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.
Showing posts with label Ikue Sakakibara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ikue Sakakibara. Show all posts
By chance, did anyone check out the Oscars last night? To be honest, and I have most likely mentioned this in past articles, I had once been a regular watcher of the Academy Awards when I was a kid because of the glitz and the fact that it was Hollywood celebrating Hollywood. But living in Japan all those years gradually weaned me off due to the fact that the live presentation was happening while I was at work.
Then when I returned to Toronto for good in the early 2010s, I realized that I had lost interest in the glitz and the celebration of celebrity. Plus, my track record of seeing those Oscar movies is frankly abysmal. The last Oscar-nominated movie I caught was "Oppenheimer" back in 2024. I don't really consider myself a cinephile and yet, I still cherish some of the older stuff such as "Casablanca" and "Roman Holiday" (as for newer stuff, there is "Inception" and a few of the MCEU movies). And to be frank, when I occasionally catch a movie, the purpose is to get away from reality for a couple of hours and be entertained...not necessarily to be educated or moved.
OK, I'll just jump off my rapidly sinking soapbox and give you my latest Author's Picks. Over the years, I have discovered that from time to time, certain songs pop up which have at least a titular connection with Hollywood or movies, so here's a short but varied list.
Back in the day (or night), whenever I traipsed through Tokyo around the Xmas season, I didn't particularly think "holy night". It was more "blisteringly bright night" with all of the seasonal illumination. I wondered often about how much power TEPCO possessed to light up all of those Christmas lights everywhere especially Roppongi and Omotesando.
All this to segue into "Tokyo Holy Night", a track from 70s and 80s aidoru Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）November 1982 album"Variety Box". I figured that Ikue-chan, being a former teenybopper and all, just had to have a Xmas song hidden among her many tunes and sure enough, I finally found one. Written by Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）, composed by Kisaburo Suzuki（鈴木キサブロー）and arranged by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, it's one jaunty march that is one dance beat away from being considered Eurobeat and it starts with a great keyboard riff. The song centres around a couple who often bicker throughout the year but they call a truce during the Xmas season and have a romantic time of it. Can't really say that there is anything religious about it despite the title but Japan has mostly been about the Santa Claus side of things.
Saw it on the news crawl on CP24 this morning, but yep, unfortunately singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett passed away at the age of 76 yesterday due to lymphoma. The man was the paean to good old-fashioned tropical beachfront living and such was the fame and popularity of his magnum opus, "Margaritaville" that I think it did have at least some influence on the Resort Pop subset within the New Music, City Pop and AOR realm in Japan. The folk-turned-AOR duo Bread & Butter might be one example. In any case, I've mentioned his name and the song enough times over the years on KKP that I have to mention this today.
"Margaritaville" was released in February 1977, and I can imagine here in Canada at that time, listeners really got that desperate feeling about flying to Florida on hearing this song of tropical paradise. But strangely enough, what I only discovered just in the last hour or so is that "Margaritaville" is really about a hedonistic beach bum who has come to the gradual realization that he's lost the love of his life due to his own actions, especially after a few instances of bad luck. Margaritaville may really be now the bum's soft prison and his margaritas are the crutch to keep him going.
I used to hear "Margaritaville" all the time on radio as a kid and all this time, I'd just assumed that it was the song to advertise a potential retirement in perpetually summery ecstasy. It certainly sounds inviting enough. And I've drunk enough margaritas to get that nice comfortable buzz.
The song hit No. 4 in Canada and No. 8 in the United States but it went all the way to the top of the Adult Contemporary charts in both nations. It was even inducted into the 2016 Grammy Hall of Fame and in the United States National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress this year. My condolences to Buffett's family, friends and fans through this special ROY article.
So, what were some of the Best New Artists at the Japan Record Awards that year?
This article was originally going to be another All-Points Bulletin request for identification on a mystery song. However, the Force was really with me today so I was able to find out the song title and the singer for the person who had reached out to me via the Contact Form earlier today.
Allow me to explain. I was sent the above Streamable link to find out who was singing on the video. Well, there were two versions of one song there. The first several seconds had someone who I immediately pegged as a female 80s aidorusinger happily singing away at a tune with a certain 50s pop lilt. But I couldn't recognize the singer and punching in patches of the lyrics into search engines only got bupkis. The second singer was male and I found out that it was David Lui doing a cover version of the mystery song under the title of "Sweet Sixteen", and I did find a YouTube video for it as you can see above.
The David Lui and "Sweet Sixteen" clue was key here. I put those two into the search engine and was led to Discogs where I found out the composer in romaji: Kayoko Nagasaki. But I also found out her name in kanji: 「長崎加代子」. Punching that into J-Wiki, Nagasaki didn't have her own entry there, but I noticed that her name was placed a lot under 70s/80s aidoru and later TV personality/actress Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）songs.
