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.
The above is a Very Berry Shake that I got at a place called Petit Potato. It was indeed very flavorful and thirst-quenching. However, the theme isn't on the contents but the container. Early this year, I came up with an Author's Picks called "Substance Kayo" which focused on those kayo titled with various substances. But then, I realized after writing up one recent article and remembering a couple of oldies that I'd written early in this blog's history that a subset can be made of kayo kyoku containing the word "glass" in their titles. As such, let me start this Tuesday edition of KKP with some glass kayo.
I started thinking about the anniversary day's plans including the cover versions for "Memory Glass" a few weeks back, and so finding the covers, I then thought about some of the other songs that singer-songwriter Jun Horie（堀江淳）had recorded in the decades between now and the 1980s. It wasn't particularly easy since "Memory Glass" was the one big hit for him.
However, I did find one song which was some years after "Memory Glass". There was his 1993 maxi-single or mini-album titled "Tokyo"（東京）which for some reason doesn't exist in his J-Wiki discography but exists on Apple Music. One of the tracks is "La Regina" which has that urbane feeling of 1990s Tokyo and sounds like something that could have been a theme song for a J-Drama suspense during a weeknight. Horie's high-pitched voice is unmistakable.
Fridays are usually reserved for the urban contemporary music but today also happens to be January 30th 2026, aka the 14th anniversary of "Kayo Kyoku Plus". Grace and Mr. Calico are celebrating up above so we will, too.
I just wasn't quite sure how we were going to commemorate and celebrate fourteen years of Japanese music blogging. However, for starters, I opted to search for cover versions of the song that became the point of the very first article on KKP back on January 30th 2012, and that was Jun Horie's（堀江淳）big hit "Memory Glass" from 1981. For example, I found this urbane version by Ms. OOJA that she recorded for her April 2024 album"Nagashi no OOJA 3 ~ Vintage Song Covers"（流しのOOJA 3～VINTAGE SONG COVERS～...Strolling OOJA 3）. I don't know who arranged it but they apparently went for the Old City Pop rather than the Neo-City Pop which is perfectly fine for me. There's even more of an urge to drop in at that hotel top bar for a cocktail now.
Decades earlier...in fact, in the same year that Horie's original was released in 1981, veteran chanteuse Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）recorded her own take on "Memory Glass" via her November album "Hotarubi"（螢火）which can be translated as either "Firefly Glow" or "Embers" (depending on how romantic you feel, you can pick either one). Fuji's take is much closer to Motoki Funayama's（船山基紀）original arrangement of the song.
In high school, I was always more adept in Chemistry than I was in Physics (Biology was my favourite, though). I couldn't make heads nor tails of Physics but give me a test tube and some substances, and I was a happy camper. For one class, we had to go crazy making esters. It was indeed great fun but all those odors infused into us so heading home on the bus that day wasn't the most pleasant for my fellow commuters.
Anyways, I did bring over a periodic table from Wikimedia Commons. At one point, I was able to memorize the first ten elements. I think I still have the ability but I've noticed in the 40 odd years since my last Chemistry class, the periodic table has grown some more elements. Also, I need to put a shoutout to my old Chemistry teacher, Mr. Phillips. He was a grizzled elderly ex-soldier who definitely held a position of some responsibility (sergeant at the very least) and if he detected any nonsense, he made you feel like the lowest recruit at boot camp. But if you were on his good side, he could be quite cordial.
Yes, I am being quite whimsical (and before a Wednesday, to boot) which means that I've got to get an Author's Picks out of my system. This time, it's all about the substances that I've seen in titles of kayo kyoku over the years. And I'm not just talking about the bare elements either.
One more thing about Mr. Phillips. There was once this cockamamie so-called allowance at high school in which if a teacher didn't show up at class within the first ten minutes, then the students could walk out and have a free hour. One time, our math teacher didn't show up due to traffic issues so of course, a third of the class just stood up and walked out gleefully. A minute later, that whole third walked back in looking dramatically glum...and in walked Mr. Phillips behind them looking very miffed. We then got the drill sergeant's reprimand along with a no-nonsense reminder that no such allowance existed. It turned out that the math teacher had called the office to let the school know that he would be late. Mr. Phillips was there to make sure that the allowance never happened.
