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.
Y'know...I'm just a few weeks shy of twelve years since I first posted singer-songwriter Hiroshi Madoka's（円広志）"Musoubana"（夢想花）, the song whose chorus encourages everyone to fly nine times. Once you hear it, you never quite forget it.
Well, a couple of years after that hit debut single, Madoka released his 4th single "Musician" in April 1980. In a way, I guess it's kinda like his tribute to the hard-working musician out there in the same way that Billy Joel gave his kudos to the piano man working for his fee and tips. With words and music by the singer and then arrangement by Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）, it has that nostalgic feeling of a typical Japanese pop ballad in those late 70s and early 80s with the wailing electric guitar and silky strings. Plus, it starts off with a fairly frenetic Spanish guitar before Madoka sets the languid tone.
In my last post, I mentioned that recently I've been hooked onto listening to some old 90s Cantonese pops. This is another Japanese song covered by Hong Kong singer Leon Lai 黎明 in 1992. I forgot how I came to know that it's a covered song, but I probably discovered it shortly after I began studying Japanese back in 2010. Hiroshi Madoka is such an odd name that I did not remember until I decided to write this post a few days ago.
It's so interesting when I read Hiroshi Madoka's Wikipedia page. It is said that as a singer, Hiroshi is considered by many Japanese to be a one hit wonder! That one hit, Musoubana 夢想花, was covered by J-Canuck in this post. It's nostalgic because that post was written in 2012, the year this blog started.
Speaking about one hit wonders, as much as I love Midori Karashima 辛島美登里, she's also kind of a one hit wonder. Coincidentally, both Midori and Hiroshi began their career by winning the Yamaha Pop Song Contest. Hiroshi did it in 1978 whereas Midori won in 1983.
Released in 1990, Yuki no Furu Hito was Hiroshi's 14th single. Music was written by Kisaburo Suzuki 鈴木キサブロー while lyrics was written by Masao Urino 売野雅勇. The English translation of the title would be "Man of Falling Snow." It's about a couple who separated. The man was watching an airplane taking off, whose light is disappearing amid falling snow. The plane was carrying his ex-lover to the next chapter in her life. He remembered how they first met at age 20, when he was carrying her across a bridge on his back that summer. Now, there's only "falling snow" everywhere.
Frankly, I like Leon Lai's singing better. I agree with J-Canuck that Hiroshi Madoka's voice sounds like Takao Kisugi 来生たかお. To me, that's like a drunken old man singing in a karaoke!
I'll let you guys decide. This is the covered version in Cantonese by Leon Lai. The title of the song is called "Wish We'd Be More Than Friends 但願不只是朋友."
On this week's regular Reminiscings of Youth, I have this memory of a song that could have been the transition between the old disco and the New Wave.
This is going to sound so weird but whenever I hear Blondie's "Heart of Glass", my memories go back to a fishing trip that consisted of my brother, myself and a friend of mine from junior high school on Centre Island which was a five or ten-minute ferry ride away from Toronto's harbour over Lake Ontario. "Heart of Glass" was playing all over the park speakers and I thought it was an odd musical accompaniment to the attempts of getting successful at the trout pond. So, it hasn't been the fragrance of cologne and tobacco at Studio 54 but the smell of fish and lake water that has been my sense memory of this hit song from January 1979.
Still, I'm never going to confuse rainbow trout with the beautiful visage of Deborah Harry who was the vocalist behind "Heart of Glass", a song that I think mixed the disco and New Wave and has become one of my early music touchstones. It was the first time that I had heard of Blondie so I was surprised that "Heart of Glass" wasn't the debut single but something like the 10th single by the band according to their Wikipedia discography although it was first heard on their third album"Parallel Lines" from September 1978. That album cover, by the way, with Harry looking rather stern in front of her smiling band is pretty darn iconic to me.
"Heart of Glass" hit No. 1 in several countries including Canada and the United States and has even made it onto Rolling Stone's list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
So, according to Showa Pops, what was also coming out in January 1979 in Japan?
