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.
For those viewers of anime from way back, there was the 1980s "Miyuki"（みゆき）starring a pre-aidoru Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）as the main character. As well, the show was also well known for folk-pop duo H2O's contributions to the theme songs with the opener "10% no Ame Yohou" (１０％の雨予報）and then the two ending themes "Omoide ga Ippai"（思い出がいっぱい）and "Goodbye Season"（Goodbye シーズン）. "Omoide ga Ippai" has gone on to become one of the evergreen representatives of graduation-themed tunes.
Well, in between the two H2O enders, there was a second ending theme which showed up on the TV screen for a period of several weeks. Titled "Summer Holiday", this was sung by Michiko Kawai（河合美智子） as a seasonally-reflective romantic number and its old-fashioned standard-style arrangement had me thinking of early Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and Kaoru Sudo（須藤薫）. Thanks to Masahiko Yoshida's（吉田雅彦）melody and Katsu Hoshi's（星勝）arrangement, it's so Beach-Blanket-Bingo tenderhearted that I can sink a fork into the song and take out slices. Tsuzuru Nakasato（中里綴）was responsible for the lyrics, and for Kawai, this was her 2nd single from July 1983.
My previous article on the obscure song "Shonan Afternoon"（湘南アフタヌーン）by Maria Minami（南マリア）talked about its summery nature while its arrangement sounded like something from the 1950s or 1960s.
Well, it's been a while since I've posted anything by the pop duo H2O (the last time was back in 2021 for their "Tsugi no Magarikado"（次のまがり角）) , and their 7th single "Kaze no Romance" (Windy Romance) from June 1984 is also a rather summery number. But this time, the arrangement by Katsu Hoshi（星勝）, who was probably helping out full-time with Anzen Chitai's（安全地帯）songs at this point, and the original melody by Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）from the band Off-Course（オフコース）wasn't going for the nostalgic line, instead pursuing the contemporary H2O vibe of light and shimmery pop.
Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）, the future Svengali behind Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）and then AKB48, provided the lyrics for "Kaze no Romance", an H2O tune that this time doesn't have anything to do with an anime and nor does it sound like a minor-key ballad. It's all very sunny and convertible ride-worthy. The song would also find itself on the duo's fourth and final album"Next Corner", released in February 1985.
It was a dozen years ago, during Year One of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", when I delightedly wrote about my re-discovery of folk/New Music group Higurashi's（日暮し）"Aki no Tobira"（秋の扉）, a song which I hadn't been able to identify on my crackling radio recording of it on "Sounds of Japan" for around thirty years. It still remains one of my favourites among autumn kayo and there are plenty of those tunes in the Great Japanese Songbook because apparently the Japanese have loved to create and sing about the death of romance in the cooler season.
"Aki no Tobira" was Higurashi's 8th and penultimate single released in September 1978. The B-side is "Tabi no Douwa" (A Fairy Tale for a Trip) which was created from a collaboration between Higurashi co-vocalist and guitarist Seiichi Takeda（武田清一）and arranger Katsu Hoshi（星勝）as was the case for the A-side (unfortunately back then being so early in the blog's history, I apparently hadn't made it a custom to mention songwriters in the first few months of KKP😓).
Compared to the feeling of standing on a hill and letting the breeze flow around me when I listen to "Aki no Tobira", "Tabi no Douwa" is very much more of a moving tune (still lots of breeziness though); just get in the car and drive well into the countryside or along the seashore. At first, when I read the title for the song, I assumed that it was going to be some tenderhearted ballad for children since "douwa" can also mean "children's story". However, Takeda's lyrics don't mention any moppets at all, and it's really about someone driving alone wishing that a now-absent passenger seat was still occupied by that special someone but for reasons unknown, the person will no longer be there. Still, the feeling is that time and the driver are moving on in all aspects of the word.
