I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
As I mentioned in the previous ROY article, my family had gone for sushi for dinner over the weekend, and it was at a favored restaurant called Aoyama. We've usually gone there on New Year's night since it's perhaps the only Japanese eatery that's open on January 1st in Toronto, but this time, we decided to try it out over the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend.
The restaurant has a rather interesting setup. There is the main restaurant which isn't too big inside so some years ago, the owner managed to secure space a few doors down and that is now called the VIP Lounge for Aoyama. And so whenever I make the reservation, we get to dine in VIP...the only time in my life thus far that I've been able to boast anything like that.
It used to be the thing that when our family went to Japanese restaurants decades ago, the usual koto classic "Sakura" was playing on the speakers. You might say that it was the theme song for Japanese restaurants everywhere. Nowadays though, and this was also true of Aoyama a few nights back, such places are now playing all kinds of Japanese pop and/or kayo kyoku (and playing ancient Japanese commercials on the TV screens), including some City Pop. Kuri, my old karaoke haunt during my university years in the 1980s, did the same but that wasn't a restaurant but truly a lounge to sing out those hits.
In any case, some of us were playing "Name That Tune" for the songs that came through the speakers at Aoyama. My brother and I did pretty well; if I hadn't done well, I would have had to turn in my blog in shame. Moving forward, this is some of what I heard that night. It's quite the mix.
Happy Good Friday to everyone! Hopefully, you are all taking things easy on this statutory holiday. Of course, being a national holiday, I'm doing a special Reminiscings of Youth article today for Urban Contemporary Friday, and you might consider this a sequel or a follow-up to yesterday's ROY posting on that soundtrack from the hilarious "Airplane!"(1980).
Commenter Brian Mitchell and I were exchanging comments for that one earlier today and I realized one big interesting pop culture connection between one of the funniest movies ever made and a short-lived American sitcom that was out at about the same time. In fact, I'll lift a good chunk of my comment to explain things.
Speaking about coincidences regarding planes, I realized that "Airplane!" also had a fairly surprising connection with an American sitcom "Angie" which had a short run from 1979. Robert Hays (Ted Striker) had a co-starring role in that one next to the title character played by Donna Pescow who just happened to dance with John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever". Of course, there was the famous disco scene in "Airplane!" which was accompanied by "Stayin' Alive", the official or unofficial theme for "SNF". And to top it all off, Maureen McGovern who played the nun on "Airplane!" sang the theme song for "Angie".
Indeed, that is indeed McGovern's nun above trying to solace a couple of passengers and failing utterly. That may have been her first foray into acting after starting out in 1967 and being primarily known as a recording artist. She first hit the bright lights when her recording of "The Morning After", the theme song for another serious disaster movie, "The Poseidon Adventure" from 1972, had won her an Oscar. Ironically enough, and to extend the coincidence chain, Leslie Nielsen from "Airplane!" had played the captain of the doomed cruise liner.
According to her bio on Wikipedia, McGovern had still hit some lean times between then and the late 1970s. However, things started looking up with not only the "Airplane!" gig, but also with her recording of "Can You Read My Mind?", the love theme from Richard Donner's "Superman" earlier and then as I mentioned in the comment to Brian, her recording of the theme song for the sitcom "Angie" on ABC.
I did watch a lot of "Angie" during its time between early 1979 and late 1980 because I have to admit that I had a bit of a crush on Pescow, not knowing for many years that she had that pivotal role in "Saturday Night Fever". I also remember that McGovern had another hit in "Different Worlds", the theme song for "Angie" and it was quite popular on the radio as well as each time that an episode aired on the telly. And listening to it again after so long, those happy-go-lucky disco vibes had me swooning a lot. Strangely enough, I started getting memories of Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"Sunshower" and "Mignonne" albums as well.