That was a declaration by Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）when she appeared at an Oita Prefecture music festival which was held on April 19th and 20th. Larry Chan, fellow KKP co-administrator, foodie partner, good friend and Akina fan had informed me over the weekend that the Tokyo singer had made a comeback there by singing some of her old hits. Good to see that her health is getting back into gear. Now, let's see about getting her to Toronto for a few concerts. 😃
In celebration, I'm posting up another B-side from one of her earlier singles, "Twilight - Yugure Dayori"（トワイライト -夕暮れ便り-）which was released in June 1983. As soon as I saw the title "Drive", I immediately thought some raunchy rock (well, at least, enough that could be permitted on an aidoru tune back then) and Akina on the back of some high-speed motorcycle on the highways and byways of Japan while her high school punk boyfriend is fleeing from the authorities. After all, "Twilight" is an aidoru ballad with the singer in high-toned voice. In comparison, I would expect such a B-side with Akina plumbing the lower depths of her vocals to contrast with the more innocent A-side.
However, "Drive" doesn't go into that direction at all although it is still quite different from "Twilight". her voice does go a bit lower and softer compared to the higher and more strident of that A-side. Nope, I'd say "Drive" is Akina in classy City Pop mode with a goodly amount of bossa nova for that added metropolitan feeling. Written and composed by Jun Horie（堀江淳）, famous for his "Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）which was the subject of the very first article for KKP back in 2012, and arranged by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, the mode of conveyance here is simply an unidentified car with a young couple taking that trip in the evening while the lady is hoping for some further escalation in the relationship. Maybe a stop at Inspiration Point is called for. 💕
Anyways, instead of me hoping for Akina to be in better health as I have usually done for years, I can see that she is in better health. May that continue for a good long time.
Singer-songwriter Jun Horie（堀江淳）has always kept a special place in the "Kayo Kyoku Plus" heart all these years. His April 1981 hit tune, the zippy "Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）, not only remains as one of the songs that finally got me to appreciate Japanese popular music but the article for the song is the very first one on KKP.
Well, as I've always said, never forget those B-sides, and so I bring you "Yume Fubuki" (Dream Blizzard). As expected, Horie was responsible for the melody but this time, lyricist Kaoru Asaki（麻木かおる） came up with the bittersweet words. Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）, as was the case for "Memory Glass", took care of arrangement. Listening to "Yume Fubuki", I've gradually gotten the impression that Horie is at heart more of a folk singer along the lines of the late and great Kozo Murashita（村下孝蔵）, and that is also true for "Yume Fubuki" which retains the same level of jauntiness as the A-side. The story behind this one involves a fellow who's putting up a brave front after a romantic breakup but is still hurting inside and the wintry evening outside isn't helping his mood any. An extra sweater, perhaps?
If you can take a gander at the Labels on the right side of the page (take your time, I'll wait), you can see the years with the largest number of articles on KKP: 1981 1982 and 1983. Well in recent days, there has been a pitched battle for dominance, a battle that had been led by 1982 by a good degree for many years. But the gap closed up and until a couple of days ago, there was a 3-way tie at 449 articles each. As of a couple of days ago, though, 1982 has inched forward once more with its 450th article.
However, 1981 isn't letting that go thanks to this article which is a sequel to last week's Gosanke（御三家）entry. That was my first imagined trio consisting of the first three female singers in Japan that I had seen for thanks to my trip there in that fateful year and repeated viewings of "The Best 10". Then I figured that if I could come up with a Sannin Musume（三人娘）according to that legendary music ranking show, then I can do the same with the male singers since I saw them as well for the first time. The genre base is a little wider for these guys, though.
All that cackling by Dudley Moore's rich kid Arthur Bach aside, the opening for the 1981 comedy "Arthur" really showed the romantic and sophisticated side of The Big Apple, despite it being known as The World's Most Dangerous City at the time. It was one of the biggest movies of that year, getting four Oscar nominations and winning two, one for Best Supporting Actor for John Gielgud as the incredibly snarky Hobson. I think my brother ended up watching "Arthur" a couple of times, but ironically, I never caught it even once at the theatre, settling for certain scenes on TV reruns. Maybe I wasn't such a Moore fan, although he did get his past acclaim through other comedies such as "Foul Play" and "10".
However, that theme song "Best That You Can Do", which is more popularly known as "Arthur's Theme", has stuck me with me throughout the decades, and I can say that this has also been one of my musical touchstones. "Arthur" had come out midway during my Japanese language school graduation trip in July 1981 and then Christopher Cross' single was released the following month. And as much as I had Yellow Magic Orchestra and Jun Horie's（堀江淳）"Memory Glass" on the brain at the time, the theme song for that movie became another familiar thing to hear on the radio when I returned to Canada.