Just on a whim, I chose one of those songs and put that into YouTube. Well, I should've bought myself a lottery ticket since I hit Bingo! "Mama Louisa" was the mystery song, and it was a track on Sakakibara's final studio album"Wandering Paradise" from June 1984. Nagasaki had actually done both words and music with Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）handling the arrangement. With that 1950s-sounding pop melody, I'd assumed that it was Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）behind it, but I was wrong there.
So, there was no need for the APB and everyone is happy. It usually doesn't happen that quickly so I'm happy that it did resolve itself the way it did. However, Sakakibara just recently lost the love of her life so I'm hoping that she's getting better and going on.
A few years ago, I never would have thought that I would have a single Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）album but in the past few years, I have been able to come into possession of a number of them now, some thanks to Michael who needed to unload a few LPs. One of those records happens to be the former 70s/early 80s aidoru's 5th album"Ikue Jishin" which can be directly translated into "Ikue Herself" but I'd like to go with "Ikue In Her Own Words" because after a couple of listens, it's fairly evident that this is an album that was produced to get up close and personal with the lass raised in Atsugi City, Kanagawa Prefecture.
On the obi for "Ikue Jishin", which by the way was released in August 1979, it notes that Sakakibara herself transcribed the lyrics into the liner notes (continues with that personal touch) and that the record itself is transparent and green (and I'm doing this article just before St. Patrick's Day, too). It's been quite a long time since I've come across a record that was other than the usual basic black.
Side A begins with "My Seventeen"（マイ・セブンティーン）which is a mid-tempo but still pretty bouncy number with the just-as-bouncy vocals of Ikue happily flowing out of the headphones. Written by Konosuke Fuji（藤公之介）and composed by Yuki Mizuno（水野ゆき）, the feeling is of a happy-go-lucky teen in the big city thanks to that bright and optimistic City Pop arrangement through the horns and guitars.
Track 3, "My Hometown Atsugi"（マイ・ホーム・タウン厚木）is what it says on the label...a love song devoted to her hometown Atsugi, and she says it plainly enough through Jun Hashimoto's（橋本淳）lyrics. In a way, she may also be talking about how much busier she became after entering show business; she'd love to come back to Atsugi but simply can't. Ben Sasaki（佐々木勉）provides the still-cheerful aidoru melody further mellowed out by that trumpet or fluegelhorn under Reijiro Koroku's（小六禮次郎）arrangement.
"Sugao no Mama de"（素顔のままで...Just The Way You Are） is the penultimate track on Side B, and though Hashimoto is once again behind the lyrics, this time singer-songwriter Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）is handling composition and arrangement duties. Yep, I can hear that this is still aidoru but I can't help but feel that the producers and Ikue-chan may have wanted to go for something a little more mature and sophisticated along urban contemporary levels for "Ikue Jishin" overall. Especially with "Sugao no Mama de", although it's about a young teenage girl waxing romantically about that future guy on her arm, there is something rather Margaritaville and even Bread & Butter（ブレッド＆バッター）of that time associated here.
YouTube channel The Sound of Vinyl - LP Analog has actually put up Side A and Side B of "Ikue Jishin" so you can take a listen to all of the tracks there, but I wanted to give listeners a little sampler of what to expect on this album. To be honest, when I first went through the album, I didn't particularly think that "Ikue Jishin" was going to be a heavy rotation record because I thought that all of the tracks rather adhered to a certain "bandwidth" of melody and arrangement, and I think they still do to a certain extent. However, with a few more listens, I think that I'm getting to hear some of the more subtle features within each song so that most of the tracks are starting to stick onto me. Still, give the album a go and see what you think.
I was listening to this LP of 70s/80s aidoru-turned-tarento Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）while scrolling through her information on J-Wiki when I came across a rather interesting discovery.
Well, first let's do a tiny sidetrack here and mention the legendary manga-turned-anime "Sazae-san"（サザエさん）, that heartwarming home comedy anime which has been on Fuji-TV for years now. Heck, I was watching that every Sunday night at home in Ichikawa.
I discovered that apparently Sakakibara, who has played Peter Pan on the stage, then took on that iconic role of Sazae-san herself in a 1994 stage musical version. The production was led by famed playwright and screenwriter Koki Mitani（三谷幸喜）, and he was the lyricist for the theme song for "Sazae-san", "Aruite Kaero" (Let's Walk Home) recorded by the star herself.
But it wasn't just Sakakibara behind the mike but also veteran zany Osakan comedienne Masami Hisamoto（久本雅美）who played the role of Katsuo, Sazae's impish little brother. I never saw the play but I can imagine Hisamoto playing that particular part due to her raspy voice. Anyways, getting back to that theme song, "Aruite Kaero" also caught my attention since the music was done by none other than Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）herself. And it's a relaxing happy-go-lucky tune with a bit of a reggae lilt as Sakakibara gives a solid and clear performance while Hisamoto sounds like she's giving her part in character as Katsuo. The CD single was released in March 1994.