Hiroshi Madoka -- Musoubana （夢想花）(released in Nov. 1978 according to J-Wiki)
Mariko Takahashi -- Anata no Sora wo Tobitai(あなたの空を翔びたい）(released in Nov. 1978 according to J-Wiki)
Alice -- Champion （チャンピオン）(released in Dec. 1978, according to J-Wiki)
Even in quiz show-happy Japan where shows and theme music tie-ups have been common for some time, I was a bit surprised that this one was the ending theme for this turn-of-the-decade (80s to 90s) program on TV Asahi called "Quiz Shigotonin"（クイズ仕事人...Quiz Pros）.
Not that there is anything wrong with Hiroshi Madoka's（円広志）"Kaze no Arpeggio" (Wind Arpeggio). Far from it. It's quite the shibui song that has that tang of class and Mood Kayo in-bar introspection. Plus, Madoka sounds quite a bit like singer-songwriter Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）. I just didn't think that it would be a theme tune for a quiz show; it sounds like something that would adorn a drama or a commercial for a Toyota Cressida driving around at night.
"Kaze no Arpeggio" was Madoka's 15th single and although he is also a songwriter, this particular tune wasn't his creation. The lyricist and composer was Shigeyuki Shibano（柴野繁幸）who had also been the guitarist/vocalist for the 80s rock band, RoveBard（ロブバード）. Of course, when it comes to Madoka's magnum opus, there is this one song.
I've known veteran Masako Mori（森昌子）for her teenage love song towards a teacher, "Sensei"（せんせい）back in the early 1970s. However, she is also famous for a much more mature tragic ballad that she recorded a little over a decade later in 1983 titled "Ettou Tsubame"(Hibernating Swallow).
The title may sound no more dramatic than something from a show on the Nature Channel. However, reading the lyrics by Shinichi Ishihara（石原信一）, there is the sad tale of a woman whose love has gone sour since the supposed man of her dreams has found other women to fulfill his flock. And yet, she can't or won't leave the jerk.
Yoshihiko Shinohara（篠原義彦）composed the music whose guitar and strings ebb and flow with the tide. So whenever I hear the song, because of the kanji for winter in the title, I always imagine the poor woman from the song stuck in some house near the shores of one of the northern prefectures during the cold months. The other notable part about "Ettou Tsubame" is the refrain of "hyururi~, hyururi~rara~..." which may signify the cry from that swallow in the title. By the way, Shinohara also happens to be the real name of Hiroshi Madoka（円広志）, who had become famous some years earlier for a catchy pop song of his own.
Although I don't think the above video is from the 1983 Kohaku Utagassen, she gave such a moving performance there (her 11th appearance on the NHK special) that she got quite weepy in the middle. This was apparently not lost on the powers-that-be since Mori was awarded Best Vocal Performance at the annual Japan Record Awards. "Ettou Tsubame" was her 42nd single from August 1983, and it peaked at No. 27 on the charts.
A number of cover versions have been done of "Ettou Tsubame" over the years including Madoka's own version from 1984.
Indeed it is February 29th 2016, Leap Day. In my view, we're in the midst of some rather unusual activities: we just had the Oscars handed out last night, tomorrow will be Super Tuesday in the United States, and today is the National Hockey League's Trade Deadline Day! For that last one, this has become such a quintessentially Canadian tradition that it should be made into a national holiday.
So, we've covered the cinematic, political and athletic. So why not go musical as well here?
These are my 5 choices for Leap Day since they all have something to do with jumping, flying and other synonyms within the title or the lyrics. The songs are not in any particular order.
1. Yoshie Kashiwabara（柏原芳恵） - Koibito tachi no Café Terrace（恋人たちのキャフェテラス）
This is the only entry on the list that has not had its own article on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" so I gather that I will be giving the largest paragraph here. The biggest thing I remember about the song is that lyricist Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）provided the phrase "Hop, skip, jump" for a ditty about a girl who just can't seem to raise the gumption to meet up with a guy she likes at a café despite her ardent feelings for him. This was Yoshie's 8th single from February 1982 composed by Masami Koizumi（小泉まさみ）, and it has that folky bouncy flavour that I often associated with the aidoru's earlier releases. It peaked at No. 9 on the Oricon weeklies scoring over 190,000 sold and was the 72nd-ranked song for 1982. "Koibito tachi no Café Terrace" (Lovers' Café Terrace) was also a track on her 6th album"Summer Sensation" from June of that year.
