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.
Haven't seen singer-songwriter Reimy（麗美）in a while, so it's nice to have her here right at the beginning of this new year.
As I've stated in the past regarding Reimy, she seems to have had three stages in her singing career. Her first phase in the early to mid-1980s had her often covering Yuming's songs or providing some pretty aidoru-esque fare. In her second phase, she was doing more West Coast dance pop stuff for a short while, and then finally the third phase in the late 1980s going into the early 1990s involved her own creations which followed a gentle pop style.
"Saigo no Yasashisa"(The Final Kindness) was a B-side to her June 1987 single"fa・ri・ra". Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and composed by Reimy herself, it's a step away from the dance floor although the arrangement by Trevor Veitch still keeps it within that Los Angeles disco. It's a pleasant groove tune with some introspection about the nightlife that could fit LA or even Tokyo. And in a way, the song might be a fusion of those last two phases that I was referring to above.
Last month, I introduced brief-careered 80s aidoru Chiaki Ogami（尾上千昌）and one of her singles "Tokimeki Highway"（ときめきハイウェイ）from July 1983 which is so typically 1980s aidoru-tastic that it makes my memories shiver like an ice cream headache on certain head muscles (haven't felt one of those in a long time).
Ogami and her songwriters, lyricist Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and composer/arranger Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）, were at it again for the B-side, "Glass Shojo" (Glass Girl). This song is a bit more fleet-footed thanks to those thrilling strings and the wailing electric guitar but it's still very much an aidoru tune of its time (especially with that off-tune plaintive delivery in the chorus), and I actually prefer it to the A-side.
Ahhh...the early 80saidoru arrangement: lots of wailing electric guitar and twinkling synthesizers, plus the adorably (or not) off-tune teenage singer herself. Found a new aidoru in the form of Tokyoite Chiaki Ogami（尾上千昌）who was a part of an aidoru septet called Shower（シャワー）in 1982. The group only released two singles and one album that year.
As for Ogawa, she released just one single herself in July 1983 titled "Tokimeki Highway" (Highway of Excitement). Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and composed by Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）, the song fulfills my impression that I described in the first paragraph including the off-tune vocals. At least one of the covers for the single had her looking a bit like Yoshie Kashiwabara（柏原芳恵）.
Welcome to the continued dog days of summer, and yep, it's still plenty torrid here even in Toronto. I can't even imagine what it's like now in Japan although I hear that the southern regions have been getting pounded by torrential rains.
Akemi Ishii（石井明美）is someone that I haven't heard from in a while so allow me to rectify that. In addition, she has her own big kanreki birthday (as do a few of us this year) coming up in a few weeks, so we should wish her a happy one.
"Celebration" is a non-single track from her 2nd album"Joy"(August 1987) that I have heard before but just haven't covered as of yet. Not sure whether composer/arranger Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and lyricist Ikki Matsumoto（松本 一起）were aiming for Eurobeat or some mix between it or pop, but there is something in there that reminds me of Cutting Crew's big hit "(I Died) In Your Arms Tonight" from 1986. Matsumoto's lyrics are filled with paradoxes with the basic one being whether someone's happy with that other person or without. Quite the celebration.
When it comes to the oeuvre of singer Akemi Ishii（石井明美）, I've always pictured her as being someone resolutely linked with the mid to late 1980s. For that matter, her music usually had me thinking Eurobeat or something with some Latin pizazz. "Cha-Cha-Cha" and "L'Amant"（ラマン）come to mind.
"Celebration" is a song that I first heard on a BEST compilation by Ishii so I had initially not known about where it originally came from. It is a coupling song from her 11th single from October 1993, "Anatarashiku Ite"（あなたらしくいて...Stay As You Are） so that is one personal trope broken about her. The other trope broken is that I'd often associate her works with cover versions of Eurobeat songs and "Celebration" sounds as if this would be another one although the arrangement doesn't show off the Eurobeat all that strongly.
However, "Celebration" is a homegrown product with Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）handling the melody and arrangement respectively while Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）is the lyricist. But, as one commenter on YouTube has pointed out, "Celebration" does have some similarity with Cutting Crew's big 1986 hit "(I Just) Died in Your Arms".
I've known my fair share of ladies named Shiho including one of my students-turned-friends back in Tokyo. We also have a few of them here on KKP but this is the first time I'm bringing aboard an entertainer who goes just with that first name...SHIHO, although her full name is Shiho Sakamoto（坂本志穂） from Miyagi Prefecture.