The last time I wrote about Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）, it was for her 1982 "Ame no Requiem"（雨の鎮魂歌）, which was about as City Pop as one could get.
Well, it's time to get back to her early aidoru late 1970s period and to start off the last few days of September 2021, let's go to the cheerful 8th single, "Do it BANG BANG" which hit the record shop shelves in October 1978. In all honesty, when I first read the title, a very naughty part of me suddenly envisioned the words "Wham" and "Bam", and then the phrase "Thank you, Ma'am". This had to have been some innocently giggle-worthy double entendre.
Ahhh...actually, the answer is a resounding no. Thanks to Jun Kasama's（笠間ジュン）lyrics, "Do it BANG BANG" is a straight-out demand by an impatient young lady to her boyfriend to ravish her. Stop with the kind and polite courtship, she's yelling. All that sexual frustration is swaddled in a cute aidoru melody from Ben Sasaki（佐々木勉）and an arrangement by Masaaki Omura（大村雅朗）. Not sure whether Nippon Columbia's switchboard lit up like a Xmas tree with a ton of complaints about the message being sent here...not that I'm having any complaints myself.
Whaddaya know? She even got to perform it on the music shows, but then again, Ikue's star as an aidoru was definitely on the upswing because her previous single was the July "Natsu no Ojosan"（夏のお嬢さん）, her defining hit which had also been created by Kasama and Sasaki. There was no way that she was not going to appear on the shows and the stage from now on especially with that cute countenance of hers. "Do it BANG BANG" didn't do quite as well as "Natsu no Ojosan", but it was still a good earner by hitting No. 15 on Oricon and selling around 125,000 records.
I knew that going into the 1980s, singer/tarento Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）was rather transitioning from being an aidoru into something more in the pop realm, but I was surprised to see and hear how nicely she was taking to City Pop. I mean, her vocals were still reminiscent of her teenybopping years but the surrounding music was very much in the urban scene.
Take "Ame no Requiem" (Requiem in the Rain) for example. A track from her 14th studio album"Variety Box" from November 1982, it reminds me somewhat of "Aka to Kuro"（赤と黒）, Yoshimi Iwasaki's（岩崎良美）debut single from 1980 with that jagged electric guitar and string intro that could be mistaken for the beginning of an opening credit sequence of a cop show in Japan. Written and composed by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）, "Ame no Requiem" goes into a cool and breezy down-home City Pop rhythm that gradually fires off some more engrams of memory as it approaches its ending because of the additional backup chorus behind Ikue's refrain. It actually reminds me of Gloria Gaynor's"I Will Survive".
"Ame no Requiem" does its job. Even though I was there in Tokyo in 1981, I still get those urges to step back in time to walk the streets of the megalopolisduring those heady days.
Oh, yes...a nice photo of the south Shinjuku pedestrian bridge as taken from the entrance of Takashimaya Times Square back in August 2009. Simply reading that month has me feeling beads of sweat rolling down my back and forehead; summer is definitely one season not to be trifled with in Tokyo. I recall gulping down a lot of bottles of Max Coffee back then.
To be frankly honest here, I realize that it is City Pop/AOR Friday on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" but I'm not entirely sure that this song by Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）, "Akirameta hazu na no ni" (I Thought I'd Given Up On You) really applies. Oh, to be sure, the people involved have loved their urban contemporary; we have Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）on lyrics, Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）on music and Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）taking of the overall arrangement.
Certainly, I can say that Sakakibara herself graduated from the genre of aidoru music going further into the 1980s although I agree that "Akirameta hazu na no ni" is a happy bouncy affair. There is indeed a City Pop-py saxophone solo but overall I think this ultimately comes across as a really cheerful straight pop tune. As the title hints, the song is about realizing that the feelings are still there for that special someone despite some initial relenting but the overall sensation is that of striding gleefully through a park. It just doesn't have to be a city park. The song was a track on Ikue's 15th album"Niji Iro"（虹彩...Rainbow Colours） from June 1983.
In the last few months, I realized that I was doing a disservice to arranger Motoki Funayama by not mentioning him in a large number of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" articles. Although I had long been mentioning lyricists and composers, I never really included arrangers for whatever reason. However, the fact that I kept seeing his name in the songwriting notes for songs and I was reacting with a "What?! He arranged THIS song?" much in the way that I had first reacted on seeing the late composerKyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）in a huge amount of kayo and J-Pop, I figured that the Tokyo-born Funayama had to get his due on KKP. The tipping point was when I was writing up "Oricon Top 5 Most Commercially Successful Arrangers", I discovered that he was the second-most prolific arranger after Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）. Keeping on the Tsutsumi connection, according to Funayama's J-Wiki biography, the arranger had the biggest association with Tsutsumi in terms of songs arranged.