I guess Kayo Grace Kyoku and Mr. Calico are waiting for that bus or train while it's raining cats and dogs (no offense to Mr. Calico). Wasn't aware that Kayo's pet and manager was willing to go au naturel but perhaps it's Wednesday. But yeah, yesterday was one for the ages, meteorologically speaking (although we've been getting warned now that the situation will be normalizing over the next few decades) as the Greater Toronto Area got walloped with a month's worth of rain within a few hours yesterday. Half of the city got its power knocked out and a lot of streets including our Don Valley Parkway were transformed into bodies of water. Even hip-hop singerDrake's palatial mansion in the northern part of Toronto suffered major flooding in the basement.
Well, we're all drying ourselves off from the Storm of 2024 today, and as such, I've decided to start today's edition of KKP with something rain-themed. The blog has included many songs along that theme such as Iruka's（イルカ）"Ame no Monogatari"（雨の物語）and Chisato Moritaka's（森高千里）"Ame"（雨）.
Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）wrote and composed his 2nd single for release in July 1972, "Kasa ga nai"(I Have No Umbrella) with Katsu Hoshi（星勝）handling the arrangements. Incidentally, I first heard this song (without knowing anything about it) when Inoue himself appeared on an episode of the Fuji-TV comedy-variety show "Tunnels no Minna-san no Okage desu"（とんねるずのみなさんのおかげです）to goof about with The Tunnels. With the three of them decked out in exaggerated versions of Inoue's old 1970s big hair, it was a bit jarring to hear the singer himself blurt out something about suicide in that toothy grin of his, but then that was the only word I could really understand from the lyrics at that time so I had no context.
As it turns out though, "Kasa ga nai" wasn't about suicide despite the rather melancholy folksy melody. It was about a young man reading about the suicide rate growing in Japan but then throwing out all thoughts of society's ills and wringing his hands instead on the fact that he really wanted to see his girlfriend but didn't have an umbrella to get to her place despite the storm happening outside. From what I've read on the J-Wiki writeup regarding "Kasa ga nai", Inoue was taking a mildly sarcastic approach as he created one of his trademark tunes at a time when the student protest movements were still pushing through with folk songs being one of the musical weapons in the arsenal. However, by the time that the song finally got out onto record store shelves, folk music had started losing its political edge and became something more self-centered in the New Music sphere of things. So, it ironically went from being a satirical joust to a harbinger of the times, and Inoue admitted that had never been his intent with this song. Ahhh....oops?
"Kasa ga nai" peaked at No. 69 on Oricon but it also ended up as a track on Inoue's debut album"Danzetsu"（断絶...Severance） which was released in May 1972. The album was a Top 10 finisher by coming in at No. 8 on the weeklies but it eventually became the No. 7 album of 1974.
For all of those Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）fans as well as any casual purveyors of Japanese pop and rock in the 1980s, do you remember "Remember to Remember"? Yes, I'm partially being a smart aleck here but I am indeed also being serious since the Hokkaido band did come up with their January 1983 first album with that very title. And as the link indicates, I also devoted an article to this debut release especially in the light that this original LP was rather proto in that it had come out before Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二） and his band really hit the big time with "Wine-Red no Kokoro"（ワインレッドの心）later in the year.
As I've mentioned in the past, I've always been fascinated by the early days of any legendary singer or band since it's frequently been the case that they hadn't sounded in the same way that we've known them in their prime. Case in point: Anzen Chitai's 2nd single "I'll Be On My Way" from October 1982 which was also placed onto "Remember to Remember". In my article on the album, I indicated that it didn't quite sound like the Anzen Chitai that a lot of us fans knew.
One other thing that I've mentioned in the past is in the form of a catchphrase: Never forget those B-sides! In the case of "I'll Be On My Way", that was "First Love Twice". The charismatic Tamaki did compose the tune with the band and familiar Anzen Chitai face Katsu Hoshi（星勝）handling the arrangement, but this time, it was singer-songwriter Kei Ogura（小椋佳）who provided the lyrics of getting that second chance at love. "First Love Twice" also has a similar energy to its A-side but over here, there seems to be that feeling of transition from the proto-atypical "I'll Be On My Way" to that famous atmospheric sound of Anzen Chitai that marked "Wine-Red no Kokoro" and their subsequent hit records.