Sexy aidoru SHIHO
And even then, she's not the only Japanese celebrity who has gone by a full-cap treatment of her first name. There is the fashion model SHIHO who's been around in the last twenty years or so. Ms. Sakamoto has actually been categorized on J-Wiki as sexy aidoru SHIHO (which was a phenomenon in the late 80s and early 90s with acts such as C.C. Girls), and her time on the scene was mostly in the 1990s.
In fact, between 1988 and 1994, SHIHO released 11 singles and 6 albums. The one song that I'll be introducing here is "Distance" which was the coupling song on her 2nd single"Plastic Moon" from March 1989. Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and composed by Ken Sato（佐藤健）, it's already hit me as being rather nostalgic and not just because it comes from the turn of the decade into the 1990s...it's also because I haven't covered an especially rousing Eurobeat tune for quite a while. SHIHO's vocals aren't too bad either and although I haven't seen any evidence of further singles and albums coming out since 1994, in recent years, she's also been involved in some gospel concerts. Her daughter, Lala Sakamoto（坂本らら）, was once a member of the now-defunct aidoru group Pimm's.
This particular song popped up a mere few days ago on YouTube channel "Kimi no Station: The Home of City Pop", and usually it's my personal policy not to jump the gun too quickly to put up freshly-posted videos.
However, seeing that we are entering the summer months and this song exemplifies the happy and gentle side of the sunny season, it was simply too irresistible. Resistance was indeed futile. I am talking about "Memorial Song" by the duo Step. Seiken Komura（小村精権）and Kojiro Nishimori（西森幸次郎）released this in May 1983 as their final single before breaking up, so I guess in a way, this was truly a memorial song. Plus, I can guess that Kimi no Station was interested in getting this on board around the Memorial Day weekend some days ago.
Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）, composed by Tsunehiro Izumi（和泉常寛）and arranged by Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）, "Memorial Song" is an appropriately bouncy and sunny AOR/City Pop ditty with some fine keyboard and chorus work. Imagining a cordial stroll along the waterside in June as this is playing wouldn't be out of the question. If you can, have a read of my previous Step article for "Cool de Atsui Kimi"（クールで熱い君）.
Through the Mixi news feed yesterday, I read that lyricist Ikki Matsumoto had passed away on November 4th at the approximate age of 73. A graduate of Keio University, he began his career in music in 1979, and according to J-Wiki, his debut set of lyrics came with 80s aidoru Yu Hayami's（早見優）debut single. However, he provided lyrics for songs in a few other genres such as pop, rock and City Pop, and he contributed songs to anime, TV shows and commercials. In fact, it's said that he was involved in over 3,000 commercials. I've also noticed that Matsumoto had often worked with composer Ken Sato（佐藤健）who already has his own Creator article.
The following is a small example of tunes that he provided lyrics for. My condolences go out to his family, friends and fans.
When I think of the Japanese dramas of the late 1980s, my mind usually goes to the trendy dramas in which the young and beautiful reside in apartments that are way too expensive for their jobs and cavort in plush and/or resort environments. However, I recently discovered that there was a Fuji-TV drama in early 1989 which was actually based on Leo Tolstoy'sfinal novel "Resurrection"(1899). Couldn't get more highbrow than that. Titled "Hana no Wakare"（華の別れ...Farewell of the Blossom）, it starred Satomi Tezuka（手塚理美）as a budding designer, Sachiko, who ends up in a tense liaison with a young man returning from studying overseas in the United States; meanwhile, Sachiko actually already has a proper boyfriend. You can play the video immediately below now.
For a Tolstoy-based J-drama, an appropriate theme song would be good here, and so singer-songwriter Joe Hisaishi（久石譲）was asked to come up with such a creation. He came up with "Fuyu no Tabibito" (Winter Traveler) which was also his second single from January 1989.
Following from his surprising City Pop single "Night City" several months earlier, "Fuyu no Tabibito" has also been categorized as a similarly City Pop tune on J-Wiki, although I don't really agree with the assessment. If anything, the classy piano piece with Hisaishi singing is probably more in relation with a more contemporized and livelier version of the languid Fashion Music from around a decade previously. With Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）behind the lyrics, "Fuyu no Tabibito" was probably designed to match with the Tolstoy cachet.