Funayama was born in Meguro Ward, Tokyo in 1951 and from a young age, he had been interested in maps and sheet music, and on entering elementary school, he was on the bass drum in the school band. Jumping to his higher learning days, he attended the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University but kept his music connections by participating in the High Society Orchestra there where he was the concertmaster as he played the saxophone. However, according to the above video interview, Funayama mentions that he was absolutely horrible on the sax due to his inability to improvise...so I gather that jazz musician wasn't going to be one of his titles.
Once he became a junior at Waseda, he began working at the Yamaha Music Foundation including their Popular Song Contest where he learned the basics of music arrangement. Soon after, he dropped out of university and from 1974, he went on the path of a freelance composer and arranger.
(cover version)
According to J-Wiki, the first song that he arranged was "Azami-jou no Lullaby"（アザミ嬢のラライ）for singer-songwriter Miyuki Nakajima（中島みゆき）in 1975. Knowing Nakajima's distinct melodies and singing style, perhaps I can say that Funayama had a good hand in creating that style.
(short version)
Funayama's first big success was Kenji Sawada's（沢田研二）"Katte ni Shiyagare"（勝手にしやがれ）from 1977 for which the song earned a Japan Record Award Grand Prize. That dramatic bullfight intro probably has gone down as one of the more famous in kayo.
Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）"Robot"（ロボット）from 1980 was one of those Tsutsumi/Funayama collaborations and it was another winner for both since Sakakibara ended up appearing on the Kohaku Utagassen because of its hit status. As such, Funayama was also willing to get into the synthpop craze of the time, and it's interesting in J-Wiki that following his stay between 1981 and 1983 in Los Angeles, he decided to purchase aFairlight CMI synthesizer. He then incorporated some of that computer technology into the music for some of his other clients later into the decade.
One of the songs mentioned taking on that synthpop style is "Romantic ga Tomaranai"（Romanticが止まらない）by C-C-B in 1985. This was another Tsutsumi/Funayama collaboration with Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）as the lyricist. It is one of the band's trademark tunes and the arrangement was impressive enough that techno group Denki Groove（電気グルーヴ）adopted one riff from "Romantic ga Tomaranai" into their kakkoii "Nijuu-ichi Seiki mo Motetakute"（２１世紀もモテたくて）.
However, it wasn't all upbeat music with Funayama. He also arranged Mayumi Itsuwa's（五輪真弓）1980 hit "Koibito yo"（恋人よ） as this epic heartrending ballad dealing with an absolute end of an affair. The version above is fine, but I think the original recorded version with the strings hits the heart best. If there's an image created thanks to the arranger's work, it's that of the saddest person in the world lingering in a French café while the relentless rain represents the tracks of his tears. I wonder if an arranger comes up with those images as well when coming up with a way to illustrate a song to the finest degree.
There's no way that I could ever come close to totally encapsulating the oeuvre of Funayama's work no matter how grand I make this Creator article, so I will just include one more song here, and that would be Wink's "One Night in Heaven" from 1989. I have this one here because the arranger worked on so many of the duo's songs and I gather that his Fairlight CMI was helping out in the work behind this hit.
Anyways, more to search in the blog to see whether I have to put in the Motoki Funayama label. As of the 1990s, Funayama was also working on anison and commercial jingles along with songs by the various Johnny's groups. As of 2019, he has more than 2700 songs to his credit.
Man, dramatic Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）has some properly 80s hair right there. Perhaps it's just an inch or two away from mullet status.
Another hint that this particular single by Sakakibara was from the 1980s? The music (and words) by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）for "Ame no Requiem" (Rainy Requiem) and the arrangement by Makoto Kawaguchi（川口真）simply have that alternating jingly and urban contemporary keyboard work that I could only associate with songs from that decade. I realize that the ever-grinning Ikue-chan was a 1970s aidorubut I think by that May 1984 release date of her 33rd single, she was pretty much more of a pop singer, and I think "Ame no Requiem" kinda hints at that. There's something about the song that feels as if former aidoru herself Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）from that time period could have also tackled it.
Listening to it a few times already, I've gotten images of 80s young folk walking the streets of Shinjuku and doing their shopping and coffee-drinking. Must have been some good times back then.
When I wrote about Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）"Arrangement" back in 2016, I had wondered about whether I would be able to get its originating album "Slow Memory". Well, hooray! I was able to get it along with her 1980 release"C'est Drole" which I have already written about. Along with "Arrangement", I've also gone into the title track.
As I mentioned in the article for the track "Slow Memory", that album cover with a profile shot of Ikue-chan in front of a romantically lit dining room set with the planets peeking in through the window had me thinking of something more urban contemporary rather than my image of her as the ever-smiling aidoru. Certainly, both "Arrangement" and the title track have a more mature pop sound.
