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.
I gotta say that when the Japanese music community discovered the way to mesh their combinations of notes with computer technology back in the 1960s and 1970s, they really loved to push some of the older genres through the filter of synthesizers and emulators. Yellow Magic Orchestra played with surf rock via "Cosmic Surfin'" and Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）melded some of that new French pop approach to the technopop in her album "Romantique".
It was also during that time that the synthpop band Ippu-Do spearheaded by singer-songwriter Masami Tsuchiya（土屋昌巳）was making its mark on the stereos and radios. Back in 1980, they came out with their second studio album"Real" and within it, there was the track "Chinese Reggae", written and composed by Tsuchiya, which was indeed as advertised. It was an English-language tongue-in-cheek ditty with a Chinese-sounding melody overlaying a reggae rhythm and Tsuchiya was able to make it work. Then in 1981, their third album"Radio Fantasy" included the Japanese-language version of the song.
The above video provided by YouTuber Contain Yr Brain has both versions with the Japanese-language version before the original English version.
When I was in elementary school, I had actually thought about becoming a biologist since I loved and still love animals. For that matter, I also coddled an interest in astronomy (I collected newspaper articles on the planets and the International Space Station's ancestor, Skylab) and meteorology. Sometime in the 1970s, I ended up watching a science-based variety show, "Don't Ask Me", originally from the UK's ITV network on our local educational channel, OECA (later known as TV Ontario).
There was one elderly fellow on "Don't Ask Me" named Magnus Pyke (incredible name, by the way) who was this nutritional scientist, government scientific advisor and television presenter that pretty much stole every scene although there were other hosts and presenters. The very British Pyke may have already been close to around 70 years of age when I first saw him, but he was this ball of energy that flapped his arms about and very excitedly talked about various scientific matters as if he had just discovered them himself. He almost cemented my resolve into becoming a scientist but a certain country got in the way permanently some years later. The above video has Pyke in the sequel to "Don't Ask Me", "Don't Just Sit There" in the late 1970s.
It did make me wonder whether Matt Smith had partially based his own interpretation of The Doctor ("Doctor Who") on Pyke with his manic energy and flappy arms. And the good Doctor was also a governmental scientific advisor as well back in one of his earlier selves.
Several years after Pyke and "Don't Ask Me" had left my brain, the former suddenly appeared again and throughout pop culture once more when he showed up in Thomas Dolby's"She Blinded Me With Science", a single released in October 1982 in the UK. And though, according to the Wikipedia article for the song, it didn't do all that well in the home nation, it certainly made its mark in the United States and Canada by scoring No. 5 and No. 1 respectively.
For a guy like me who was not only a geek but a guy who was also getting into the synthpop side of things, "She Blinded Me With Science" was musical manna from heaven. It certainly didn't hurt having Pyke's cachet as the mad scientist and director of the Rest Home for Deranged Scientists yelling "SCIENCE!" and the title all throughout the music video. Dolby's magnum opus is so catchy with the two melodic sides of funky/cheerful and ominous that I think of it as one of the representative songs of the 1980s. It was indeed poetry in motion.
I think Dolby's "She Blinded Me With Science" will be one of the juicier ROY articles that I've written up for the blog because not only does it have the Magnus Pyke angle, but there is also another angle involving Japanese popular music. More than ten years ago in the early days of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", when I wrote up about Akiko Yano's（矢野顕子）super-happy "Harusaki Kobeni"（春咲小紅）, I mentioned that there was a rumour regarding the singer-songwriter's connection with Dolby in that she had been in the recording studio when "She Blinded Me With Science" was being made, and so the following famous lyric came about:
Good heavens, Miss Sakamoto! You're beautiful!
(for years, I'd assumed that Pyke cried "Good heavens, Miss South America!")
At the time, Yano had provided backing vocals to Dolby's song "Radio Silence", a track on his May 1982 debut album"The Golden Age of Wireless", and at the time, she had been married to Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）of Yellow Magic Orchestra fame. The site "TV Tropes" has mentioned the rumour in its file on Dolby (scroll down to "Shout-Out") and in "Harusaki Kobeni", I also wrote that this came out in Yano's own J-Wiki profile although it could have also actually been referring to the Sakamotos' daughter Miyu who was only one year old at the time. What the J-Wiki profile additionally stated was that Yano had also helped with the backing vocals, and I think that I did hear that distinctive voice of hers in the song, although according to Discogs, Miriam Stockley and Mutt Lange were the only people on backup chorus.
Having said all that, I did find a 2011 interview at the "Songfacts" website where Dolby said at the end that he'd written the Sakamoto line simply because he wanted to get a Japanese woman in the video. He also cheekily said that he had been ahead of the times in fetishizing Asian women. Not sure how tongue-in-cheek he was about that, though. Speaking about that femme fatale in the video, I did come across a Reddit conversation which mistakenly identified the lady as Yano. As someone who has a number of her albums, I can categorically say that the lady in the video and Yano are two different people.