The J-Wiki article also has the list of musicians involved in the recording of the song, and there are a few big people from the New Music and City Pop genres. Along with Hisaishi handling vocals and keyboards, Fujimaru Yoshino（芳野藤丸）was on guitar, and the husband-and-wife duo of Yasuhiro Kido and Junko Hirotani（木戸やすひろ・広谷順子）were helping out in the chorus. "Fuyu no Tabibito" made it as far as No. 77 on the singles charts. Meanwhile, it was also included on Hisaishi's 4th album"illusion" (also containing "Night City") from December 1988.
With summer approaching, I have to start digging more for those seasonally appropriate tunes. Since urban contemporary was the thing yesterday, let's go with some aidoru to start things off today.
(3:47)
However actually, Tomoko (Rinco) Mayumi（真弓倫子）hasn't been listed in her J-Wiki file as an aidoru but as an actress and a TV personality from Kagoshima Prefecture. The reason that I've inserted that "Rinco" in her name is that early in her career, she had been going with a different reading of her first name as a stage alias, but the article doesn't specify when it was decided that she would go back to Tomoko, so I'm covering all of the bases.
Getting away from the naming thing, Mayumi was a graduate of that Tokyo equivalent of Hollywood High, Horikoshi High School in Nakano Ward. She was scouted in Harajuku (not sure if they ever had a drugstore which served milkshakes there) and made her debut as an actress on television in January 1987. Half a year later in June, she released the first of five singles, "Kataomoi Graffiti"（片想いグラフィティー...One-Sided Love Graffiti）. But it's the B-side that's the focus here, "Sentimental Natsu Shojo" (Sentimental Summer Girl). Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）, composed by Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）and arranged by Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）, I think that Mayumi does a pretty solid job with her high-pitched vocals matching the twinkling synths going at a good tempo. It does sound like a contemporary (for the time) 80s tune although I can pick up on the 60s girl pop vibe as well. The single was the only one to crack the Oricon Top 20 at No. 19.
Mayumi released one album in 1989, "Sincerely Yours", and one BEST compilation in 2011. With that final single coming out at the end of the 1980s, she then focused on acting throughout the next twenty years.
A few months back, I wrote about a singer from Aichi Prefecture named Mayumi Abe（阿部真弓）who was one-and-done with her singing career in the 1980s. Her lone single was "Tsumi to Batsu"(Crime & Punishment) from October 1984 but for that article in February, I only spoke about the speedy B-side "Koi ~ Burning"（恋・バーニング）.
This time, it's the A-side with "Tsumi to Batsu" which is also just as jumpy. With Takeshi Ike（いけたけし）behind the music and Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）as the arranger, the song does hint at a certain danger involving the protagonist as it combines the typical bounciness of an 80s aidorutune and the dramatic rock guitar-and-string tandem which sounds like a typical Hagita trope of the time. Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）provided the lyrics, and the overall effect of "Tsumi to Batsu" is that it reminds me of a few early Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）hits such as "Shojo A"（少女A）from the first half of the 1980s.
This could come down as one of the bigger coincidences that I've ever experienced but this particular song by 80s aidoru Yu Hayami（早見優）came out as part of her 5th album "Recess" on March 1st 1984, a little over a week before the release of Ron Howard's"Splash", the story of Tom Hanks' Allen Bauer encountering Darryl Hannah's Madison the Mermaid. As crazy as this may sound, I never saw the movie.
Sure enough, the track is called "MERMAID 1984" and I'm not sure whether lyricist Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）, composer Yutaka Mogi（茂木由多加）or any of the powers-that-be in charge of the record production had been inspired by any of the trailers for "Splash", but perhaps Matsumoto's words might reflect the romance between Allen and Madison. Anyhow, the music by Mogi is quite slick as it kinda straddles between City Pop and synthpop but not going fully into either genre so I'll be happy to keep it aidoru.
"Recess" peaked at No. 5 on the Oricon album charts, and it would be her final full studio album to get into the Top 10. By the way, I have to give my compliments to her snazzy cab driver get-up on the cover.
Welcome to Friday! The photo above is of the Toki no Kane (The Bell of Time), one of the landmarks in the city of Kawagoe, Saitama Prefecture. My friend and I visited the area when I visited Japan in November 2017.