Sure enough, the track that I'm starting with is "Yoake no Loneliness"（夜明けのロンリネス）. Written by Sonomi Ari（阿里そのみ）and composed by Tsunehiro Izumi（和泉常寛）, the ballad is a torch song about what seems to be a tug-of-war between two women who probably have not met each other but they are vying for the same guy, and the protagonist is the one perhaps on the losing end. It's got quite the epic arrangement including those strings which remind me of songs by Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）at the time.
Having listened to "Slow Memory" the album a couple of times already, I have to say that the standout tracks have been the ones created by songwriter Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）. For example, here is "Gozen Ni-ji no Good-by"（午前2時のGood-by...Good-by at 2am）. I love Sakakibara's vocals here especially when the refrain of "Stay by my side" comes in and the chorus is just wonderful. This ballad is even more sorrowful since a lady is at home waiting for her paramour in vain.
"Secret"（シークレット）is written by Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）and composed by Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾）, the same tandem behind "Arrangement", and seeing that Kisugi's brother, Takao（来生たかお）, was also involved in the creation of the title track, I had already known beforehand that the album would be filled with some solid pop tunes. There is that old-style breezy feeling to "Secret"which reminds me of some of the earlier discography of Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）. Interesting adoption of DeBussy at the intro.
My last number is the final track and this is the other Kyoko Matsumiya gem, "Hopelessly", an acetylene torch song with a full-out refrain, an electric guitar solo and an anthemic feeling to the proceedings. I couldn't help but get that memory of "Desperado" when I first listened to this. Also, it's the first time that I have ever heard Sakakibara sing in English. Geez, I'm such a sucker for Japanese love ballads from the early 1980s.
Just before I forget, "Slow Memory" was released in April 1982 as her 12th album. And perhaps true to one word in its title, almost all of the tracks go at their own languid pace. Unlike "C'est Drole" in which Sakakibara took a trip around the genres, "Slow Memory" is basically a solid pop album.
Fushigi ne...it truly is. I ordered Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）6th album"C'est Drole ~ Fushigi ne ~" (Strange, Ain't It?) along with one other Ikue album "Slow Memory" back on July 16th and then just this past Monday morning, I got the e-mail from CD Japan that the package has shipped. Now, usually that means the discs won't be entering my hands for another week.
Well, three hours later on Monday afternoon...
THEY'RE HERE!
Man, I wanna congratulate CD Japan for getting that hypersonic jet in the air finally. If it can take human passengers, I wouldn't mind hitching a ride on that plane rather than take the 11~13 hour flight to Haneda on Air Canada.
The slightly "Twilight Zone" anecdote ends here. As for "C'est Drole", which was originally released back in January 1980, I bought it after hearing its title track "Fushigi ne" and after hearing a few more tracks on YouTube. Plus, seeing that another Sakakibara release "Ready Lady" (which I may also get a little later this year) was actually incorporated into my bible of "Japanese City Pop", I was intrigued about what the future Peter Pan used to sing when she was an aidoru, especially since she's been seen more as the friendly TV presence for decades.
Well, I popped in "C'est Drole" into the player and for the next two-thirds of an hour, my opinion of me deserving to eat more crow was further strengthened. As was the case with Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）2nd album"North Wind" which also came out in 1980 (mind you, all the way forward in December), "C'est Drole" didn't strike me as what I had envisioned to be the typical aidoru album of happy bouncy uptempo tunes and super-sweet love ballads. In fact, I got a fair potpourri of genres here too on my first listen. Double in fact, I had actually wondered whether I should have even labeled this as an aidoru album.
Case in point, the first track "Two-Way Street". It launches very much with a romantic saxophone and a soft and mellow ballad which fairly screams AOR. It's an interesting mix of two styles. The jazzy AOR which fills the instrumental passages and then Ikue singing a pop love tune about a man and a woman who may have been together at one point or at least fantasized about it but now walking in different directions on opposite sides of the avenue.
Mayo Shouno（庄野真代）wrote and composed "Two-Way Street". She is famous for singing one of those exotic kayo which was fairly popular in the late 1970s, "Tonde Istanbul"（飛んでイスタンブール）. The other thing that struck me was how well Sakakibara could sing. Something like "Two-Way Street" sounds like a ballad that Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）would tackle but Ikue-chan takes care of it very well. There are also parts of the song which remind me of another more famous song which came out a couple of years prior.
The second track "Omoide no Irie"（思い出の入江...Bay of Memories）was written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by Casey Rankin of the band SHOGUN. Although compared to "Two-Way Street", this mellow number is more on the conventional side of kayo/aidoru ballads that I've envisioned, the arrangement by Reijiro Koroku（小六禮次郎）still has the song lifted up a level. I could even imagine one of my favourite singers, Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）, covering this one.