Whew! That was quite a reminiscing of youth there. Anyways, what were the Top 3 singles on Oricon for October 1982?
Yellow Magic Orchestra was a band that initially put out its songs as fun little ditties of past genres such as surf rock and exotica transported through a technopop filter before looking a little harder into the synthesizers and sequencers as they entered the 1980s.
Meanwhile, although I don't have as much knowledge about the New Wave/synthpop bandIppu-Do（一風堂）, which had its 1979-1984 run, I think vocalist Masami Tsuchiya（土屋昌巳）retained some of that exotica within his group throughout those five years, notably with their 1982 big hit "Sumire September Love" (すみれ September Love).
A couple of singles later, in April 1983, Ippu-Do released their 8th single"African Nights". The title and Takashi Nakahata's（仲畑貴志）lyrics about a romance trying to launch through Tsuchiya's light and seductive vocals may be within Africa, but there's something about Tsuchiya's melody that seems to hint more at that Singapore or Hong Kong bar in the 1930s...again through that technopop filter. But the atmosphere isn't anywhere nearly as thick as the smoke that must have filled those drinking establishments back in the day; it's nice and airy thanks to those instruments which I believe includes a melodica as well. Incidentally, the song is also on the band's July 1983 original final album,"Night Mirage".
Approximately two weeks ago, I contributed a ROY article for Steely Dan's wonderful "Peg" from the band's 1977 "Aja" album. Without going into the whole hullabaloo about how I got into the works of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker again, allow me to say that it was the beginning of my exposure to this demanding and resultingly amazing duo.
Some years later, I then started hearing "I.G.Y." by Donald Fagen on AM radio and that time, I thought that it was one of the weirdest pop songs that I had ever heard. A horn section shuffling to a reggae beat? The singer trying to reach those falsetto heights? And why would a song ever be called "International Geophysical Year", for heaven's sakes?
It would be years before I finally saw the light about "I.G.Y." and its album by Fagen, "The Nightfly". Before that point, I hadn't known that Fagen was part of Steely Dan, and although I did remember seeing that iconic cover for "The Nightfly" with the old-style radio DJ in the booth, I had no idea that it was Fagen as the disc jockey. In fact, I didn't even know that Steely Dan breaking up for a while partially led to the birth of this classic album.
My thanks will strangely go to IBM. As I mentioned in the "Peg" article, there was an IBM commercial played in Japan with a popular model/actress being featured alongside the ThinkPad and "I.G.Y." was the song in the background. My engrams were firing once more with a bit more affection for the Fagen single. At the time, I was teaching at my second school in Tokyo, and a fellow teacher who had been doing his own DJ'ing and recording recommended "The Nightfly" to me as one of the albums everyone had to own.
Indeed, I did buy it and it has become a heavy-rotation album. As was the case with that subtitle for "I.G.Y.", what a beautiful world! All of the tracks are splendid and I gradually got to know the story behind the concept of "The Nightfly" and Fagen's personal connection to it. Of course, you can take a look at the Wikipedia article for the album for starters.
The part of the story where Fagen related how much he relied on those 1960s late-night radio shows as a kid in what he called his bland neighbourhood did hit me somewhat. I had my decade of listening to various stations across the dial and especially during my university years, I relied on those radio DJs to keep me amused, entertained and awake as I pulled off those all-nighters to get the essays done and exams studied for. Certainly, I was interested enough to track down this video of a 1964 broadcast of a radio show from Boston.
As for "I.G.Y.", I now consider it to be one of the most appealingly quirky pop songs that my ears have had the privilege of being exposed to. Once again, it was all about those horns, keyboards, Fagen's vocals and that melody now paired with lyrics that sardonically talked about the wonders of futuristic living. And yet, I still get one of those rare moments of optimism in my head (my persona really usually wavers between cynicism and pessimism) whenever I play "I.G.Y." on the stereo, hoping for those gleaming trains, hypersonic planes and driverless automobiles going to and from those smart homes. Not surprisingly, my mind goes to certain areas in Tokyo such as Odaiba and even further afield in nations such as Dubai.
"I.G.Y." was released in September 1982 with "The Nightfly" coming out a month later, so I figure that I can provide what were in the Top 3 of Oricon in October 1982.