A single was released in June 1979 which hit No. 1 on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart while it reached No. 18 on the same organization's Top 100. Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox were the songwriters behind "Different Worlds". Considering the title, I would have thought the song could have been great for "Superman" but maybe it was a little too disco for the Man of Steel. 😁
Anyways, I'm not sure on which day "Different Worlds" was released but to see what was hitting the top of the charts at around that time, let's go with June 4th 1979.
As the byline says, Happy Chinese New Year or Gong Xi Fa Cai! (If I have this wrong, please correct me.) And indeed, it is the Year of the Snake whose titular animal is supposed to bring wisdom, transformation, calmness and creativity. I can only hope that this is really true. Within my city, I've got a number of friends who are probably celebrating with their families so I wish them well on this day.
In any case, I don't quite believe that up to now, I haven't had an article commemorating Chinese New Year but I will rectify that now. I had initially thought about putting up songs which have had something to do with Chinese places or culture, but I've now decided to post songs by singers who have come from places such as Hong Kong and Taiwan to provide hits within the kayo kyoku world.
First off, I will have to apologize to all of those Rickie Lee Jones fans out there. When it comes to the Chicago-born singer, songwriter and musician, there are only two things that I remember about her. One is the "SCTV" parody of that K-Tel album containing all of the cover versions of "Stairway to Heaven" in which Catherine O'Hara was emulating Jones' scatting jazz style for her take at around 1:07 above.
The other thing that I remember about Rickie Lee is "Chuck E.'s in Love", and if I have to remember anything about her, it should be this song. And I was surprised to find out that this song that had been created around a friend's (songwriter Charles E. Weiss) sudden telephone declaration of love as transmitted via her then-boyfriend Tom Waits was her first single from April 1979. I had assumed that Jones had been around for some years before that since that saucy drawl of a delivery was something that could only have come about through years of singing and playing and experience-building, but the rookie apparently hit it out of the ballpark like Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani.
It occasionally got onto the radio and what I remember along with Jones' singing is the slow playful strut of an arrangement as if the music were representing a pixie-ish Jones herself shuffling happily in her most comfortable neighbourhood one afternoon, greeting all of the neighbours and smiling to herself in some satisfaction after Chuck E. finally made that confession. In a way, I think "Chuck E.'s in Love" is a bit of a cousin to Billy Joel's earlier "Rosalinda's Eyes" in that with both I get that friendly and family-like atmosphere within an American inner-city community. Everyone knows each other and no secret stays secret for long...and she's perfectly fine with that.
Both in America and Canada, "Chuck E.'s in Love" did very well with it hitting No. 4 and No. 5 respectively on their countries' music charts. At the 1980 Grammys, Jones won Best New Artist and was nominated for Song of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female for the song.
"Chuck E.'s in Love" was released on April 28th 1979. I could find the April 30th Oricon rankings, so let's see what the Top 3 songs were that day.
Well, it's been several months since I've posted anything regarding the vivacious singer from Taiwan, Judy Ongg（ジュディ・オング ）. Of course, she has been immortalized for "Miserarete"（魅せられて）, her 1979 exotic kayo megahit, and I can only imagine that Japanese tourists visiting Greece and the Aegean Sea even now may end up instinctively searching for Ongg in that billowing white dress on a cliff nearby.
Mind you though, it looks like the cover for her May 1980 28th single"Reika no Yume" (Dreams of Resplendent Flowers) has her taking on a more peacock-y appearance. But she's still dazzling nonetheless. Created by the same duo behind "Miserarete", lyricist Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, although instead of the latter also handling the arrangement, it's Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）in that department, the dramatic kayo feeling is still there but the exotic kayo has largely been replaced by something a bit closer to City Pop with a hint of disco.
Come to think of it, I'm wondering whether that first word of the title might actually be a woman's name. The lyrics don't exactly make that crystal clear. Also, what's unknown is how well "Reika no Yume" did on the charts.
Yeah, we're breaking heat records today! Most likely, a 78-year-old one is going to fall by the wayside by sunset since we'll probably go higher than 90 degrees Fahrenheit. The fan is most definitely on in my room and I've got a bottle of water at my side.