Another bluesy number punctuated by the sax is "Toki wa Utsukushiku"（時は美しく...Time is Beautiful）which straddles that City Pop/AOR line. It's a nice slow twilight shuffle down a street as Ikue serenades her beau about how enjoyable her time is with him. Hearing that sax, I rather wish that somebody had actually put down who handled all of the instruments in the liner notes, but c'est la vie. In any case, Reiko Imamura（いまむられいこ）took care of the lyrics while Rankin once again came up with the music.
Singer-songwriter Nanako Sato（佐藤奈々子）, who I have also seen within the pages of "Japanese City Pop", was responsible for this happy and quirky "Sweet Sunny Side Up" about wedded bliss showing up over breakfast. Ikue not only sings about getting up early to make the most important meal of the day for her darling hubby but she does it in a faintly early 20th century style. I could almost see a giant NBC microphone materializing in front of her.
My last song for this article is "Kurenai Hana"（紅い花...Red Flowers）, one of my favourite tracks on "C'est Drole". It starts off rather gospel-like before it goes into this cool riff about heartbreak. My imagination once again flies here as I envision Ikue singing in front of a honky-tonk piano somewhere in Paris. Ahhh, l'amour....c'est drole, n'est ce pas? The only thing missing here are those rose petals just frittering away in the cold wind. Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）and Koichi Sugiyama（すぎやまこういち）were responsible for this one.
I couldn't find out how "C'est Drole" did on Oricon but I think for Ikue fans, it was a good buy. There is a nice mix of songs by good songwriters and I realized that Sakakibara wasn't just the happy-go-lucky aidoru who popped up on the first few episodes of the Kohaku Utagassen that I had ever seen.
Before I finish off, I have to give thanks to the YouTube uploader who was responsible for most of the videos up here tonight, Dasu（ダス）. He is totally devoted to Sakakibara and thanks to him, I was able to pull the trigger on my wallet to get "C'est Drole" and "Slow Memory", the latter of which I will also talk about in the next week or so.
It's strange, isn't it? I've been seeing veteran tarento Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）for years on TV via commercials and variety/quiz shows as this shining presence, knowing that she had started out as one genki aidoru in the 1970s.
The thing is, though, I got hints from actually seeing Sakakibara included in my music bible of "Japanese City Pop"(!) and then learning that she did a technopop tune called "Robot"（ロボット）that she (or her manager) didn't just settle for the run-of-the-mill teenybopper material. Ikue-chan could do the cute aidoru stuff but still have some aspects of other genres flow in freely.
Case in point: "Fushigi ne" (Strange, Ain't It?), the title track from her 6th album released in January 1980, "C'est drole ~ Fushigi ne". It's got this happy teenybopper bounciness but it also has this layer of 1970s City Pop (bass and keyboard) feeling bonded to the aidoru music. Lyricist Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）and composer Katsuo Ono（大野克大）created the song but I gotta also admire the arrangement by Reijiro Koroku（小六禮次郎）. I can still imagine having taken a pleasant walk with Ikue-chan through West Shinjuku to this number, although her future husband would have been none too pleased.
Such was the charm of "Fushigi ne" and a couple of other tunes by the singer that I purchased this album and one other at CD Japan. Must explore!
It's not my usual thing to write an article on one singer less than 24 hours after I wrote about the same singer on the blog, but when I saw the title for Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）4th single from October 1977, I simply had to go after it.
After all, it's not every day that you come across a shoutout to two major figures in cinema within a kayo kyoku title. The last time I saw something like that wasn't even in the Japanese music world. It was "Robert De Niro's Waiting" by Bananarama, and now I've encountered De Niro's contemporary in Hollywood along with a French heartthrob for Japanese women from my mother's generation in Ikue-chan's"Al Pacino Tasu Alain Delon Yori Anata" (You Are Better Than Al Pacino and Alain Delon Combined).
Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）wrote and composed this breezy and skippy 70s aidorutune (with a hint of Gay Paree thanks to that accordion) about a girl who may not appreciate her boyfriend's dismal attempts at imitating Pacino and Delon but still thinks he occupies a higher pedestal than those two thespians. And considering that the song had been released many years before we all witnessed growly and hoarse Pacino in "Scent of a Woman", it's no wonder that the beau really didn't impress with his impression back then.
There's no information at J-Wiki on whether "Al Pacino" made any big headway onto the charts (although the video below apparently had it at No. 9) but the song was arranged by Reijiro Koroku（小六禮次郎）who would later also do the same job on a bigger hit for Ikue-chan, "Natsu no Ojosan"（夏のお嬢さん）in the following year.
I know that both Pacino and Delon have made it over to Japan to promote their various projects over the decades, so I kinda wonder if the reporters had ever unleashed the song on either one of them. I wouldn't be surprised if it actually had happened but there's a part of me that wished it didn't.