Welcome to Sunday night. Currently, Toronto is in the middle of a windstorm with a lot of wires going down throughout the southern part of the province, but I'm hoping that somehow we'll be saved from losing power. Still, it was good that we could have dinner and up until recently, I was happily digesting myself into middle-aged slumber.😴
But seeing that I have some time tonight, I decided to try out another article so I encountered this one in the backlog, and boy, did it wake me up! This is "Shinpai Shinai de" (Don't Worry, Baby) by Ippu-Do（一風堂）led by Masami Tsuchiya（土屋昌巳）representing the genres of synthpop, New Wave and experimental.
One of the tracks on the band's debut album"Normal" from March 1980, "Shinpai Shinai de" wants to make it abundantly loud and clear that everything is going to be OK. Judging from this one, I gather that Tsuchiya, who wrote and composed this track, wanted to throw in some rock along with their Devo and a small shoutout to The Beatles'"Day Tripper". The arrangement is going at the speed of a Bullet Train for the most part aside from some deceleration for a bit of whimsy here and there.
My compliments also go to the fellow who designed the spare cover for "Normal". And I also appreciate the reassurances from Tsuchiya as I wonder about the weather out there.🌀
For nostalgia's sake tonight, I put on one of my ancient Canadian Tire tapes with stuff that I had recorded all the way back in my high school years (1980s). Unfortunately, my tape recorder, Jaws, got a bit peckish so it nibbled on some of the tape, and if you have read my article on Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）"Crimson", it can get a little too messy on the devouring. Luckily, though, the damage wasn't too bad.
The first song on my various tapings from the FM stations on Toronto radio happened to be DeBarge's"All This Love" which was released back in October 1982. "All This Love" stands as one of the great soulful romantic ballads of all time in my estimation. It's one of those special tunes that can truly transport me into a happy place for nearly 6 minutes. Moreover, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch for me to say that thanks to this classic and other great 80s R&B/pop songs, this helped me appreciate Japanese City Pop.
Now, considering that this may be my fourth time paying tribute to a Western tune after also having written about "Love Will Keep Us Together", "Vacation" and most recently "Lovely Day", I've decided to pack these all together into a new Label called Reminiscings of Youth. Basically, if I talk about one of my favourite American, Canadian or British songs when I was a teen or kid, I will see if I can find some of the timely kayo that had come out around the same time as that song.
So, without further ado, here are the Top 3 songs on the Oricon singles chart for October 1982:
Well, I figure it was going to happen to me someday, but I got word from CD Japan that my order for a certain compilation on Techno Kayo would have to be cancelled since not only was the disc out of print but there wasn't enough demand to make it worthwhile for the originating producer. I'm a bit disappointed, of course, but knowing that I usually go for the older and rarer albums, I was due for some rejection.
So, in the meantime, I came across this catchy Techno Kayo number by New Wave-yIppu-do（一風堂）titled "Moonlight Magic". Written and composed by the vocalist, Masami Tsuchiya（土屋昌巳）, as the band's final single in April 1984, I'm not sure how it did on the charts but it was used for a Mitsubishi commercial. And for me, it has that really delectable poppy beat filtered through all those 80s electronics that had me getting all electro-nostalgic again.
Strangely enough, the first time I'd heard of this Japanese New Wave band was on the legendary Toronto program, "The New Music"when J.D. Roberts (now John Roberts, former CNN anchor) and Jeanne Beker had a special episode on the music of Japan. My first thought of the vocalist was that Duran Duran should have recruited him on the spot.
Ippu-Do（一風堂）was formed in 1979 with Masami Tsuchiya（土屋昌巳）as that lead vocal. I mentioned this when I profiled Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）1977 album, "Crystal City", but Tsuchiya was the guitarist behind the track, "Funky Little Queenie". It wasn't until July 1982, though, that Ippu-Do hit paydirt with its 6th single, Tsuchiya-penned "Sumire September Love"（Violet September Love). Reminding me of some of YMO's earliest hits like "Tong Poo"and "Firecracker" in melody, Tsuchiya's vocals glide through Machiko Ryu's（竜真知子）lyrics like skates on ice.
The song managed to peak at No. 2 on the Oricon charts. Selling 450,000 records, "Sumire" also got picked up as the campaign song for a Kanebo Cosmetics commercial starring Brooke Shields. The above video has "The Best Ten" program handing it off to Ippu-Do at the Liverpool Empire Theatre in England. At the time, Tsuchiya was part of the world tour for UK band Japan. Ippu-Do, by the way, was named for a discount store located in Shibuya, Tokyo.
In October 1997, one of the big bands of Visual-Kei (Japan's version of Glam Rock), SHAZNA, released a cover of "Sumire September Love" as its 2nd single. Tsuchiya couldn't have asked for a better person to hand the baton to. It also peaked at No. 2 and was the 54th-ranked song of 1997. It can also be found on SHAZNA's 1st album, "Gold Sun and Silver Moon" released in January 1998.