Although Cross already had a few hits out there such as "Ride Like The Wind" and "Sailing" in the previous year, it was really "Arthur's Theme" that first tugged on my heartstrings when it came to his music. That opening piano, the lush orchestral arrangement and the singer's high-toned boyish voice ensured that the song was cemented in my memories. Thinking of it now, I think that having Cross sing the theme was a mark of genius since his delivery gave a certain child-like quality to "Arthur's Theme" for the movie which was about a figurative kid in a man's body finally growing up. But the song was and is still first-rate urbane romantic melody and that specific lyric about being between the moon and New York City still sends that chill up and down the spine.
Unsurprisingly then, Cross had quite the cream of the crop in terms of collaborators. Burt Bacharach and his wife at the time, Carole Bayer Sager, along with Peter Allen, whose ex-wife Liza Minnelli starred with Moore in "Arthur" all helped in creating the song that earned a Best Original Song Oscar. Then, there were the musicians including Cross: saxophonist Ernie Watts, drummer Jeff Porcaro and guitarist Steve Lukather among other stars. It hit No. 1 on Billboard and No. 2 on RPM in Canada.
The reason that I'm doing this ROY article on a Friday after the usual Thursday one last night was that recently I'd discovered the cover version of "Arthur's Theme" by Sing Like Talking vocalist Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）, and yep, I realize that I did do an SLT article to start off today's spate of articles. I figured that if I was going to give time to Sato's cover, then I might as well give the original by Cross the ROY treatment since I'd been planning to do so sometime.
Now in Japan, "Arthur's Theme" was given the title of "New York City Serenade"（ニューヨーク・シティ・セレナーデ）when it was given its due there, and so Sato's cover has been retitled "Tokyo City Serenade" for his October 2004 album of covers"The Hits ~ Cornerstones 3", which peaked at No. 4 on Oricon. Sato's voice is great as usual but I think that his take on Cross' song gets a tad too ambitious in the rearrangement so the execution isn't 100%.
Speaking of those hits in Japan, I'll give you the Top 3 of August 1981 as reported from the Oricon site.
If I'm not mistaken about my date, July 5th will be an auspicious one for me. Tomorrow will be 40 years to the day since I boarded that Air Canada (or was it Canadian Pacific?) flight with the rest of my graduating class from the Toronto Japanese Language School for that one month in Japan. Over the years of writing for "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I've mentioned about that fateful summer 1981 trip in various entries, probably mostly for 1981 songs, in which being in Tokyo, Nagoya, Nara, etc for that one month changed my life so much that it became all about learning of Japanese culture for me. Of course, that Japanese culture also included pop music.
As such, on this personally special ROY article, I thought that I would end this blogging day by listing all those songs that I remember hearing during my time there and then watching on the TV music ranking shows over and over again. Initially, I'd thought about just listing the Oricon Top 10 for July 1981 but seeing that I've already done that, well, this particular list is more heartfelt.
Perhaps it's a tad over-the-top, but without that July 5th departure for Japan, there would be no fascination for the nation of my heritage, there would be no decision to major in Japanese Studies, no life and music in Japan for close to 20 years, and no "Kayo Kyoku Plus". It's been quite the ride and I hope to not get off the bus quite yet.
I swear..."Private Eyes" must have been Japan's favourite Hall & Oates song. That's quite a declaration but I kept hearing their August 29th 1981 single whenever I entered a Muji department store or my neighbourhood Daiei supermarket. Then at one point, it was even used in some commercial on TV. I mean, Daryl and John must have been wondering one day early in the 21st century when they got an envelope at their studio and said "Why are we getting a cheque for 100 million yen?". Royalties must have been good, man.
For whatever reason, 80s music was always popular in Japan but "Private Eyes" was very public in my old stomping grounds. Maybe the one other American tune from that decade that I could remember that was getting a maximum amount of love in the country was Huey Lewis & The News'"The Power of Love".
"Private Eyes" was released almost a month after my return from Japan during that important school trip, and as I've said before in past articles, that trip and that time were responsible for finally hatching my longtime interest in kayo kyoku, so the songs that were in the Oricon monthly Top 10 for August 1981 bring a goodly sum of nostalgia and love. Here are the songs that were the top 3 entries.