Part of the exotic climes kayothat was popular back in the late 70s, Shouno's most famous song has certainly got the right verb in the title. At the time, tourists were probably hankering to fly over to those amazing far-off places.
This was the song that sparked my idea to put up a Leap Song list in the first place. When you have that epic repeated lyric of tonde in there, it was pretty much fait accompli.
One of the classic Mariko Takahashi songs that has become rather rare to find on YouTube, so we've got enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）pitching in as a guest singer of the blissful soaring song.
Since March this year, "Nippon no Uta" has become "Shin Nippon no Uta" (新・BS日本のうた). I haven't yet seen this new season as NHK is still showing episodes from the previous season, but from what I've been seeing from the lineups from the "Shin Nippon no Uta" webpage, besides the word "new" in the show's title, there are a number of changes to the Saturday music program. For starters (literally), there is no more "Meikyoku Eleven", it has been changed to... something else and the 11 songs have been reduced to 9, and the "Special Stage" pairs are now singing tunes that hardly, if ever, get any time in the sun. Some instances include Ikuzo Yoshi's (吉幾三) official debut single during his time as a budding aidoru in the 70's (I am not kidding), and George Yamamoto's (山本譲二) "Bokyo Shigure".
I chanced upon Yamamoto's "Bokyo Shigure" quite a while ago by accident when I was too late in changing to a different track as I was listening to my "George Yamamoto Playlist". It came immediately after the muscular "Yume Kaido" (夢街道), and what prevented me from switching to something else like "Oirase" (奥入瀬) was its dramatic music with a heavy atmosphere, brought to you by Hiroshi Madoka (円広志), that fits Yamamoto's cool and manly demeanor. Well, unfortunately what you hear in the video above is rather tame in comparison to the recorded version.
When Yamamoto first opens his mouth, "Bokyo Shigure" starts off as somewhat gentle as he mournfully murmurs the first few lines, as if he's voicing his pain of missing home to himself or the bartender handing him a glass of brandy on the rocks at a quiet drinking establishment. But at the chorus, the volume of both music and Yamamoto increases as he yells out in indecision - he desperately wants to return to his hometown, but bound by pride, which can be seen in the very last sentence of the song, "Ore wa otoko janai ka?" (Am I not a man?), he is obliged to stay. Reiji Mizuki (水木れいじ) penned the lyrics.
amazon.co.jp
"Bokyo Shigure" was released on 21st September 1986 as Yamamoto's19th single, and its actually one of my favourites as it's got the enka singer's contrasting delivery at different parts of the song and the fierce score.
Another tribute video today. Earlier this afternoon, Austrian 'Fearless' Felix Baumgartner did the impossible and made the highest freefall jump in history right from the edge of space.
So, why did I post this particular song? Well, it's one verse in "Musoubana"(Dream Flower) which goes "Tonde, tonde, tonde, tonde, tonde, tonde, tonde, tonde, tonde, mawatte, mawatte, mawatte, mawaru." which means "Fly"(x9) and "Turn"(x4). (Baumgartner was doing a fair bit of both during his descent.) It's probably one of the most famous sets of lyrics in recent Japanese music history but people often can't remember the title or the singer behind the song.
Well, the singer is Hiroshi Madoka（円広志）who was raised in Osaka. He made his debut as a singer at the Yamaha Music Festival in 1978 with "Musoubana"(written and composed by Madoka) where he won the Grand Prize. From that point, the song was released as a single in November of that year and would eventually sell 800,000 records. It went up as high as No. 4 on the Oricon rankings and would become the 23rd-ranking single in 1979. Although Madoka would continue releasing singles for many more years, his debut would be his only bona fide hit. Apparently, he was able to write the song in 5 minutes....a little less than what the song is clocked at!
I think that lyric alone is inspirational enough. Certainly a lot of commercial campaigns have thought so as well since the song has been used over the years by various products for their advertising. If you're feeling somewhat down, give this tune a listen. Strangely enough though, Madoka wasn't inspired to use the "Tonde" verse because he had this need to fly. Instead, he just got inspired by the name of his entertainment agency that he had belonged to, Office Tonde.
In any case, watch Fearless Felix make his supersonic jump!
