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.
No "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）tonight but that's OK since we've got family coming over for dinner so we can't really be watching TV. Still, that means we haven't had any kayo programming here for a week since we weren't also able to catch "Uta Con"（うたコン）due to some emergency coverage of Japanese government deliberations.
However, last weekend when we could watch "Shin BS Nihon no Uta", semi-regular guests Junretsu（純烈）appeared to sing "Junretsu Damashii"(The Soul of Junretsu). This was the vocal group's 15th single from February 2024.
On the face of it, this might sound rather self-congratulatory but it's really a sweet thank-you song to the fans for their support all the way from their time entertaining guests at hot spring resorts. Junretsu leader Kazuyoshi Sakai（酒井一圭）was behind the grateful lyrics while the Old Man of Enka himself, Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）under his Joji Hara（原譲二）pseudonym, provided the sweet and laidback melody. "Junretsu Damashii" reached No. 4 on Oricon.
As expected, "Uta Con"（うたコン）had its final episode of the year on Tuesday night with a retrospective on 2025's highlights. They did have some guests performing in front of the camera, though.
One of the acts was the oft-appearing group Junretsu（純烈）which has now been whittled down to a trio. They will be showing up on the Kohaku Utagassen in a few weeks as one of the relatively fewer performers providing something akin to the old kayo.
Maybe they will be performing their June 2025 single"Futari dake no Himitsu" (A Secret Between You and Me) which is what they sang on "Uta Con". I quickly caught onto their combination of old-fashioned doo-wop and kayo kyoku, and my mind went back to the sentimental music of the 1960s and 1970s because of it. Written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）, composed by Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）and arranged by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, it's no wonder how old-school it sounds considering the three music creators behind it.
The official music video above has Junretsu taking on double roles: of course, as themselves performing "Futari dake no Himitsu" in what appears to be an Okinawan bar and as a trio of lunkhead barflies smitten over a demure lady. Double of course, hearts will be broken.
You know that January is racing by quickly when all that Kohaku Utagassen coverage from NHK on YouTube has suddenly disappeared like ghosts from the platform. The 75th edition is now nearly three weeks gone from viewing but I think one of the highlights is one that I've mentioned in my own article summarizing the New Year's Eve special.
There wasn't a whole lot of onsite performances this time around, but one that did stick out was when the kayo kyoku vocal group Junretsu（純烈）showed up just outside of a family's house in Gunma Prefecture to serenade the matriarch because she was such a huge fan of the guys. It was supposedly a surprise but since every TV show in Japan is planned down right to the second, it really wasn't although the grandmother fan was truly a very happy person and not suddenly having a heart attack at her heroes invading her home.
Junretsu's song of serenade was their April 2024 single"Yume Mita Kajitsu" (Dream Fruit), written and composed by Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）with arrangement by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）. A saucy little number about coveting and consequences, the official music video has that film noir quality, and I'm sure that the grandmother was over the moon when the guys gestured to her with the lyrics repeating "I love you".
"Yume Mita Kajitsu" went as high as No. 5 on Oricon. I hadn't been aware of this and I don't recall hearing about it on the Kohaku broadcast, but back last June, Junretsu member Hiroaki Iwanaga（岩永洋昭） had announced his intention to leave the group as of March 2025.
I think that I have referred to Ginzan Onsen（銀山温泉）once before in a KKP article, but if so, I do want to refer to it again tonight for the purposes of this particular article. Just before the pandemic sent international travel into hibernation for a few years, my anime buddy and a couple of other friends had gone over to Japan and decided to splurge a bit on a couple of nights' stay at the famous hot spring resort in Yamagata Prefecture. From the photos, it certainly looks like they had quite the luxurious experience. By the way, I'd like to point out that the above video comes courtesy of Kuga's Travel, a YouTube channel that I've been subscribed to for a few years now.
Over the past few years, my student, who will soon be a professor teaching tourism policy at a university, and I have been talking about where inbound tourists ought to explore outside of Tokyo. He opined that the Tohoku region (where Ginzan Onsen is located) and Hokkaido are good places to see and they could certainly use the tourism bucks. My anime buddy has developed a liking for Tohoku himself so he's visited Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture and will be going to Sendai in Miyagi Prefecture later this year.