I think among all of the current collaborators on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I, J-Canuck, am the only one who seasonally lives in an environment that is not unlike the one in Antarctica. Following Snowmageddon 2019 on Monday, we're currently going through a cold snap with high temperatures at around -18 degrees Celsius (that would be 0 degrees in the United States). Earlier today, I basically bundled myself so much in winter gear that I looked like the Canadian version of Iron Man's Hulkbuster outfit.
from Vectorstock.com
Anyways, onto business. Well, actually this should be pleasure since this has been fun. Today is the 7th anniversary of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", and I bid you welcome once more as I have almost every day since January 30th 2012. When I first started this up, I naively thought that I would get this over and done with in a year. Ah...little did I know.
Well, each year, I always wonder whether this would be the final time for me, at least, to put up an average of two articles per day on the various Japanese pop songs contributed over the past century and more on the blog. But then, I go back to this famous scene from "The Godfather, Part III".
Not that I was ever going to abandon this huge project by any means. I thought that I would be going into a more curatorial mode, but as it stands, I have a huge backlog of songs that I need to get through and then there is music that just pops up all of a sudden through tips by various commenters and collaborators. So, semi-retirement isn't currently an option. And that's just for me, not including folks like Noelle, Marcos, Larry and Joana for whom I have been grateful for their contributions over the past 7 years.
I was thinking about what to put up today on this 7th anniversary of the blog. Getting an Author's Pick is no longer just an option but a plan for later tonight. Then, I thought about searching for a song by singer-songwriter Jun Horie（堀江淳）, the reason being is that his 1981 hit song"Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）became the very first topic on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" since it is one of the touchstone tunes that got me interested full-bore into kayo kyoku in the first place after my Toronto Japanese Language School graduation trip to Japan that year.
At first blush, though, I wasn't optimistic since basically, Horie only had that one hit and most of the YouTube videos on display feature only "Memory Glass". However, I was able to find this title track from his second album"Yume no Ayatori" (Cat's Cradle of Dreams) released in May 1982. Not sure what the recorded version sounds like, but as it sounds in this TV rendition, it's quite the folksy ballad. It's quite different from the poppier "Memory Glass"...it's more on the lines of something by the late Kozo Murashita（村下孝蔵）.
What the heck? Allow me to show you what started this show going. Some additional information that I hadn't provided on the original article was that "Memory Glass" became the 18th-ranked single for 1981, selling over half a million records. The above version seems to be a rearranged take.
In any case, my thanks to everyone who has been providing their own stories with their songs (past and present collaborators and commenters) along with the many more readers. Let us see what more treasures we can unearth from the past and what more discoveries we can make in the future.
Good evening! It's the end of another weekend and I think most of us are reluctantly getting ready for another work week. Not too bad for me since my commute only takes the half-second to get out of bed and into my chair.
I'm starting my first new category in quite a while on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" and it's called The First. In this case, The First stands for The First Song or Songs That Got Me Hooked on Japanese Popular Music. And in fact, it is also a slightly whimsical project that I'm launching since I am inviting all of the collaborators who have contributed over the past five years to write about the songs that drew them into loving the raison d'etre for this blog in the first place. Furthermore, I am even inviting some of the frequent commenters over the past five years to also write about those special songs of theirs.
I've gotten in contact with a few of them already such as Karen and T-cat with positive responses. However, I would also like to hear from RagnarXIV, Laurence Green, May Lily, Francium, Kenji France, Nagaregumo, Gen Kanai, Henrique, Trevor Bordage, Yuie-Chan and Ryan Miller if they are interested as well. However, this is purely voluntary...I realize that some folks prefer to read blogs instead of writing them so I will totally understand if the answer is no. But if it's a yes, then contact me through the Contact Form on the upper-right side.
Now, when I first approached the regular contributors about the idea, one of them rightly pointed out that it would be somewhat difficult to narrow the choices down to one trigger song so in my case, I'm putting down three. And all three have been covered in the blog.
As veteran readers of KKP may already know, Japanese music has always been a part of my life since I was a baby. However, I only started getting obsessive about kayo kyoku when I made that trip to Japan in 1981 with my fellow graduates in Japanese Language School.