"First Love Twice" didn't make it onto any of the original albums by the band but it would get onto a couple of their BEST compilations: the 2005 "Anzen Chitai Complete Best" and the 1994"Anzen Chitai Another Collection Mishuuroku Kyoku Shuu"（安全地帯 アナザー・コレクション -アルバム未収録曲集-...Album-Excluded Song Collection）.
Listening to some of the material by the late Eri Kojima（小島恵理）, I sometimes wonder why the singer-songwriter never became quite as big as some of her contemporaries such as Junko Yagami（八神純子）. She had the vocals, the spark and the spunk but for whatever reason, she's been someone that I only got to discover because I was doing the blog many years later. Again, there isn't a whole lot of information about her.
I had to dig around my usual sources to find the data regarding Kojima's 1982 single"Urenokori" (Old Maid) and that included the search engine images feature where I found out that she had created both the A-side and the B-side, "Magical Situation". Katsu Hoshi（星勝）arranged "Urenokori" while "Magical Situation" was arranged by Kojima herself. The above video has both songs.
"Urenokori" is reminiscent of a Yagami song during her own disco/City Pop phase and the bass is going especially nuts along with the insidious electric guitar wailing away. I would hardly think that Kojima looks anything like an old maid on the cover, but her character in "Urenokori" is revving up to stand up for herself after being given the urenokori label and as someone who has been told that she's too late of a bloomer. Maybe she's going to show some major dance moves on the floor or razzle-dazzle a whole bunch of guys at the bar. Meanwhile, "Magical Situation" at 3:48 has that 70s/80s West Coast rock anthem vibe and it's the song where Kojima's vocals really shine through.
Welcome to another Urban Contemporary Friday on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". I would have started earlier but I had to watch the finale for Season 3 of "Star Trek: Picard". Not a dry eye in the house.😉
Anyways, why don't we start off with some sunny and summery Margaritaville-type music such as singer-songwriter Yosui Inoue's（井上陽水）"Feminist"? A track from his September 1979 7th album"Sneaker Dancer"（スニーカーダンサー）, I should also add that there is some disco in there, too. Either way, it comes off as a travel-friendly City Pop that was written and composed by Inoue with Katsu Hoshi（星勝）providing the arrangement.
Looking at those lyrics, it sounds like Inoue is singing from the point of view of a footloose and fancy-free lady who's not much for feminists but does like her pianists. She likes to keep things simple and fun. Maybe that was indeed the atmosphere back in the late 1970s going into the early 1980s. As for the album itself, "Sneaker Dancer" hit No. 3 on Oricon.
Got another potential Noah's Ark situation in the weather department with loads of rain on the way. Ugh! Y'know...spring can actually involve sun, too!
As you know, I've often relied Wikipedia and J-Wiki for information regarding singers and songs, and yep I do realize that when it comes to academic writing, neither source has been greatly admired as the ultimate reference due to their amorphous nature. So if there are footnotes are available in the Wiki articles, I try to refer to those original sources.
Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）has been one of those underrated (by my estimation anyways) singers whose information has slowly grown from the small trickle that it once had been to something a little more plentiful. Indeed, I just discovered some rather new data when I checked her J-Wiki entry with the original source being a February 1985 issue of "Shuukan Terebi Bangumi"（週刊テレビ番組...Weekly Television Programs）. I knew that her name was actually a stage name with her real name being Shizuko Fujimoto（藤本.志津子）of Hokkaido (although that information has now been deleted for some reason). What I hadn't known was how she became Ruiko Kurahashi.