Happy Monday to you all. Late last year, I had put up an article based on the title track of Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）1982 album"Slow Memory" but unfortunately since the only recorded sample of the song got taken down, I had to put the article back into draft status (well, happily that's been rectified).
But I could find another track from the album to spotlight tonight. That would be "Arrangement", which like the title track and presumably the other songs on "Slow Memory", has more of a straight contemporary pop feeling. I had always presumed the pixie-like Ikue to be all about the happy-go-lucky aidoru music so it was a revelation to come across the music from this particular album.
"Arrangement" has the singer sounding less like her super-cheerful self and more along the lines of Mizue Takada（高田みづえ）or Yoshie Kashiwabara（柏原芳恵）in ballad mode. With Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）providing the lyrics, singer-songwriter Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾）composed the music that skirts on the edge of City Pop and has a certain mystique about it. In particular, there is that ghost-like twangy guitar off in the background that keeps things interesting.
It's another one of those discoveries that has me "Hmmm..." when it comes to potential shopping choices...provided that the album exists online somewhere.
When it came to the two big music ranking shows of the 1980s that helped me get more and more into Japanese popular music, I always saw TBS' "The Best 10" (ザ・ベストテン) as the sempai over the kohai of NTV's "The Top 10". And the former was indeed the longer-lasting of the two (1978-1989) while the latter's reign was from 1981 to 1990. Plus, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi（黒柳徹子）who was one-half of the hosting team on "The Best 10" was really just larger than life itself....her hairstyle alone was larger than life.
Basically though, I saw the two programs as two sides of the same coin with their in-studio and onsite guest performances. Still, "The Top 10" which took over for the long-running "NTV Kohaku Uta no Best 10"（NTV紅白歌のベストテン...NTV's Red-and-White Songs Best 10）(1969-1981) had its differences from "The Best 10" in that it ran on Monday nights instead of the latter's Thursdays which kept the managerial teams for all those singers quite happy, I imagine. Also, instead of the mirror ninja wall and the clattering airport terminal-friendly ranking boards at "The Best 10", "The Top 10" had a glittering elevator and a computer screen with a smiling/pouty monkey face to show the rankings on that show.
And of course, there were the hosts. The aforementioned Kuroyanagi and Hiroshi Kume（久米宏）were the mile-a-minute emcees on "The Best 10" but "The Top 10" had the amiable and former Group Sounds cat Masaaki Sakai（堺正章）and perennially pixie aidoru Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）handling things. One thing that I hadn't known was that legendary lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）was the overall major domo of "The Top 10".
Another thing was that "The Top 10" actually ended its run in early 1986. But right there to take its place was "Uta no Top 10"（歌のトップテン...Songs Top 10）. With a change in set design and hosts, the show took the baton and continued until March of 1990 with a few other small adjustments here and there.
For the first year, the hosts were broadcaster Kazuo Tokumitsu（徳光和夫）and former aidoru Mako Ishino（石野真子）with singer/tarento Akiko Wada（和田アキ子）and comedian Shinsuke Shimada（島田紳助）taking over from 1987 onwards.
Beginning with all that VHS footage I saw at my classmate's house back in late 1981, I was hooked on both "The Best 10" and "The Top 10" so that I often would rent out videos of the two programs to catch up on my music. "The Best 10" finished its run in 1989 but I remember seeing "The Top 10" some months into my stay in Gunma Prefecture so when that final episode aired, I realized that an era just ended.
And totally off-topic here but since we are in Easter Weekend, I just wanted to give my tribute to the holiday with "Velvet Easter" and "Peter Rabbit to Watashi". Enjoy the ham and chocolate bunnies and eggs.
I think anyone who has been reading this blog regularly over the years, especially the Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）entries, will probably cotton onto the fact that Karuho Kureta（呉田軽穂）is the pseudonym of singing and songwriting veteran-with-a-V Yumi Matsutoya (nee Arai)（松任谷由実・荒井由実）. Writing an article in the Creator category about Yuming（ユーミン）was pretty much a must (especially after writing a BESTarticle on her not too long ago), but she's written a ton of songs for a good number of singers throughout the decades that I needed to narrow things down a tad. And I thought focusing on her works under the name Karuho Kureta (a cute little semi-pun on the late Greta Garbo when you read the name in the Japanese way) was a good way to do so. Naturally, Yuming has created songs for other singers under her real name, but for today, let's focus on Kureta.
Of course, the first time I noticed Yuming's seeming subterfuge was when I was writing about the various songs that she had created with lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）for Queen Aidoru Seiko-chan in the early 1980s. I don't have definitive proof but supposedly the reason that she came up with the pen name in the first place was that she had once declared that she would never write or compose a tune for an aidoru so that the name was a way of hedging her bets, so to speak.