There were a number of songs that hit my heart as well as my ears the first time I heard them. And one was Jun Horie's（堀江淳）"Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）from 1981 which was incidentally the topic of the very first KKP article in 2012. After the trip to Japan in July of that year, there was a quick reunion of the students and teachers at one of the students' houses in September and our host was nice enough to play a whole mess of "Best 10" shows on her VCR.
A lot of the songs stuck with me since they were getting regular rankings on that show but "Memory Glass" was one standout. At that time, I was pretty YMO-crazy so when I heard that synthesizer intro, I targeted in on the song like a heat-seeking missile. Listening to Horie, I also realized that Japanese music wasn't all enka and cute boppy aidoru tunes.
Strangely enough, Akira Terao's（寺尾聡）big hit "Ruby no Yubiwa"（ルビーの指輪）also from 1981 didn't show up to my recollection on any of those tapes playing on my classmate's video deck but I remembered hearing it through other sources. Perhaps it was through some speakers at a record store when I was walking past it in Osaka or Tokyo, or maybe it was on a commercial on TV.
However, one of the biggest and coolest City Pop hits made it onto the 1981 Kohaku Utagassen and that's where it truly imprinted itself on me. I wouldn't even know the term "City Pop" for several more years and yet there was something so appealingly urban and urbane about "Ruby no Yubiwa" but so different from anything in American urban contemporary pop at that time. It was one of the tunes that would begin the process of persuading me that there was something to Japanese pop.
Then, there is Iruka's（イルカ）"Ame no Monogatari"（雨の物語）. It actually came out in 1977 but I first heard it on a 1982 broadcast of "Sounds of Japan" which I taped. And like the above "Ruby no Yubiwa", hearing the song for the first time made me believe that Japanese popular music could be quite good and appealing. It was certainly different from enka and along with that amazing guitar intro and the wonderful rise of the strings, even listening to it on that broadcast which incessantly crackled and faded in/out didn't affect my delight and enjoyment.
Those are the three big songs for me. And thanks to them, I waited earnestly for my family to get our first VCR so that I could rent "Top 10" or "Best 10" videos, and I taped a ton of those "Sounds of Japan" shows onto cheapo Canadian Tire audiotapes. Of course, those aren't the only three to affect me, so Larry was indeed right about the difficulties in narrowing down the choices. Probably the last thing I can say here is that kayo kyoku brought me in since a good chunk of it sounded like Western music but with a certain twist to it...perhaps like an alt-universe thing. Other aspects of Japanese pop culture have formed that way.
I have already talked about the above songs in the past but I wanted to give those folks interested in our little project an example of what a sample article can look like. After all, I'm hoping that The First will now be focusing more on what other fans have to say about this shared music.
Yes, my apologies to Yahoo! Labs for borrowing this photo but I did want to acknowledge that as of yesterday, "Kayo Kyoku Plus" reached its 5th anniversary. It has been quite the lark of a journey since I started things up at the end of January 2012. Over the past 5 years, I've been able to talk with a number of folks who have that same interest in Japanese pop music whether it be Showa Era or Heisei Era, a few of whom have been able to contribute their own articles. Indeed, it has been a good run and although I cannot say with any certainty about how long the trek will last, at this point, I guess the adventure will continue.
Once again, I give my thanks to my fellow contributors JTM, nikala, Marcos V., Noelle, jari, and Larry for their articles over the past several years. And of course, I'm also grateful to all of the commenters for their contributions to the conversation within our own little world.
The very first article I wrote for "Kayo Kyoku Plus" was for Jun Horie's（堀江淳）perky "Memory Glass" (メモリーグラス) from April 1981. This song has remained as one of my musical touchstones from the era that finally got me started down the path of enjoying kayo kyoku. Well then, I think it's most appropriate if I did write another Horie article although (with due respect for the dedicated Horie fans) "Memory Glass" was his only big hit.
"Rouge" was his 2nd single released in October of that same year. This time, the singer-songwriter created this melancholy ballad as aDear Jane letter. The fellow here has decided to break up with a woman to spare her from any more pain since he now feels that he has been getting too obsessive with her. There's no record about whether "Rouge" charted on Oricon but it was used as the theme song for a TBS drama "Warera Doubutsu Kazoku"（われら動物家族...Our Animal Family）.
Also I wanted to take this opportunity to pay tribute to Masaya Nakamura（中村雅哉）, the founder of Namco who has been called "the father of Pac-Man" (although wasn't Toru Iwatani who actually designed the game?). He passed away a little over a week ago at the age of 91. While we were all in Japan during that torrid summer of 1981, my classmates enjoyed some tabletop video game fun nearby the Tokyo Prince Hotel...and got some free iced coffee, to boot. That was indeed service! I was never a huge enthusiast about video games but even I enjoyed my occasional round of Pac-Man.