Anyways, I found this 1968 single by a teenage Judy Ongg（ジュディ・オング）titled "Sayonara Juu-nana Sai"(Goodbye 17). Her tenth single to be exact from September that year, it was written by Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）and composed by Shosuke Ichikawa（市川昭介）, and it's quite the maudlin ballad about what I'm assuming is a girl's first heartbreak. The arrangement is pretty interesting in that it starts off with some haunting echoes from an American 60s love ballad which then takes on a folksy tilt thanks to that European stringed instrument. However, along the way, it also combines some French jazziness and a fairly rocking drum. Intriguingly enough, the main melody even reminds me of a more downbeat version of "Bei Mir Bistu Shein", popularized by the Andrews Sisters. I gather that "Sayonara Juu-nana Sai" could be set either in Tokyo or Paris.
Fortunately for me, my 17th year on Earth was filled with my burgeoning interest in kayo kyoku and Western music in general so I was taping the heck out of the radio stations including CHIN-FM which had "Sounds of Japan".
Last week, I noted about the passing of lyricist Makoto Kitajo（喜多條忠）late last year at the age of 74 through one of his songs for actor/singer Hiroyuki Sanada（真田広之）. Well, I've found an earlier creation by him and folk singer/composer Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）which received some more appreciation and fame.
"Itsuka Machi de Atta nara" (If We Meet In Town Someday) is wistful with a capital "W" as originally recorded by actor/singer Masatoshi Nakamura（中村雅俊）. Released as his 3rd single in May 1975, it tells of a man's encounter, affair and breakup with a woman who still has an effect on him. I believe that the protagonist realizes that the relationship is over and done with but in his mind, he still would like to meet her again if only to go over old times. The arrangement just screams for an observation point overlooking the ocean at sunset.
The song peaked at No. 6 on Oricon and became the 16th-ranked single for 1975. It was also used as an insert tune within Nakamura's own detective series "Ore-tachi no Kunshou"（俺たちの勲章...Our Medals）, a show that I've already noted in a TRANZAM article.
"Itsuka Machi de Atta nara" has gotten its share of covers. I've read that Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）tackled it as well so I tried searching for his cover, but alas, it's not up on YouTube. However, I did find one cover by Judy Ongg（ジュディ・オング）, a few years before she recorded her most famous hit, "Miserarete"（魅せられて）. Her take on the Nakamura original as arranged by Yusuke Hoguchi（穂口雄介）is a little more uptempo and was a track on her 1975 album"Ai wa Seimei"（愛は生命...Love Is Life）.
Composer Yoshida also provided his own cover of "Itsuka Machi de Atta nara" in his April 1977 album"Private"（ぷらいべえと）which focused on covers of various kayo. His version of the song has a bit more of a gallant country feel. The album hit No. 1 and ended up as the 23rd-ranked album of the year.
When I first started "Kayo Kyoku Plus" in 2012, it was all about the singers and the bands as they steadily got included in the Labels that you always see at the right of your screen. However, as the years passed toward the end of the decade, I also realized how important the lyricists and the composers were, and then relatively recently, I got that same impression about the arrangers. And so, they were also gradually included in the Labels.
Up to today, I'd not considered producers but earlier this morning on the NHK 9 o'clock evening broadcast and then later on Mixi, I found out about the passing of one of the prolific producers for kayo. Masatoshi Sakaiat the age of 85 a few days ago on the 16th. Born and raised in my ancestors' home of Wakayama Prefecture, after graduating from university, he had initially started working for the film company Shochiku in the early 1960s before jumping ship to the music industry, beginning with Nippon Columbia. For the next 60 years, he would gain a reputation for his uncanny way of discovering new talent and then refining them and their music. From what I've read and heard so far, it looks like he focused a lot on the aidoru of the 1970s and perhaps some of those singers exploring the exotic kayowhich enjoyed their fifteen minutes of fame in the later part of the decade.