It looks like the national broadcaster NHK has also tried to help the area out through its Tohoku Onsen Area Support project. Last week on "Uta Con"（うたコン）, veteran folk singer-songwriter Iruka（イルカ）appeared to sing her evergreen "Nagori Yuki"（なごり雪）, but she was also there to see popular kayo group Junretsu（純烈）since she had composed a song for the guys titled "Tohoku de Attamarou" (Let's Get Warm in Tohoku) with the group leader, Kazuyoshi Sakai（酒井一圭）, providing the lyrics.
"Tohoku de Attamarou" was made the theme song for NHK's onsen project and it's a happy-go-lucky kayo with a bit of steel pedal twang praising the wonders of the Tohoku area such as a soak in the various hot springs. Even Iruka herself couldn't resist adding a few chirpy words of encouragement during the song. It was released as a digital single last October and from the music video above, it was one of the last appearances of now-former member Ryohei Odai（小田井涼平）who left the group as of January 1st 2023. Odai has been replaced by actor, model and singer Hiroaki Iwanaga（岩永洋昭）who had once played one of the Kamen Riders more than a decade ago.
The current quartet that makes up Junretsu（純烈）has been labeled a contemporary Mood Kayo group although for the number of KKP articles on the guys, I think that it's been half-and-half between Mood Kayo music and pop.
With their February 2022 single"Kimi wo Ubai Saritai" (I Want to Take You Away), I think that it's not just only the latter in play, but there's also quite a bit of nostalgic rock in this song about stealing a loved one away from some of the stresses of life and heading to some place far nicer. Incidentally, the music video takes things into left field by cutting between a taxi ride with a driver who is extremely perceptive and the Junretsu four dressed up as if they were survivors from an atomic war. In fact, I found out that the person playing the cabbie was film director Minoru Kawasaki（河崎実）who specializes in parodies.
Music and words were provided by Junretsu's regular songwriter, Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）with Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）arranging the song. I think the nostalgic part of that melody is maybe due to the observation that it sounds like something that any of the Being bands and singers, such as DEEN and Tube, could have concocted back in the 1990s. I can even pick up on a soupcon of disco, a la Hideki Saijo's（西城秀樹）"Young Man"（ヤングマン）. "Kimi wo Ubai Saritai" peaked at No. 7 on Oricon.
The vocal quartet Junretsu（純烈）has become a regular presence on the annual Kohaku Utagassen over the past few years and once again, they've been invited to join the New Year's Eve special on NHK. With "Propose"（プロポーズ） and "Junretsu no Happy Birthday"（純烈のハッピーバースデー）having been performed in the past couple of editions, I had been wondering what would Kazuyoshi Sakai（酒井一圭）, Yuujiro Shirakawa（白川裕二郎）, Ryohei Odai（小田井涼平）and Shota Gogami（後上翔太）present this year at Shibuya Hall.
Well, I don't think I need to wonder anymore. This song has been popping a fair bit on shows such as "Uta Kon"（うたコン）so I figure that their February 2020 single"Ai wo Kudasai ~ Don't You Cry"(Give Me Your Love) has been given the NHK go-ahead for performance.
Plenty of gusto in this one. Written and composed by their regular songwriter Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）with arrangement by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, "Ai wo Kudasai" has brought in all of the ingredients for a Junretsu song: brio-filled Latin horns, old-style and new-style kayo, bar-friendly Mood Kayo and the reassuring voices of the guys. The music video surprisingly doesn't have the four put on the usual dancing show and they don't appear until the last minute of the song, instead focusing on their voices soothing a lonely young lady in a really nice living room set. That last scene though made me wonder whether the director was going for something like a pivotal part of "The Bachelorette". "Ai wo Kudasai" peaked at No. 3 on the Oricon weeklies.
Happy New Year and welcome to 2020! Also, a good friend and fellow translator is celebrating a birthday today, so I did find the perfect J-Pop song to commemorate the occasion. It also received the biggest attention on New Year's Eve when it was featured on the Kohaku Utagassen last night.
That's right...that would be "Junretsu no Happy Birthday" (Junretsu's Happy Birthday), the May 2019 single by the kayo vocal group Junretsu（純烈）. The guys had some personnel issues about a year ago, but it looks like things are back to smooth sailing.
This time, its less about the enka/Mood Kayo and more about the Latin and the dancing with "Junretsu no Happy Birthday". Apparently for that latter aspect, the choreography got the public's attention so I can only think about how active the karaoke boxes were last year...but then again, it was really about those "pincer" hand gestures.
Miyuki Kohei（幸耕平）, the same songwriter responsible for Junretsu's other hit "Propose"（プロポーズ）from 2018, was also behind words and music here. "Happy Birthday" peaked at No. 3. For all those of you who are celebrating a birthday on January 1st as well, enjoy!