Now, the reason for the photo is because the fairly obscure singer featured here just happens to hail from Kawagoe. His name is Toshitaro Hiejima（稗島寿太郎）but at the time, he released this particular album "Chic" in 1986, he was going for that cool mononym of TOSHITARO (nothing like caps to get your message across while screaming in script).
I couldn't find much information at all about TOSHITARO except from what I could glean at the Japanese-language "Music Avenue". "Chic" was his 3rd album, and from it, I have "Tight Night" which was composed by him and written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）. It's quite the cool and smoky mid-tempo nighttime City Pop number, and I have to agree with "Music Avenue" author kaz-shin that it's the type of song that would belong on a car stereo tape while bombing down the highways in Tokyo. The late Kenji Omura（大村憲司）, who arranged everything, is handling the guitar solo.
Happy first weekend of 2021! So far, so quiet today although I did catch that "Doctor Who"New Year's special (I've been doing my fair share of PVR'ing this Holiday season) earlier today. It was actually pretty entertaining and who knew that Chris Noth could play such a hilariously slimy villain?
Several years ago, I wrote up an article devoted to "CD '87", Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）May 1987 album and on it was "Gypsy Queen", one of my very favourite singles by her because of its dramatic exoticness, a melodic theme that seemed to course through the album.
It was given lyrics by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and the melody was produced by singer-songwriter Wataru Kuniyasu（国安わたる）. A native of Chiba Prefecture, he has created tunes for a lot of aidoru according to his J-Wiki profile, but he also released several singles and albums of his own during the 1980s, although he had earlier debuted alongside his brother in the band RAIN.
Well, in October 1988, Kuniyasu released "Kuniyasu Wataru Best Hits"（国安わたるベストヒッツ）and on the album is his cover of "Gypsy Queen". It's quite a worthy cover, too, as though it still retains the drama of the song that he had given Nakamori to sing, his version has more of a City Pop flavour. I'm not sure if he was also behind the arrangement of the song, but there is a feeling of Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）in there.
According to that same J-Wiki article, his brother, singer-songwriter Shuuji Kuniyasu（国安修二）, is currently running a bar and live house in the Ueno-Okachimachi neighbourhood of Tokyo, and from time to time, Wataru shows up to play a session (although his website states that he's currently not active). That particular area is just around the corner where I first started my NOVA career as an English teacher in late 1994.
To be honest, though, I still prefer the original by Akina!
When it comes to the 1980s aidoru, I've usually split it down in the middle: the early 80s aidoru with folks like Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）were the ones with the short hair, frilly dresses and the summery and breezy puppy-love songs while the late 80s were often populated with ladies with more divergent styles such as Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）and Shizuka Kudo（工藤静香）. Although depending on the singer, the melodies could retain that happy-go-lucky feeling, some of the other music also tended toward areas such as dance music with brassier arrangements and sassier attitudes.
So, what to make of Jun Miyazaki's（宮崎純）"Shin-Romantic" (New Romantic) and "Second Virgin"? She was another one of those aidoru that came and went like the wind in terms of output with only two singles under her name, both coming out in 1988. The debut single "Shin-Romantic" with its B-side of "Second Virgin" was out in May of that year.
The A-side is the more interesting of the two. "Shin-Romantic" is a pretty snazzy number so I thought it was a bit of a pity that it probably didn't do all that well perhaps (never heard of Miyazaki until very recently). Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and composed/arranged by Shunichi Tokura（都倉俊一）, the melody is cloaked in all sorts of synthpop decoration to keep things hopping. Considering the release date, I would say that Miyazaki's debut was going for that late 80s dance pop with all of the needed bells and whistles. In the way that KKP collaborator Marcos V. compared Morning Musume's（モーニング娘。）"Koi no Dance Site"（恋のダンスサイト）to Dschinghis Khan's"Dschinghis Khan", "Shin-Romantic" seems to hail back to Boney M's"Rasputin" in the refrain. On the other hand, "Second Virgin" at 3:42, (sorry but that video has been taken down) which was also handled by Matsumoto and Tokura, seems to hail back to the the early 80s aidoru period when the happy 1950s pop tune was providing some inspiration to the singing teenyboppers back then.
As for Miyazaki, I could only find out from Idol.ne.jp that she was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1972, and aside from those two singles, she had also done some acting as well.
Couldn't finish off today's articles without tackling this one here since it's so funkalicious!