Allow me to show a very tiny sliver of some of his contributions.
I'd added a January 2021 PS to the original May 2012 article regarding "Ihojin" in which through one of the NHK variety programs, it was discovered that this exotic kayo bringing up adventurous images of traveling on the Silk Road had originally revolved the more mundane situation of riding on the Chuo Line in Tokyo. Well, if I'm not mistaken, I think that it was Sakai himself who came up with the idea to change the setting.
According to the J-Wiki article for Sakai, Go initially liked the sound of "Oyome Samba" but felt that he wouldn't be able to do it justice. However, the producer took him aside and told him "You're the only one who can sing this as brightly. This song will undoubtedly be continued to be sung at wedding receptions by later generations." Go was convinced.
In addition to the accolades that he received through his songs, Sakai also earned the honour of Person of Cultural Merit both from Wakayama Prefecture and Japan in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
Last night, I had the opportunity to listen to Come Along Radio's latest Summer Mixtape and in what has become a custom, I enjoyed the hour-long session while watching another enjoyable J Utah video, this time a drive through San Francisco. I also had the opportunity to visit the city almost 30 years ago while I was taking a trip with some of my fellow colleagues at the Board of Education for my town on the JET Programme. We were able to visit Fisherman's Wharf, Chinatown, and the zigzag Lombard Street among other places. My only regret was that we couldn't get to see the Golden Gate Bridge because of another San Francisco phenomenon: the fog.
J Utah in his description for this particular video mentioned that this was filmed during the current pandemic so traffic is lower and I have also noticed that a lot of the shops have been boarded up. This hit home especially on the news that many areas in the United States including California have had to backtrack on any re-openings. And so I'm hoping that my friends in the Golden State, fellow KKP contributor Larry Chan in the SFO area and Come Along Radio's Rocket Brown in LA, are hanging in there, as well as my other friends elsewhere in the country.
One of my most cherished standards happens to be "I Left My Heart in San Francisco", and of course, the ultimate singer for this classic is Tony Bennett. However, having said that, the first time I ever heard "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" wasn't his rendition but one that was performed by The Norman Luboff Choir via that record collection of standards that my father had gotten along with the RCA stereo decades ago.
I love Bennett's version but there was also something very haunting and elegiac about the cover by The Normal Luboff Choir, almost as if their version was meant as a tear-jerking musical requiem for a beloved longtime resident in the City by the Bay. Unfortunately, I couldn't find their take on YouTube or elsewhere.
According to Wikipedia, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" was originally written back in 1953 by George Cory and Douglass Cross with Bennett's first recording his version in 1962. Of course, others have covered it over the decades and that includes Japanese singers according to what I got when I placed the Japanese translation of the title "Omoide no San Francisco" (San Francisco Memories) into the YouTube engine. One such English-language cover was by The Tough Guy himself, Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）. The uploader states that Ishihara's version was recorded in 1974 and it can be found in his 5-CD "Ishihara Yujiro ~ Cover Song Shuu"（石原裕次郎 カバーソング集...Cover Song Collection）. Ishihara is no Bennett but he's got the timbre and gravitas in his vocals to perform a pretty decent cover.
(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)
Judy Ongg（ジュディ・オング）also provided her version of "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" on a TV show and along with her wonderfully smoky delivery of the tune which I would love to have caress my ears in the minutes before slumber, there are other reasons for my choice. One is that I finally get to see trumpet player Shin Kazuhara（数原晋）for the first time and the other is that Ongg's cover is done in Japanese, thanks to Rei Nakanishi's（なかにし礼）lyrics.
In the "Killing-two-birds-with-one-stone" department, I also found a San Francisco-themed kayo to include here. Titled "San Francisco no Hito" (San Francisco Woman), this was The Peanuts'（ザ・ピーナッツ）33rd single from October 1971 and was the final part of the "Hito"（女）trilogy of songs that Emi and Yumi Ito（伊藤エミ・ユミ）recorded following "Tokyo no Hito"（東京の女）and "Osaka no Hito"（大阪の女）in the previous year.