Well, according to the magazine, she had been scouted by a record company and undertook about 18 months of singing lessons before making her debut with "Glass no Yesterday"（ガラスのYesterday）in 1981. It turns out that the lyricist for that first single, Fumiko Okada（岡田富美子）, had also helped the young lass in her training and was the one to come up with Ms. Fujimoto's stage name. Okada's favourite author at the time was Yumiko Kurahashi（倉橋由美子）whose novels' characters were often androgynous, and apparently that was the image that the singer projected (although I personally felt that she was still quite feminine). As well, Okada plucked out the French boy's name of Louis and added the Japanese female name suffix of "-ko" to form Ruiko Kurahashi. Maybe I can extrapolate that Okada may have also been a fan of the manga "The Rose of Versailles" as well as an admirer of the Takarazuka Troupe.
In any case, Okada wrote a number of songs for Kurahashi including this B-side, "Zenmaijikake no Machi"(Clockwork Town), to her 5th single, "Tsumi na Ame"（罪な雨）from December 1983. Unlike the languid melancholy of that A-side which was a quintessential characteristic of a lot of Kurahashi's discography, "Zenmaijikake no Machi" shows off the singer's occasional dives into something quite upbeat and breezy. Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, who's often been associated with the City Pop groove, provides some straight pop here with Katsu Hoshi（星勝）providing the country-ish bounce.
Because I've only gotten a mix of BEST albums and a few of her increasingly rare original albums, it's probable that a lot of her singles' B-sides never saw the light of day outside of those 45s. So I'm very grateful whenever I encounter them online. My thanks to uploader Nameless Songs.
Well, I'm obviously still here after those ominous warnings I gave in my final article last night about that huge Holiday storm, but how long I stay up today is still up in the air. The heavy rains have subsided but we're still awaiting the dreaded winds and snow which may take down the power lines, so Toronto and the surrounding vicinity are still not in the clear by any means. However, I will try to get my four in.
And it's on that note that I deliver yet another case of sad news from Japanese music. Before I turned in last night, I read on the Yahoo Japan news feed and J-Wiki that drummer Yuuji Tanaka（田中裕二）of the pop/rock band Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）had passed away at the age of 65 on November 17th 2022 according to a December 23rd (Japan time) announcement on the band's website. Tanaka had been undergoing treatment since November 8th for a cerebral hemorrhage. On the same day as that announcement came word that Anzen Chitai would be appearing on the upcoming 73rd edition of the Kohaku Utagassen as a special guest so there will be some poignancy to this performance.
On that point, I wanted to start off today's urban contemporary session on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with an Anzen Chitai song in tribute to Tanaka. A few years ago, I put up an article regarding the band's first single from February 1982, "Moegiiro no Snap"（萠黄色のスナップ）, and so today, I'm tackling the B-side, "Ichido dake" (Just Once).
I have taken an instant liking to "Ichido dake" although the protagonist within the lyrics written by the band and Namiko Saki（崎南海子）seems to be a rather persistent and maybe odious or strangely charming fellow bothering a young lady for a few minutes (and if successful with the "courtship", more) of her time. I've seen scenes of those young guys in real life and in anime going on the girl-hunting. For all I know, the guy in "Ichido dake" could be a smiling Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）himself. The music by vocalist Tamaki and arrangement by Katsu Hoshi（星勝）is a cool button-down strut on the pavements of the metropolis with a mixture of City Pop and rock.
As I mentioned in last night's final article regarding Original Love's"X'mas NO HI", it's always interesting to hear the very early days of a long-existing band or singer. Maybe it's just me but there is something a bit different to "Ichido dake" compared to the hits that Anzen Chitai would come up with going further into the 1980s with that distinctive band sound. Still, I can hear some of that here, too, along with Tamaki's amazing vocals. Incidentally, "Ichido dake" never showed up on any of the band's original albums but is present on their September 1994 BEST compilation, "Anzen Chitai ~ Another Collection: Album Mishuuroku Kyokushuu"（安全地帯 アナザー・コレクション -アルバム未収録曲集-... Non-Album Song Collection） which includes a lot of their B-sides.
To finish off, I found this performance from a 1997 concert featuring Anzen Chitai singing a more unplugged rendition of "I Love You Kara Hajimeyou"（I Love Youからはじめよう...Let's Begin With I Love You) . This time, though, instead of Tamaki, it's Tanaka doing the vocals. The band will be performing this very song on the Kohaku in a little over a week. My condolences to Tanaka's family, friends and fans.