When it comes to Yoshinori Monta（もんたよしのり）, who was born Yoshinori Kadota（門田頼命）, I've only really known him as part of Monta & Brothers（もんた&ブラザーズ）with their huge hit, "Dancing All Night"（ダンシング・オールナイト）back in 1980. I would like to get to know him some more especially after listening to this fun and bouncy "Aisarenai Show Time"(Unloved Show Time) from his 1987 solo album"Bitter" .
It's a good piece of kakkoii City Pop. Knowing "Dancing All Night", it's definitely Monta's voice but this time, it's surrounded by some tight horns, a relentless keyboard keeping the beat, and then all of that funky goodness. Once again, this might be another call for Daemonskald but although I tried looking through the search engines and the newly-returned JASRAC database, I couldn't find the songwriters. I wonder if Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）or any of the guys from AB'S had anything to do with this one.
Would like to get my hands on this album if it hasn't gone haiban.
The first Mami Ayukawa（鮎川麻弥）song that I put onto "Kayo Kyoku Plus" back in early 2017 was the breezy City Pop-feeling "Kaze no No Reply"（風のノー・リプライ）, the theme for the anime "Juusenki L-Gaim"（重戦機エルガイム...Heavy Metal L-Gaim）.
Now, I've got her second entry into KKP with her "Cancel no Yoin" which could be translated as "Aftertaste of Cancellation". Perhaps the song is about getting stood up. A track from Ayukawa's 7th album, "Shin Shikai"（新視界...New Angle）, released in November 1987, "Cancel no Yoin" has City Pop's sultrier side at the fore with some nice horns in accompaniment. Images include a long walk into the Shinjuku night, most likely east of Shinjuku Station where a lot of the action is.
Ayukawa was responsible for the music while Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）took care of the lyrics. Will have to look more into her discography. According to her J-Wiki article, she started out in the rock vein, but it appears as if she could handle the urban contemporary stuff just as well.
Still loving those surprises while working on the blog. One of those surprises involved the realization that Canada's own David Foster had a hand in helping out a few Japanese singers in the 1980s such as Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）, Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）and Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）. Plus, it was indirectly through "Kayo Kyoku Plus" that I found out that Foster had even been one-half of the duo Airplay, about as AOR as a band could be.
Well, something similar has happened with someone that I had thought was a popular 90s singer with an appealingly chirpy and perky pop style. Eri Hiramatsu（平松愛理）is a singer that has some representation on my shelves because of her velvety vocals and fun music, and I think she is arguably most well-known for "Heya to Y-Shatsu to Watashi"（部屋とＹシャツと私）whose music video could get folks into a tearful mood.
Perhaps then I should read the fine print a bit more in detail when it comes to J-Wiki articles. All this time I had assumed that Hiramatsu had always been a solo singer starting in the final decade of the 20th century, when actually she did participate in a couple of bands back in the 1980s. For instance, she got together with three other people to form an amateur group, ERI & WONDERLAST in 1982.
Once that band broke up in 1986, Hiramatsu made her way up to Tokyo and while working part-time, she created songs which led to her going to record companies twice a week to sell them on her works (according to the journal "Daigaku Jihou"「大学時報...University Newsletter」 in their November 2007 edition). The following year, she got together with AOR singer-songwriter Kazuhito Murata（村田和人）, another singer-songwriter from Wakayama PrefectureTsukasa Nishi（西司）, and Keisuke Yamamoto（山本圭右）, the leader of the band Piper to start the band Honey & B-Boys. The group recorded one album "Back To Frisco" for release in March 1987; the album also signified Hiramatsu's first record.
From the link in the previous paragraph for "Back To Frisco", you can see the cover of the album which looks like a picture of some pastoral scene (Napa Valley, perhaps? Sorry, I don't know the geography for California very well.). Considering that I've heard that residents of San Francisco don't like their city being called "Frisco", I would like to get Larry's opinion on this since he does live in the area.
I first discovered the sign of Honey & B-Boys' existence on YouTube when I saw the video for one of the songs off to the right side of the screen. "Wine Light" is a pop song that starts off dreamy with a synthesizer sound flitting around like a butterfly before the bass and drums come in for the refrain. It's interesting for Hiramatsu's vocals which stay dreamy without some of that lower purr that I would associate with her 90s hits. Moreover the overall arrangement has "Wine Light" sounding like a Piper tune with Murata and Yamamoto providing backing vocals. Yamamoto did compose the song while Emi Kanda（神田エミ）wrote the lyrics.