While "Osaka no Hito" took things into enka territory, "San Francisco no Hito" is more into happy-go-lucky pop kayoalthough the story is more melancholy as a woman gets summarily dumped on one of those San Francisco slopes. The same duo behind "Osaka no Hito", lyricist Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）and composer Taiji Nakamura（中村泰士）, was also responsible for this one, and "San Francisco no Hito" was performed by The Peanuts at the 1971 Kohaku Utagassen at their 13th out of 16 appearances on the New Year's Eve special.
And no...The Peanuts' voicing of "Cisco, Cisco" wasn't probably not a premonition for a certain multinational technology conglomerate that rose up years later. To be honest, when I first heard those lyrics, my immediate thoughts went to a certain Starfleet captain-turned-religious emissary (yes, I know the spelling is different😒).
Finally to end things off, for those who have never heard of The Norman Luboff Choir, you can have a listen to another standard that coincidentally saw off the show in which that Starfleet captain had starred in. Wow, this was something...I never thought I could incorporate Tony Bennett, The Tough Guy, The Peanuts, "Star Trek" and J Utah into one article.
Going to be dating myself yet again but my favourite version of the theme song from the motion picture "Around The World in 80 Days" is Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops' enthusiastic take on the Victor Young original. It's epic, sweeping, romantic and has that nice flavouring of Latin spice. I first heard it on that collection of standard LPs that we got when my parents purchased the humongous RCA stereo player, and through multiple listenings of The Pops' version, it's basically imprinted itself as the version for me.
A few nights ago, I listened to Rocket Brown's latest mixtape of City Pop favourites. This time, his theme was New York so he had folks such as Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, Casiopea and Hi-Fi Set to entertain me before bedtime. The next day, I thought about making my latest Author's Picks article and basing it not just on songs about The Big Apple, but on a variety of kayo having to do with those far-flung places outside of Japan. There have been plenty of them, y'know.
Well, I just had to start from my nation, eh? Still don't know what had composer and singer Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）decide that The Great White North would make for the ideal setting for a hit kayo, but hey, if it helped inbound tourism to places like Banff and Toronto, all the better. It certainly worked out for the duo of Hirao and Hatanaka.
Let's take that one-hour flight from Pearson International in my hometown over to Manhattan, and we've come to "Purpletown", a love letter of sorts to The Big Apple (although I never found out why the colour purple was significant for New York City) Indeed, it was the JAL campaign song for tours to ol' Gotham, and just from all that fun funk by Yagami（八神純子）, Foster, Kennedy and Conrad, I can only hope that a lot of Japanese tourists were happily lured over the Pacific.
Well, it was done to me decades ago, but whenever I hear about the Aegean Sea, in a downright Pavlovian fashion, I will always remember Judy Ongg's（ジュディ・オング） most famous hit "Miserarete"（魅せられて）. It stands as one of the most famous examples of that exotic kayo involving adventures in those far-flung places that was the trend back in the late 1970s. Perhaps it helped draw Japanese tourists to Greece. Perhaps it also helped in sales of billowing white dresses.
A relatively short hop from Greece to another representative exotic kayo, Mayo Shouno's（庄野真代）"Tonde Istanbul"（飛んでイスタンブール）. I'm not sure whether the melody by the prolific Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）actually reflected Turkish music but it certainly sounded adventurous enough. One piece of trivia from the J-Wiki article for the song that I hadn't included in the original article was that Tsutsumi had actually created "Tonde Istanbul" for 70s aidoruGoro Noguchi（野口五郎）but later realized that a female vocalist would do better justice with his work.
