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.
Well, you City Pop bass addicts ought to like this dose. I actually posted one track from actress/singer Jun Miho's（美保純）1983 album "Private Theater" back in 2021; "After Rain Afternoon" is a nice jazzy and summery number.
Its track mate, "Mou Ichido Mou Ichido"(One More Time, One More Time), is one funky song launched by both a bopping synth bass and a just-as-jumpy electric bass which should be having the fans strutting like crazy. Of course, Miho lends her smoky-as-bacon vocals to the proceedings of a woman begging for another chance with perhaps a love-'em-and-leave-'em type of cad. Written by Fumiko Okada（岡田冨美子）and composed by Takayuki Watanabe（渡辺敬之）, those horns sound as if they migrated from Chicago's "Street Player".
Well, it is an afternoon and we did have some rain earlier this morning so I gather that the song title would fit under the circumstances.
Jun Miho（美保純）is a name that I've heard every so often and I have probably seen her on commercials and perhaps television game shows since she is listed as a TV personality. However, I don't know much about her acting career although she's had a famous long-time role on the tube as a lawyer for several years.
What I also didn't know was that she had started out as a model and made her debut in the soft porn industry around 1981 in her very early twenties (although according to the J-Wiki article, her manager at the time fudged a bit and shaved a few years off her age to add to the titillation factor). However, going further into the decade, she was able to take on more mainstream roles such as a recurring one in the "Tora-san" movie series.
Her early commercials showed off her sex appeal but as you can see in the video above, Miho also had some comical ads notably with Trident gum as a semi-tsuppari who could bring even a huge burly teenage thug to heel. Probably what sold her as high school punk was the lower and slightly raspy timbre of her voice.
Miho also put out a few records: five singles and two albums according to J-Wiki. The first album was "Private Theater"（プライベート・シアター）from 1983 from which I have this one track titled "After Rain Afternoon". Written by Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）and composed by Makoto Saito（斎藤誠）, it's got this summery City Pop beat overlaid with some light jazz. I like it although the singer doesn't exactly have the smoothest chops; I don't mind the lowness of her voice, though.