One of the other NHK kayo kyoku-based shows that I've seen is the Friday afternoon "Gogo Uta"（ごごウタ）hosted by tarento/actor Kazuki Kosakai（小堺一機）, and on the episode that I caught a couple of days ago, the Mood Kayo chorus group Junretsu（純烈）made an appearance.
Noelle was the first to talk about this group which seems to be a blend of Arashi（嵐）+ Mood Kayo so you can take a look at her article on "Konya wa Romantic"（今夜はドラマチック）for the details on the guys. However, I wanted to talk here about the song that I heard on Friday, "Propose" which is their latest single from Valentine's Day this year. In fact, for some reason, the powers-that-be have released Type A and Type B recordings for the single.
What I like about "Propose" is how the melody by Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）has that old-fashioned Mood Kayo feeling combined with a big and brassy horn arrangement which almost takes things into the funky side of urban contemporary. And as Noelle hinted in her article, Junretsu isn't satisfied to merely stand around the microphones and stoically sing like the old Mood Kayo groups; leader Kazuyoshi Sakai（酒井一圭）and company like to use their choreography as well.
Smart idea to release "Propose" on Valentine's Day, too. Miyuki also wrote the lyrics which talk about the encounter of a lonely man and a woman who's afraid of love to bring about a romantic relationship together. You can pretty much squeeze a bucketful of valentines out of this song.
Speaking about songwriter Miyuki, he's had an interesting career. In the early 1970s, he was a percussionist for the rock bandTranzam（トランザム）before getting into songwriting for aidoru beginning in the later part of the decade. It looks like for the past number of years, though, he has been focusing on creating songs for enka/Mood Kayo singers.
After 23 long years - that's impressive - "Kayo Concert" has finally retired from the NHK stage as of this Tuesday, but taking its place from this April onward is the new "Uta Kon". I would think it's pretty much the same as its predecessor as it still features enka-yo as well as pop. So far the only difference is the time extension; it's going to be slightly more than an hour long. What I hope would be different, however, is that other accomplished veteran performers, like Haruo Minami (三波春夫) or Yujiro Ishihara (石原裕次郎), and other well-known showa-era songwriters, like Yoshiji Nagatsu (長津義司) or Yoshi Eguchi (江口夜詩), get to have an episode dedicated to them, similar to the Hibari Misora (美空ひばり) and Masao Koga (古賀政男) specials.
Speaking of "Kayo Concert", I'd like to talk about one of the more recent regulars on the music show, Junretsu (純烈). Now that is how you do a current-day (Mood) Kayo-Chorus group! While there is another Mood Kayo trio by the name of Hayabusa (はやぶさ), they are kinda weird and they never really stepped out of the unfortunately uncool circle the Mood Kayo groups of yore are (understandably) trapped in. Junretsu, on the other hand, take things to a whole new level - fashion-forward outfits, slick hairdos, members dancing away to the music like they are from aidoru groups or EXILE. Most importantly, they are actually cool. And what made me agreeable with them is that the lead vocalist, Yujiro Shirakawa (白川裕二郎), has a good voice for the genre he's in - smooth and fruity. It sort of helps that he's a quite a looker too.
Anyway, one of the more recent tunes that I've heard Junretsu perform besides old kayo was "Konya wa Dramatic". As its title implies, "Konya wa Dramatic" is indeed dramatic with the blaring of the trumpets accompanying a fast-paced melody with a slight Latin flair. It almost sounds aidoru if not for its somewhat Mood Kayo-like lyrics, and I could imagine someone like Hideki Saijo (西城秀樹) or Hiromi Go (郷ひろみ) tackling this song. Writing "Konya wa Dramatic" was Natsumi Watanabe (渡辺なつみ) and Meiyu Otani (大谷明裕) was in charge of the music. "Konya wa Dramatic" did respectably on the Oricon charts, peaking at 26th place and I recall it being in the top 10 on the enka-yo charts for a week or more.
Just some background information on Junretsu: They formed in 2007 at the suggestion of Kazuyoshi Sakai (酒井一圭), who's the band leader, and had their major debut in 2010 with the song "Namida no Ginza-sen" (涙の銀座線). Other members include the aforementioned Shirakawa, Ryohei Odai (小田井涼平), Yusuke Tomoi (友井雄亮), Tatsuya Hayashida (林田達也), and Shota Gogami (後上翔太). These guys are tall, with the group members' average height being 183 cm, and the tallest, Odai, stands at a staggering 188 cm! When they were in the "Kayo Concert" lineup at the beginning of the show, they usually tower over the rest.