As I hinted in the original article for the album "First Light" by Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）, the first time that I heard "One Hot Love", I didn't think of downtown Tokyo but downtown Los Angeles. There was something so Airplay, Doobie Brothers and a ton of other AOR artists imbued into this classic that the ghost of my old SONY radio almost materialized in front of my eyes. It didn't help that the original cover for the album is composed of a glorious photo of LA (at least, I think it's LA). How West Coast sound is that?
Honestly speaking, I never think of Rick and Ilsa when I listen to "Aishuu no Casablanca"（哀愁のカサブランカ）, but there's that feeling of traveling far afield to places surrounding the Mediterranean and enjoying a truly luxurious night. I'm just surprised that one of Hiromi Go's（郷ひろみ）trademark hits was never used to sell something like an airplane tour, a car or a cologne. The video above has a newly arranged version of the song.
We're finally jumping over to Asia and visiting Hong Kong, a place that I thoroughly enjoyed for a few days with my students over a decade ago. Yuming's cover of her husband's original tune seems to encapsulate a first-timer's visit to the famed area with all of the starry-eyed observations of places like Kowloon and Central. I thought that this was more "Blade Runner" than any place in Japan. I hope that Hong Kong will recover from not only COVID-19 but also the political turmoil that it had been wracked with even earlier.
Our final destination is somewhere in France, perhaps The City of Light itself. The reason being the final song is Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"Tsumuji Kaze"（つむじ風）, a track from her 1982 album"Cliché". Aside from that synthpop intro, everything else about it just has that fragrance of Maurice Chevalier's and Charles Boyer's Paris. Croissants and café au lait come to mind here.
When deplaning, make sure you haven't left any of your belongings. Just follow the signs over to Immigration and Customs. Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, we will all be able to hear the first two sentences again for real.
In July, I got an email from J-Canuck, asking all Kayo Kyoku+ contributors if we can write about "Our First" - an account of how we get into Japanese music in the first place. I thought it's a fantastic idea and so I made a promise. Now that I got some time, I'm going to share "My First" with all of you.
Confession
Interesting enough, I didn't regularly listen to Japanese music till around 2010 when I started learning Japanese. For a long stretch starting from my college years in the 90s till 2010, I listened to ZERO Japanese music. Yes, that's right, NIL.
So, I decide to write The First and a follow-up article, Second Chance, in which I would share my recent (is 7 years too long to qualify as recent?) foray into Japanese music.
First Japanese Song Ever Heard
Honestly, I forgot. But it HAS TO BE A SONG FROM AN ANIME SERIES.
When I was 4 or 5, every Sunday morning from 8 to 11, there's 3 hours of non-stop cartoon on TV. Weekday 4-6pm was kids time and Japanese anime were all over TV. There were occasionally American cartoons (e.g. Popeye the Sailor) but we all thought they're boring. None of my friends wanted to talk about them. We only talked about Japanese anime. On the school bus, we would be singing those anime theme songs, in Japanese, because in that era TV stations in Hong Kong didn't ask local singers to cover like they do now (Well, Jade TV in Hong Kong started to ask local singers to cover starting in late 70s, if my memory serves correctly).
Drawing from my memory, it's EXTREMELY likely that the first Japanese song I ever heard was this one:
It was the theme song of Mazinger Z (マジンガーZ), an extremely popular Japanese anime in Hong Kong when I was small. I forgot what the story was about now. Of course, I never understood what I was singing on that school bus.
First Non-Anime Japanese Song (and First Kouhaku)
This I remember clearly. It's Judy Ongg's (翁倩玉) Miserarete (魅せられて). J-Canuck wrote an article about it in 2012 (sorry J-Canuck, I borrowed your YouTube link below).
On December 31, 1979, my Mom and Dad said that Ongg's going to appear in Kouhaku (紅白). It was a big thing because Ongg's Chinese. My Mom also said Ongg's going to wear a costume that would turn herself into a peacock. I thought a person turning into a peacock would be pretty cool and so I watched Kouhaku with my parents. It was also my first ever Kouhaku.