"Juu-go-fun Matte Blue Sky"（15分待ってBlue Sky...Wait 15 Minutes, Blue Sky）strikes me as being rather New Music in the sense of another band for that genre in the 1970s, Sugar Babe. Hiramatsu, and I think Yamamoto, handle this duet. It's a very sunny and mellow and Sunday afternoon sort of tune. Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）and composed by former Sugar Babe member Kunio Muramatsu（村松邦男）, "Juu-go-fun Matte Blue Sky" is another part of my coalescing theory on whether the raison d'etre for Honey & B-Boys was as a sorta tribute to Sugar Babe (the final track is a cover of Sugar Babe's "Ame wa Te no Hira ni Ippai"「雨は手のひらにいっぱい」from their 1975 album"SONGS"). Also, this particular track had me thinking of the genre of California's sunshine pop that had its day in the 1960s with groups such as The Mamas & The Papas. There is that album title and cover that I've mentioned.
My final song here is "My Wish" which has Hiramatsu showing some of that voice that I've long known her for. Lyricist Kanda once again took care of things here but this time, it's Murata who composed this song and it does start off like one of his tunes. With the use of synths here and the arrangement for the tune to go at a more calming pace, though, it does have a different vibe compared to the first two tracks. In fact, I would say that "My Wish" sounds so intriguing that I can relate it to some of the material by the eclectic PSY-S.
As far as I know, Honey & B-Boys only released this one album, and though I searched, "Back To Frisco" no longer seems to exist online for sale. A pity, since this would be one release that I would like to get to know better. It's a fascinating find, to be sure, with this pop chanteuse of the 1990s joining forces with two artists from the 1980s AOR genre.
Satoko Ishimine（石嶺聡子）is a name that I found among the CDs of the "Good Times Diva" series, and if memory serves, she has often sung songs of her native Okinawa.
However, her debut single from November 1994,"Doyoubi to Pen to Udedokei" (Saturday and a Pen and a Wristwatch) was more in the breezy pop vein. I mentioned last night in NUTS' "Kaze wo Kanjite ~ my precious time"（風を感じて）about how some female singers introduced some of that refreshing and pleasant pop in the early 1990s. Well, I think this first single by Ishimine fits the bill perfectly.
The keyboards and strings feel so relaxing that this would be the ideal Sunday morning/afternoon J-Pop to hear over brunch or lupper. I wouldn't be surprised if this had been used as a campaign tune for some commercial (actually, it was used as the ending theme for the news program "Broadcaster"). There's also that feeling of re-birth in there, too, since Ikki Matsumoto's（松本一起）lyrics talk of a woman enjoying some more freedom in her life after a breakup. Ken Sato（佐藤健）took care of the carefree melody.
The Wikipedia article for Ishimine mentions that she has loved listening to The Beatles and The Carpenters, but her J-Wiki entry gives an even longer list: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Diana Ross, The Jackson 5, Elvis Costello, Madonna, Aimee Mann, Cheryl Crow, Vonda Shepard, Shania Twain, Bjork, Sarah McLachlan, etc. On the Japanese side of things, she is a fan of NOKKO, Chara and Tamio Okuda（奥田民生）.
It's been over a year since I wrote about the Hawaii-loving aidoru of the 1980s, Yu Hayami（早見優）, and I did listen to that first disc from her large collection yesterday so it's time to revisit her discography.
Why not go back to the very beginning? This is her debut single "Isoide! Hatsukoi" (Hurry Up! First Love) which deals with the usual pining away for that love. Hayami's first release came out in April 1982 with Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）providing the words and Yasuo Kosugi（小杉保夫）coming up with the breezy music.
"Isoide! Hatsukoi" managed to get as high as No. 36 on Oricon, not too bad for a debut. And I think for the purposes of this blog, the song is quite appropriate as it is White Day in Japan...or at least, it was...since as I am typing this out, it's already the Ides of March over there. I'm sure the chocolate shops were pulling some major overtime in the days leading up to the 14th.
It also happens to be Pi Day (3.14) which brings me to the fact that Professor Stephen Hawking passed away earlier today at the age of 76, so would like to give my tribute to him here. I did buy "A Brief History of Time". According to his Wiki biography, it seems that he wasn't all that religious so I can hope that his spirit has headed off into one of those alternate dimensions instead of Heaven.
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