In fact, there is that Seiko BEST album, "Train" which contains her tunes under Kureta-Matsumoto collaborations, but I still wanted to include another happy sunny song by them titled "Lemonade no Natsu"（レモネードの夏...Lemonade Summer）. This was the B-side to Seiko-chan's 9th single, "Nagisa no Balcony"（渚のバルコニー）from April 1982, and in a way, my impression is that the Kureta oeuvre has frequently been about the cheerful and summery side of things, although her contribution to folk/City Pop duo Bread & Butter's"Ano Koro no Mama"（あの頃のまま）was definitely cooler and more introspective.
Speaking of Bread & Butter, Kureta provided just the lyrics to the duo's "Tobacco Road 20"（タバコロード20）on that fine album of theirs, "Late Late Summer" back in 1979; now, I really got to get that album considering that all of the Bread & Butter entries on the blog come from that one release. Along with the cheerful and summery melody by one-half of the duo, Satsuya Iwasawa（岩沢幸矢）, Kureta writes about one-half of a couple letting the other half sleep contentedly under the summer sun, and there's definitely that relaxing feeling to it.
On the other hand, Kureta came up with the genki, genki music for Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵）15th single in March 1980, "Yay! Yay! Onee-san"（イエ!イエ!お嬢さん...Yay! Yay! Girl）. Shizuka Ijuin（伊集院静）, under her own pen name of Ayumi Date（伊達歩）, was the lyricist here for this supremely happy-go-lucky tune with a bit of 50s/60s sax which fit the supremely up-with-people Sakakibara.
The one big surprise for me is Kureta composing a song for Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）in February 1985, "Ginga no Shinwa"（銀河の神話...Galactic Myth）. Usually when it comes to Toshi-chan as one of the Tanokin Trio, I usually envision him and his music bounding across the stage and bouncing off the walls on programs like the Kohaku Utagassen or "The Best 10", but his 21st single is a nice mix of his usual hyperactive stuff with a certain Yuming mellowness from the late 70s and early 80s. In fact, I could even imagine Yuming herself singing this in concert. The other big surprise is seeing J-R&B queen Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）being the lyricist. "Ginga no Shinwa", by the way, high-stepped all the way up to No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies and became the 84th-ranked song for 1985.
Kureta once again gave some 50s vibe albeit with some synths for then-budding singer Mariko Tone（刀根麻理子）with "Calendar"（カレンダー）. I still don't have anywhere near a complete knowledge about Tone's discography but usually I think of her more in the urban contemporary or funk vein of Japanese music, but there was something distinctly old-style about this song whose lyrics were provided by Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）. "Calendar" came out as a track on Tone's debut album"Purple Rose" in 1985.
My final song just happens to be the first song that I came across when I was looking for the works of Karuho Kureta on J-Wiki. It looks like she and Takashi Matsumoto joined forces once more in August 2010 to create a gentle ballad, "Margaret"（マーガレット）for actress/singer Haruka Ayase（綾瀬はるか）, her 4th single. I've usually seen Ayase through her work in dramas and as an often unintentionally hilarious guest on the variety shows but I wasn't sure about her musical output. However, at least with "Margaret", she sings just like she speaks. Her final single to date managed to get as high as No. 20 on Oricon, and she's apparently covered a couple of Seiko-chan's old tunes.
According to J-Wiki's article on Yuming, she's provided a number of songs for a variety of other singers, and those are the ones that have been listed. So my earlier assumption that Karuho Kureta was just a nominal excuse to write Seiko songs has definitely been smashed to bits.
When I was figuring out what to include on the Creator article for Takao & Etsuko Kisugi（来生たかお・来生えつこ）, I came across this Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）ballad that had been written and composed by them but never got around to including it.
"Slow Memory" was the title track from Sakakibara's 12th album released in April 1982. I've listened to the song a few times now and it definitely has grown on me over the past number of days, which illustrates the point that there are hidden gems (depending on the listener) within the original albums aside from the obvious hits on a singer's BEST compilations. In fact, the album, "Slow Memory" doesn't have any tracks which were released as official singles, and looking at some of the track titles and even the album cover itself, it seems as if Sakakibara were going for a more adult contemporary vibe.
"Slow Memory" the song certainly has that infusion of Kisugi nostalgia and mellowness, and perhaps a tip of the hat to Eiichi Ohtaki（大瀧詠一）, although I don't think it's an absolute imitation of the late singer-songwriter. Still, knowing the ever-smiling Sakakibara mostly as the veteran tarento all these years and as a former aidoru whose discography I'm still chipping away at. it's always great when I discover something delightful that has been hidden away from me for over 30 years. The melody is admittedly not particularly original since I've heard variations on it by singers like Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）, but just taking it on its own merits, it's a pleasant and relaxing addition to that part of my brain which has been trained on the old kayo.