The song made a pretty strong impression, especially the paragraph "Wind is blowing from the Aegean...." (I didn't realize it was English and I thought it was Japanese at that time). Ever since I listened to it for the first time in 1979, I would still remember the melody in all these years. And whenever I describe who's Judy Ongg to my friends, I would hum that melody.
Okay, Okay, The Real First
First, some background.
I was 11. A fresh school year had just started. Hin-Chung Mak, my friend who sat in front of me, had something new in his wallet. It was a photo of a young girl. I asked him who that girl was. He took the photo out of his wallet and showed me. There's a name printed on the photo - 松田聖子 (Matsuda Seiko). Not knowing who she was, I asked Mak why he liked her. He told me that she's cute, and he liked her songs. For some reason, I was not interested in anything Japanese at that time. So we went back to talk about a popular local manga called 龍虎門 (Oriental Heroes).
A few years later, there's new name from Japan - 中森明菜 (Nakamori Akina). Because the character 菜 means vegetable in Chinese, we're always joking about her name. Not only that, but because 菜 in Cantonese slang also means one's girlfriend (similar to tea as in "my cup of tea" in English), we made even more jokes. Still I never heard a single song from Seiko or Akina.
Summer 1984, I was spending a week at my cousin's house. I was staring at his bookshelf. There were cassette tapes - rows and rows of them. Michael Jackson's Thriller & Beat It. Here Comes the Rain Again from Eurythmics. Cindy Lauper's Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Kenny Loggins' Footloose. I duped every one of them into my TDK 90 minute tape that I brought with me!
I still remember that I didn't want to buy music because I thought it's a waste of money. Pop songs, by definition, would fade in a few years when nobody listens to them anymore. So why waste the money, I thought.
Then, my eyes suddenly caught something, Nakamori Akina's "Best Akina Memoir" was sitting right in the middle of all these Western pop music. My first reaction was, "dear cousin, like my classmates, you also found this 'vegetable' attractive, don't you?" In fact, I found Akina pretty cute at that time, but never thought I would buy her music, or even listen to her music because I was so absorbed by Alan Tam (譚詠麟) and other Hong Kong singers at that time. But since I had a whole week, I might as well check her out, I thought.
And so I did. Kinku (禁区) was the first song but I was not impressed. I found Akina's voice too "rough", like Hong Kong singer Anita Mui (梅艷芳). Then came the 2nd song, Twilight - Yuugure Tayori (トワイライト-夕暮れ便り-). The piano intro immediately grasped my attention. Then I heard a completely different female voice.
She sounded like an angel to me. Can this be the same Akina I just heard in Kinku? Are they really the same person? How did she do that? I was amazed and puzzled at the same time by this "double personality". So I listened more. The 3rd song did not make any impression on me. The 4th song, its piano intro mesmerized me again, it's Your Portrait (あなたのポトレート). Same voice as the 2nd song, but definitely different from Kinku. It almost felt comical because in my mind it could not be the same person. It had to be a trick, I thought. A little bit later, Shoujo A (少女A). Yeah, I recognized the name of this song. I saw it on entertainment news that it was banned for broadcasting in Japan. I never listened to it till that point. So this is the song, I thought! Same voice as Kinku, but definitely a different voice than Twilight and Your Portrait. Slow Motion (スローモーション) - yes, my angel returns. I have to say that at that time I loved the ballads much more than the others because they sounded similar to those Alan Tam songs that I loved.
I didn't have enough space to dup all the songs in Memoir. Somehow, I was very indifferent about Second Love (セカンドラブ) and I never even considered it. I decided I want Kinku, Twilight, Your Portrait, Ruri Iro no Yoru e (瑠璃色の夜へ), Shoujo A, Slow Motion, and 1/2 no Shinwa (1/2の神話). I only had around 4-5 minutes left and I had to decide which song to include last. After listening to the tape again and again, I finally settled for Ginga Densetsu (銀河伝説)!
I still had that tape with me till last year, when I finally said goodbye to it while I was doing this Marie Kondo exercise. Too bad I didn't take a picture of this tape.