For everyone out there, Happy Father's Day! Hopefully all of you had some good times today with the old man whether it be through a good meal, a baseball game or a movie. My brother's family came on over last night and we shared some tasty fish n' chips, and this morning, I took my parents to the local diner and treated them to some breakfast.
To be honest, I wasn't sure whether I would find another father-themed kayo out there, but when I put the appropriate words into the search engine, immediately popped out "I am a father" by veteran rocker Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾）. If I'm not mistaken, all of the KKP entries for Hamada are from some decades earlier, but his 36th single here was released in June 2005 (the day before Father's Day incidentally) and it was also included on his 16th album, "My First Love" which came out a month later.
Hamada is in fine fettle here with "I am a father". His lyrics are very self-effacing with them insisting that the guy is no Superman, superstar or any sort of hero, but he is indeed a father. However, the hard-charging music certainly paints the papa in a heroic light especially with all of his responsibilities as a working guy providing for the family. Katsu Hoshi（星勝）was responsible for the arrangement.
Unfortunately, I couldn't find the official music video that starred Hamada's good friend and actor/singer Saburo Tokito（時任三郎）, and I recall that he was once voted onto a Top 10 list of desirable father types. "I am a father" hit No. 5 on Oricon.
From time to time, I've heard the Japanese phrase "akage no..."（赤毛の）which means "the red-haired...". Now, I think that a lot of folks in Japan would immediately bring to mind "Akage no Anne"（赤毛のアン）which translates into "Red-Haired Anne" but is actually Lucy Maud Montgomery's famous "Anne of Green Gables". However, since I first knew Anne Shirley under the latter title, "akage no..." doesn't have me think of her first, but instead, the mysterious red-haired girl that Charlie Brown has loved from afar. I'm glad to hear that the round-headed kid finally got to give her that peck on the cheek.
And as such, when I first heard Takao Kisugi's（来生たかお）"Akage no Rinjin"(The Red-Haired Neighbour), a happy-go-lucky New Music tune, I couldn't help but feel that a similar red-haired girl and her family moved into the lyrics. Well, specifically, Kisugi's sister, Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）, wrote the words about that red-haired girl, Miss Daniel, and clan from abroad moving into a postwar Tokyo suburb, gaining the curiosity of at least one young boy as he wondered about life and people overseas.
It's a happy but somewhat poignant tune, composed by Takao and arranged by Katsu Hoshi（星勝）, which has me assuming that the boy never really got to know Miss Daniel all that well. But here's hoping that the sighting was enough for the lad to make good on his ambitions abroad. In any case, "Akage no Rinjin" was the second track on Kisugi's debut album"Asai Yume"（浅い夢）from October 1976, but a single version of the song was later released in August 1978.
A few years ago, I wrote about a popular women's wrestling tandem known as Beauty Pair（ビューティ・ペア）consisting of Jackie Sato（ジャッキー佐藤）and Maki Ueda（マキ上田）who also released some songs. Then afterwards, although I can't think of the name right now, there was also an aidoru who decided to change her career and go into the wrestling world as she still put out singles.
But way before this blog, and in fact, back in my university days in the 1980s, I'd bought a compilation tape from the Chinatown record store Wah Yueh which had a plethora of J-Pop tunes, and one of them was by a singer by the name of Devil Masami（デビル雅美）nee Masami Yoshida（吉田雅美）. With that name, I'd assumed that this was some sort of hard rock singer but instead her rendition of the song "J" was actually quite tenderhearted. Still I had assumed that singing was her main profession and it wouldn't be until many years later that I realized that Devil Masami was a professional wrestler who started out in All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling. The other interesting point was that the Fukuoka Prefecture-born wrestler had a pretty darn fine voice for singing and not just for "J", as I know now.
