagumo", and I think that all involved including Chiaki were going for something different from their own worlds. At this point, I'd say that the album was perhaps going into a more City Pop direction but without having heard the other tracks thus far, I will go with 1970s New Music for now.
However with the first track, "Amagumo", there is something very sensual and sultry which matches the smokiness of Chiaki's voice. In the first several seconds of the song, there is a feeling of early morning hours but when all of the instruments come into literal play, I realize that it is most likely a case of a setting sometime during a rainy day as the title hints at, with Chiaki or her avatar being in a very hip coffee house somewhere in Shinjuku or Roppongi while she stares through the window with spatters of raindrops.
Kawashima's melody weaves among City Pop, jazz and the more urbane corner of New Music so it's not particularly easy to categorize "Amagumo" into one particular genre. But there are obviously no complaints from me about it as this song also reminds me of how another wonderfully cool chanteuse, Mai Yamane（山根麻衣）, started out a few years later. One last observation about the album itself is how similar the silhouette of Chiaki is to the one given on the cover of Bill Evans' famous "Waltz for Debby". Was this some sort of homage to the amazing jazz pianist?
This morning on "NHK News at 9", there was an unexpected feature on the late Yu Aku（ 阿久悠）, the prolific lyricist of the Showa Era who I've equated as the Japanese version of Ira Gershwin or Irving Berlin. It has been almost a decade since his passing, but the reporter revealed that Aku had kept a diary for many many years which contained not only his thoughts but also newspaper articles and trendy catchphrases at the time.
I didn't understand 100% of the feature but my impression is that Aku had made the transition from frequent lyricist to author since he felt that an ever-increasing group of new and young songwriters popping up in the 1980s was making him a bit out-of-date. However, he never was quite content about being just a writer of words instead of lyrics and from time to time, he would still produce songs for some of the greats in the Japanese music industry. But with that peek into his diary, I got the feeling that there was a sense of desperation as his time came to an end...that he didn't want to relinquish his greatest gift.
Perhaps those feelings came to the fore when he wrote "Jidai Okure"(Old-Fashioned) in 1986 for singer-songwriter Eigo Kawashima（河島英五）. Another kayo veteran, composer Koichi Morita（森田公一）, took care of a melody that sounded downright elegiac. The NHK report also mentioned that the song had been created just on the eve of the Bubble Era when the then-young generation of Japan was about to truly taste a time of decadence through travel, hostess clubs and discos such as the famous Julianas. Aku may have seen this and jotted down his observations into the diary and felt that an age was truly passing by with him being swept along. "Jidai Okure" certainly is melancholy but there is still a sense of wistfulness and gratitude that the happier age did exist for him and his contemporaries to enjoy. The one line that stands out is "Jidai okure no otoko ni naritai"（時代おくれの男になりたい）which means "I want to become an old-fashioned man". Perhaps the song also has a defiance stating that Aku and the others would rather keep their old-fashioned attitudes and songs instead of moving on, but the rest of the song also illustrates the protagonist slowly getting quieter...not yelling at his kids so much and not standing out as much as he used to as a young and ambitious fellow. In a way, I see it as a lyrical declaration of passing the baton to the newer Young Turks.
The original recorded version is below but I thought Kawashima's performance in the video above had an even better tone with just him and his majestic piano. Wouldn't be surprised if there were a fair number of folks in the audience quietly tearing up.
Listening to "Jidai Okure", I was also reminded of another majestic ballad by Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi（長渕剛）, the karaoke favourite "Kanpai"（乾杯）which is arguably one of the best go-to songs to celebrate a wedding among all those family members and friends. "Jidai Okure", then, could be more for retirement as a few buddies get together to celebrate and commiserate. The song is supposedly set in a bar or an old neighbourhood izakaya for the guys to drink down the realization that an age is passing.
To add to the wistfulness of it all, the song only got as high as No. 77 on Oricon although it won a special prize at the Japan Cable Awards. But listening to the recorded version, I guess I can't be that disappointed since the original sounds a little too cheerful (it was actually used for a sake commercial). If it had taken on the gravitas of the performed version from the top video, I think Oricon could have shown it some more love. However, the good news was that when the song was re-introduced on a 1991 NHK documentary on Aku, "Jidai Okure" suddenly gained in popularity leading to it being re-issued as a single. Kawashima then appeared on the Kohaku Utagassen at the end of that year to perform it; ironically 1991 was seen as the end of the Bubble Era.