As I write this, Japan is currently celebrating the annual Tanabata festival (July 7th) with the prime focus on Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture. One of the customs during this holiday is writing wishes on colourful strips of paper known as tanzaku and tying them to the branches of a tree. For Tokyo, that is probably the biggest symbol for Tanabata although Sendai goes full throttle as you can see in the video above.
Personally, I am also celebrating an anniversary of sorts today. It was 35 years ago today that my plane dropped down onto the tarmac at Narita Airport so that my classmates and I could launch the graduation trip from Japanese Language School. And as I have mentioned numerous times, this was the trip where my love for kayo kyoku finally blossomed.
So as such, I've decided to plunk down the singers who I discovered during that fateful trip and afterwards that have forever stayed in my mind as being symbolic of my half-summer in Japan in 1981. I'm not placing specific songs here, just the singers. A few of them have had long careers while a couple of them to me are one-hit wonders. These singers are not going down in any specific order. Plus, I won't go on some sort of long serenade for each of them since they already have their own entries...just a few lines each.
1. Seiko Matsuda （松田聖子）
"Fresh, fresh, fresh...". The lady, the legend, the aidoru. For me, she was the introduction to that huge mass of unique Japanese teenybopping girls with the happy tunes and the snaggletoothed smiles.
2. Masahiko Kondo（近藤真彦）
His movie "Blue Jeans Memory" was all over the media and any external structure that could afford a poster. The supposed young tough who sent teenage girls into a frenzy by simply squeaking "Matchy desu!"
3. Jun Horie（堀江淳）
My one-hit wunderkind with the high-pitched voice who appeared on all those ancient VHS tapes of "The Best 10" and "The Top 10" that were played at my classmate's house during a post-trip party a couple of months after the event itself. I didn't hear anything more from him after his big hit of "Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）but that particular technopop song has buried itself deep in my memories.
4. Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）
Along with Seiko-chan, another early 80s aidoruwith memorable hair. Her "Machibuse"（まちぶせ）was another frequently heard song on the rankings shows. My first exposure to Yuming even before I knew about Yuming.
5. Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）
The supremely long hair and that wonderful voice for that gentle ballad. Since it was early days, I had no idea that she had once been an aidoru herself. She simply registered as a classy young lady who hit me right in the heart!
6. Yellow Magic Orchestra
Bought my first audiotape in Japan and it belonged to these guys. With their brand of "computer music", they absolutely stood out in my mind. As soon as I got my cherry-red SONY double-cassette recorder and their first album, I played it in my room at the Tokyo Prince. "Rydeen"may have come out a couple of years before my trip to Japan but it still finely represents the band.
I will be coming out with sequels to my memories in future entries to represent my history with "Sounds of Japan", my time in Gunma and then my long stint in Ichikawa.
Welcome to the first entry! 1981 was the pivotal year for me: got to go to Japan for a month on the graduation trip of Japanese Language School, did a homestay in Nara, saw so many vending machines that I thought they deserved voting rights...and music.
I finally got into music around that time with me diving into Billy Joel, Michael Jackson and the British New Wave, so my brain was attuned to hearing all sorts of stuff. When I went to Japan that year, then, I just got blown away by all this strangely appealing pop music that sounded Western but wasn't.
One of the very first songs I heard that year was Jun Horie's（堀江淳）"Memory Glass", which was really his only big hit for this Hokkaido native. The single was released on April 21, and stayed in the Oricon Top 10 from late July to early October of that year, reaching a peak of No. 3 in August.
At the time, I'd started getting into the Yellow Magic Orchestra, so hearing the synths in the introduction immediately tugged at my ears. Plus his high voice made me wonder if Jun had earlier encountered a tragic castration accident. No matter....it was a pop song done in a style that I'd never heard before, and it, along with several other hit songs that year, put me on the path of kayo kyoku.
Update: October 2 2012
Saw Jun Horie make an appearance on NHK's"Kayo Concert" tonight. Usually the program features enka and mood kayo singers, but the now-51-year-old Horie also appeared to do his best (and only) hit. Man, 31 years just fly by....even tonight's rendition sounded very mood kayo-like.