In fact, Devil Masami has a small discography of 5 singles (of which "J" was the final one) and 1 album titled "Rain of Tears" produced by Mark Goldenberg. Released in December 1985, one of the tracks is "Star Jazz Waltz" which is quite the polished and classy mellow tune, and again I'm impressed by her delicately husky and elegant vocals. In comparison with her nom de guerre, she certainly doesn't sound devilish here; quite the opposite, actually.
"Star Jazz Waltz" was written by Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）and composed by Katsu Hoshi（星勝）, according to the JASRAC database, and though I'm not quite sure about the jazz part, it does have that waltz-like lilt in the arrangement. I'd even say that this could fit the Quiet Storm sub-genre. So, I'll have to see if I can track down "J" now.
Back in the spring, I contributed an article for actress Michiko Kawai（河合美智子）under her enka singer Aurora Teruko（オーロラ輝子）persona because of a hit kayo she had in the mid-1990s, and I mentioned that she had once sung some pop stuff early in her career.
Well, the commercial is all too brief but Kawai had her film debut in 1983 with "Shonben Rider"（ションベン・ライダー）. There is unfortunately no Wikipedia entry about this movie involving junior high school kids who run into some yakuza but there is a French Wikipedia article (albeit really sparse) that has the title translated as "P. P. Rider" and I'd say that this would be accurate. If you understood that immediately, then you're in! Ahem. In any case, both the trailer above and J-Wiki state that the movie was a double feature alongside the anime "Urusei Yatsura: Only You"（うる星やつら オンリー・ユー）.
The movie release parlayed Kawai's debut with her first single"Watashi~Takan na Koro" (When I Was Impressionable) which was also the theme song for "Shonben Rider". The single made itself known in January 1983, about a month before the movie's release.
Kawai played the role of Bruce, a tomboy who insisted that she wasn't a girl and always referred to herself as "boku", the informal masculine form of the first person rather than the female equivalent, "atashi". The cover of "Watashi~Takan na Koro" indeed has the teenage Kawai in some short-cropped hair but I think that she looks more pixyish than tomboyish.
The lush ballad style of the song instantly struck me as something that was created by the brother-sister songwriting duo of Etsuko and Takao Kisugi（来生えつこ・来生たかお）, and sure enough, it was indeed the Kisugi siblings behind it with Katsu Hoshi（星勝）taking care of the arrangement. In fact, Hoshi was also behind the soundtrack for "Shonben Rider". Actually, the involvement of the Kisugis was interesting because the way that Kawai sounds and the sound of "Watashi~Takan na Koro" are similar to another more famous prior Kisugi creation for a young actress/singer with a similar look and singing style: Hiroko Yakushimaru（薬師丸ひろ子）and her "Sailor Fuku to Kikanjuu"（セーラー服と機関銃）.
I've been meaning to get a Rabi Nakayama（中山ラビ）song up here for some time but I never got around to it until today. And now, my first article on this Tokyo singer-songwriter has taken on some poignancy on finding out from her J-Wiki profile that Nakayama had passed away on July 4th this year.
Born Hitomi Miyamoto（宮本ひとみ）in 1948, some of her early musical experiences included going to see The Beatles in concert in Tokyo in 1966 and then hearing the songs of Bob Dylan in her high school English class. In 1968, she then became so inspired by new folk singer Nobuyoshi Okabayashi（岡林信康）, who was called "the Bob Dylan of Japan", along with other artists of the genre that she decided to take up the guitar and perform live, eventually performing mainly in the Kansai region. During that time, she performed covers of Dylan's "Blowin' In The Wind", "The House of the Rising Sun" by The Animals, and Sachiko Nishida's（西田佐知子）"Coffee Rumba"（コーヒー・ルンバ）. She would then make her major debut through Polydor in December 1972 with the album "Watashi'tte Konna"（私ってこんな...This is Who I Am）.
Her live house performances of Bob Dylan songs which had been translated by poet Yo Nakayama（中山容） got Miyamoto to take on the stage name of Nakayama although I still don't know why she went with the first name of Rabi. Also, these performances ended up in having her being called "the female Bob Dylan".