Covers have been made of "Jidai Okure" including one by Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）. I'm sure Kawashima who died in 2001 would have approved. And I gotta say that along with his other magnum opus, "Sake to Namida to Otoko to Onna"（酒と泪と男と女）that was a karaoke staple at my old haunt of Kuri during my university years, Kawashima could really belt out those "take-a-moment-to-reflect" ballads.
As for Aku, he would live for at least another 20 years after writing the words to this poignant song. It may not have been at his old frequency, but he still continued to provide his lyrics to other singers, so I'm not sure whether "Jidai Okure" was a culmination of some mid-life crisis after which he gained a certain contentedness about that part of his life. However, he did leave a song that has become a symbolic tune representing the passing of a certain time period to be reminisced over among friends and family, and for that, I'm sure a lot of kayo fans are grateful.
As I've mentioned in a number of the articles here, my times at Kuri were filled with friends and other warblers singing Seiko-chan, Checkers, Akina, and Anzen Chitai. There were the usual clinking of glasses and happy banter to go along with the passing of the microphone and the slips of paper to the bartender with the next song selection. However, there were a couple of songs regularly sung at the old Yorkville karaoke bar that "stopped the presses", so to speak. One was Shinji Tanimura's（谷村新司）"Subaru", and the other was sung by an old friend of mine, Kaoru, whom I haven't seen in over a quarter of a century since he returned to Japan in the late 80s. Kaoru was the kindest, purest soul but he didn't hesitate in pulling off some of the craziest stunts such as Strip Rock-Scissors-Paper (he lost, by the way.....completely) when he knocked back a few.
However, his 18-ban at Kuri was such that people usually stopped whatever they were doing to listen. The song was Eigo Kawashima's（河島英五）"Sake to Namida to Otoko to Onna"(Booze and Tears and Men and Women) which was composed and written by the singer in 1976. The way the lyrics and the melody worked together, anyone with a decent voice would've slammed it out of the park. That is not to say that the song is a simple ditty at all. Kawashima just wove this song with so much heart and depth that anyone singing or listening to it would have known how to treat it. It was no surprise that Kaoru often had a lot of folks singing along with him.
According to J-Wiki, the Osaka-born Kawashima started his music career by starting up a band called Homo Sapiens in 1970 which released a couple of albums and five singles before it broke up in 1976. Kawashima then went on with a solo career with "Sake to Namida to Otoko to Onna" as his debut. Through his music, he often related about various aspects of what it was like to be a man: strengths, weaknesses, the emotions of being a father. This song here brings together the dramatic dynamic of the four elements in the title to talk about a man's crushing frustration and how he chooses to keep it at bay.
This performance by Kawashima is how I've always heard "Sake to Namida to Otoko to Onna" through my friend, Kaoru. Unlike the somewhat more proudly delivered recorded version in the video right at the top, the singer, looking a bit disheveled at the piano, had more gravel and anguish in his delivery. If Tom Waits could sing in Japanese, I think I know the song for him. The surprising thing about it, though, is that despite the feeling of well-worn years, it had been written by Kawashima when he was just 19....just one year shy of becoming an official adult in Japan.
The song itself was released in June 1976, and after 18 months, it finished in the 1977 yearly rankings at the No. 43 position, with almost 300,000 records sold. Kawashima made his breakthrough with this song, impressing other singers with the force of his voice. And he would make it to the Kohaku Utagassen in 1991 with "Jidai Okure"（時代おくれ）. Unfortunately, a decade later, he would pass away prematurely at the age of 48 from liver disease.
The song has been covered by a number of artists such as Hideki Saijo and 70s group, BORO, but I wanted to show former 80s aidoruYoshie Kashiwabara's（柏原芳恵） cover of it. Though with the lyrics unchanged, she sings it from the man's point of view (or grammar), Kashiwabara gives her own weary seen-it-all, heard-it-all torch song performance. The voice is unmistakably the Kashiwabara from 30 years ago but with a timbre that suggests that not all of those three decades were filled with frills and cuteness. Her version is on one of two cover albums she recorded in 2007 titled "Encore".
One final piece of trivia gleaned from the J-Wiki article for Kawashima is that there is/was a watering hole in Nairobi, Kenya called The Green Bar. It had a jukebox which amongst its records also contained the single of his most famous song. Apparently, whenever Japanese tourists came into the bar for a drink, the owners would play "Sake to Namida to Otoko to Onna". The story went that Kawashima, who often traveled around the world, made a stop at The Green Bar. When he identified himself as a Japanese singer, no one would believe him, so he just left the record along with his bill (why he just happened to have a 45"single on his person at the time is beyond me). As for the Green Bar itself, I looked it up but it may have been closed down since 2010.