What I thought was amusing when reading the descriptions of Sakai, Shirakawa, Odai, and Tomoi was that they all had roles as masked heroes in the Kamen Rider and Super Sentai (Power Rangers) series before their music careers. For example, Sakai was the Black Bison ranger in "Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger" (百獣戦隊ガオレンジャー) series, also known as "Power Rangers Wild Force", which is nice to know as I was a fan of this particular show when I was much younger - ain't nothing better than animals and Power Rangers!
Tonight's episode of "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）was about having a boisterous time at the bars of which there are many all over Japan. And to go along with them, there is plenty of Mood Kayo. There were quite a few of them Noelle and I have already written about, but then I came across this one that I hadn't heard before.
Kaori Mizumori（水森かおり）did the cover of "Tokyo Anna", a rumba dance of a Mood Kayo which was originally released as the 2nd single for then-17-year-old Yoshiko Ohtsu（大津美子）from Aichi Prefecture. It was quite the heady start for the singer who had just released her debut single of "Chidori no Blues"（千鳥のブルース...Plover Blues） just a couple of months before in July 1955. It became a huge hit which led to Ohtsu getting onto the 1956 Kohaku Utagassen for the first of 7 times.
"Tokyo Anna" was written by Tetsuro Fujima（藤間哲郎）and composed by Masanobu Tokuchi （渡久地政信）who acted as Ohtsu's mentor from 1953. As for the lyrics...well, the title says it all. It's about this legendary lady hitting the establishments of Ginza with the guys probably begging for a dance with her. In a way, the melody sounds somewhat like what would have been customary for a tokusatsu program. Considering that this was a song in the mid-50s, it made me wonder about what the most expensive neighbourhood of Tokyo (if not Japan) was like back then. The metropolis was still just a decade after World War II but I gather that Ginza had already become quite the happening place even then.
Here is Mizumori's rendition but on a different show and with the vocal group Junretsu（純烈）.
I’ve always liked classical music though for some reason I had never sought it out deliberately. That is, until late last year when my B.Ed.-related work exhausted me so much that the only way to get through it with my sanity intact was to have symphonies and piano concertos accompany my late hours typing up lesson plans. (I love teaching and preparing for lessons but no one in the actual field actually writes a script for those.) In the process, I got to learn a bit about some technical aspects of the music itself and its composers, though I’m still far from being an expert.
But you know what I’d like to have more of? Classical aidoru music. As much as I admire the pure form, I wouldn’t mind hearing it packaged with some sugary vocals and synthesizers. This idea sprung to mind when I listened to Seiko Matsuda’s fluffy “Pink no Mozart” and thought that the two musical worlds came together nicely in that one. Then I heard another tune that is almost entirely built on a classical piece: “Sabishinbo” (さびしんぼう…Lonely Heart) by Yasuko Tomita (富田靖子). The composition used here is Frédéric Chopin’s “Étude Op.10 No. 3 in E major”, also known as "Tristesse". You’ll recognize that melody instantly since it’s been used in numerous films and TV shows from all over the world. In case of Japanese dramas, it would often play in “101 Proposals” during scenes when Kaoru remembers her past lover. Given its iconic status, it’s not surprising that it also received an aidoru makeover in 1985 as a theme song for Nobuhiko Obayashi’s (大林宣彦) film of the same title as the song, which Tomita starred in. Masao Urino (売野雅勇) added in the lyrics while Ichizo Seo (瀬尾一三) supplied the techno synth arrangement.
I don’t know all that much about this singer/actress aside from learning that she has acted in some award-winning films such as “Bu Su” (1987) and “The Christ Of Nanjing” (1995) and has more-or-less transitioned into a supporting actress for TV dramas in the recent years. She has also done a fair bit of singing in the 80’s, including theme songs for her pictures, as Hiroko Yakushimaru and Tomoyo Harada have done. Listening to on “Sabishinbo”, she sort of reminds me of Narumi Yasuda in terms of style. You know, enchanting music with so-so yet harmless vocals. That image of her pierrot character certainly made an impression on me even though I’ve never seen the film itself. I have a feeling the song serves as a theme of her yearning for the boy she loves, judging by the plot set up in the trailer.
Here's Chopin's original for all you wistful romantics.