So, technically speaking, my first is not really a single song, but rather Nakamori Akina herself.
First Japanese MV
This, I also remember clearly. It was this video (I hope it can escape from the YouTube police).
The most impressive scene was the last one, when she boards the train, then the train door closes, and Tamaki Koji watches the train leave the station.
Where did I watch it? It was on a music show on Jade TV in Hong Kong. Must be 1984 or 1985. MV started to become popular and Jade TV decided to produce a music show dedicated to MV. Like a radio show that allows people to call in and ask the DJ to play their song, you could call in to this TV music show and ask the VJ to play the MV of your choice. Somebody called in and asked for Tamaki Koji's (玉置浩二) Love Premonition (恋の予感), and that's the first Japanese MV I watched.
Last Words
As I mentioned at the beginning, I didn't regularly listen to Japanese music, even though it has become quite popular in Hong Kong when I was in middle school. After I came here to the US, I didn't listen at all. It's not until 2010 that I really picked it up.
For that story, you have to wait till I write the follow up article, Second Chance.
Hopefully, I'll be able to write within the next 2 weeks, when I'm visiting my parents in Canada, and catching up with J-Canuck :)
Over the weekend, I'm sure a lot of the media all over our big blue marble was hawking about the big Super Blood Moon that was to appear in the night sky. So, of course, the citizens, especially those folks who have that hobby in astronomy, were all whipped up into a frenzy. I'm not so much into space that I would consider myself an amateur astronomer but I did go out last night with my digital camera to see if I could get a pic of this huge red orb in the sky. And this is what I got:
Yup, it looks like Super Moon decided to wear his Amazing Cloak of Invisibility last night over my neighbourhood in Toronto. Darn you, clouds! Well, hopefully I will be around in another 18 years when the next opportunity comes by.
Some hours before I went out for my ultimately failed attempt, I had checked out YouTube out of curiosity to see if there were a kayo kyoku which had anything to do with a red moon. Instantly, I got a Judy Ongg（ジュディ・オング）song, "Tasogare no Akai Tsuki" (Red Moon at Sunset) from July 1967. The only other Ongg song I have on the blog is her most famous "Miserarete"（魅せられて）from 1979 with the wind blowing in from the Aegean and that really flowing dress, and I had been curious whether I could find another song by her to place at KKP.
"Tasogare no Akai Tsuki" was Ongg's 4th single and according to the uploader on YouTube of the video, Hideo Oikawa, it was her first big hit. Listening to the song by Choei Shiratori and Shosuke Ichikawa（白鳥朝詠・市川昭介）, there is very much of a lonely Group Sounds sound as Ongg pleads with the red moon to find her a soulmate. Hopefully, she didn't have to wait 18 years to find one.
That lyric, plus her billowing winged dress, are my memories of Judy Ongg. The Taiwanese native had been releasing records since 1966, but her big hit finally hit in February 1979, with "Miserarete"(Love Is Talking To Me) her 28th single. And yeah, it was big all right....over 2 million records sold and Oricon No. 1 standing from April 16 to June 11. Plus, there was the Japan Record Award and her very first appearance on that year's Kohaku. This song, plus Saki Kubota's（久保田早紀） Ihojin（異邦人）, released later in October, were the two standout exotic-sounding pop tunes. I wonder if it was the Greek bouzouki or tambouras that had been played. In any case, "Miserarete"became the 2nd-most successful single of the year. Incidentally, it was given words by Yoko Aki（阿木耀子）, who had written a number of Momoe Yamaguchi's（山口百恵）hits.
Apparently, this song was also used for a Wacoal underwear commercial. I guess billowy winged dresses kinda brings up that feeling of freshness.
I just had to show that dress in action. It certainly made an impression. I was at a karaoke contest in a Japanese bar in downtown Toronto nearly 20 years ago when one fellow came onstage in that dress to sing that number. Made all of our days.