Several albums and singles were released by October 1980 when Nakayama released the single "Komatta Onna" (Woman In Trouble) and the accompanying album "Aeba Saiko"（会えば最高...It'd Be Great If We Met）. Now, when I first heard her songs via New J Channel and some of the videos posted on YouTube, I'd thought that she was always in the City Pop realm before realizing her folk roots, but I wasn't too surprised since I've known a number of Japanese folk singers who made the jump to the urban contemporary for at least a while.
With "Komatta Onna", though, I'm not so sure that this is so much City Pop than it is a New Music tune spiced a bit with some urban contemporary flakes. It is quite the catchy shuffle with the big drum beats and the electric piano dance following Nakayama's folksy and slightly growly vocals. Rabi sings her creation about a woman who realizes that she's wasting her life on man after man but can't shake the habit. There's also something with the vocoder-like instrument that hints at Billy Joel's"The Stranger".
Nakayama stopped performing and recording in 1987 but returned to the music business a decade later after the source of her music career, Yo Nakayama, passed away in March 1997. She continued to perform and record live albums until 2020 when she was diagnosed with cancer and then mycosis the following year after which she passed away at the age of 72. Her real name was only made public after her death.
I only visited the Tora-san Museum in Shibamata, Tokyo once near the end of my days in Japan. Having watched many of the movies in the long-running "Otoko wa Tsurai yo"（男はつらいよ...It's Tough Being a Man） series as a boy at the Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre, I figured that I had to go there at least once and I wasn't disappointed. I got to see a lot of the mockups of the various sets used in the movies, including the one for Tora-ya, the confectionary that is home and workplace for Torajiro's family as you can see above.
When it comes to the folk and down-home New Music songs in Japan back in the 1970s, I always envision settings such as Tora-ya since similar places popped up in the various television dramas and often such songs were used as the themes. Mind you, I don't think band Higurashi's（日暮）May 1978 single"Kokoro no Yane" (Roof of the Heart) was ever used as a theme song for a home drama but once again the hominess of the melody reminds me of those comfortable touch-base restaurants and old-fashioned houses back then.
The lyrics were provided by Higurashi guitarist/vocalist Seiichi Takeda（武田清一）and Naomi Sugimura（杉村尚美）tenderly sings about a woman openly willing to share her heart with the one that she has feelings for. As that wonderful cover for the single shows, there was at least one television drama that had the characters ending up on the roof of their house for that heart-to-heart talk, and I guess that was perhaps an inspiration for the song. I love Sugimura's singing and the chorus coming in during the refrain along with the electric guitar.
Katsu Hoshi（星勝）about whom I mentioned just last week as part of the Flying Kitty Band was responsible for the light and happy music and arrangement. He also had a part to play in the success of 80s rock group Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）in the next decade.
A couple of years ago, I wrote about Flying Kitty Band (フライング・キティ・バンド）, a trio which consisted of singer-songwriter Kei Ogura (小椋佳）, Hiromi Yasuda (安田裕美）and Katsu Hoshi (星勝）. I mentioned that I had known Ogura especially as this writer of tenderhearted kayo for singers such as Hibari Misora（美空ひばり） before realizing that he was once a member of this New Music group which released just one album, "5･4･3･2･1･0", in September 1977. The concept for the album was about a kid and his dreams to head for space.
For that first article for Flying Kitty Band, the song was "Boseki wo Sora ni"(墓石を空に）, a 1970s AOR tune whose cheeriness belies that rather morose title which can be translated as "Tombstone to the Sky". However, there were two other songs, "Boku wa Uchuu Hikoushi" (I'm An Astronaut), Parts 1 and 2 which were Tracks 2 and 5 respectively on the album.
As opposed to the AOR for "Boseki wo Sora ni", the totality of "Boku wa Uchuu Hikoushi", which is provided by k kaz in the video above, is about the kid and his buddies' desire to go to all of the nearby stars and constellations such as Sirius and Pegasus within a folksy and swinging French jazz milieu (although I really hope that the capsule doesn't have any boxes of Gitanes laying around...children shouldn't be smoking those!). It's quite the happy way to send off the junior astronauts and it ought to take the edge off during launch.
Ogura was responsible for the lyrics while Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）brought the happy melody and Hoshi arranged everything.
I was reading on one Ameblo blog where the author believed that this track from Makiko Takada's（高田真樹子）1977 2nd album"Fukigen na Tenshi"（不機嫌な天使...Moody Angel） had been ahead of its time, and if it had been released later in the 1980s, it probably would have garnered a bigger response.
Not quite sure if I agree with that opinion since I think "Okuri Kaze" (The Blowing Wind) sounds just right for its time. The chorus, the electric guitar and the keyboards make the song a pretty quintessential 1970s light and mellow number, perfect for a stroll along the sunny beach. However, now that the comparison has presented itself, I wonder what an 80s-arranged version of the song would have sounded like.
I just talked about him a couple of days ago since he's due to retire at the end of 2021, but lyricist Kei Ogura（小椋佳）was responsible for the words for "Okuri Kaze" while Katsu Hoshi（星勝）took care of the music. According to that same blog, Hoshi was also helping out on backing chorus. By the way, I also wrote about another track from "Fukigen na Tenshi" a couple of years back, the cool "Yuutsu Denwa"（憂鬱電話）.
And pray tell, what was in your lunch today? Mine was a couple of hot dogs and a couple of Timbits with milk. Nope, not exactly the healthiest I've ever eaten but it was tasty.😈
The regular Wednesday 12:30 pm slot on TV Japan is devoted to NHK's "Sara Meshi"（サラメシ...Lunch ON!）, the show that focuses on what the working hoi polloi have for their lunch. Although the above episode isn't it, yesterday, "Sara Meshi" had their occasional ending segment devoted to a famous figure who has recently left this mortal coil, and this time around, it was the late gospel singer Yuka Kamebuchi（亀淵友香）who had passed away in 2017.
In matching with the show's theme of presenting lunch, "Sara Meshi" provided the viewers with where Kamebuchi had often gone for her lunch, and it was a venerable 300-year-old Tokyo restaurant famous for its unajuu（うな重）, or grilled marinated eel on rice. Just to let you see what unajuu is all about, here is the YouTube channel Oishin Blog（美味しんブログ）with its own presentation on unajuu at another restaurant. I do miss my unajuu since I'm no longer living in Japan, and it was a dish that I first discovered on that 1981 graduation trip. I had never thought that something which looks like a snake zipping through the ocean could be so tasty.
Early in Kamebuchi's career which went all the way back to the late 1960s, she had yet to get into gospel full time and as my first article on her will indicate, she was exploring New Music. I have found this jaunty tune called "Zig Zag ~ Yoidore Tenshi no Polka" (Drunken Angel Polka) which had been initially recorded onto her March 1974 debut album"Touch Me, Yuka".
With some interesting combination of early 20th-century clarinet jazz and late 60s/early 70s rock, in a way, it's an aural slab of marinated eel with its own flavours of sweet and savory. Maybe the titular angel was going through some major hallucinations since as the song goes merrily along, the rock side of things gets increasingly more out there. In the end, I'd say that "Zig Zag" is well-titled and deserves that category of New Music of the 1970s.
The Kisugi siblings, lyricist Etsuko and composer Takao（来生えつこ・来生たかお）, took care of "Zig Zag" with Katsu Hoshi（星勝）arranging everything. I think that there is something quite Takao about the melody because I recall him adding some of that swing and sophistication to at least some of his creations. The song was also released as Kamebuchi's 2nd single, either in 1975 according to J-Wiki or 1977 according to the YouTube uploader.
"But what I really want to do is sing down-home pop/rock".
After many years on the shelf, I took out Koji Tamaki's（玉置浩二）4th solo album"Love Song Blue" from December 1994 and popped it into the stereo last night. My reaction was "Geez, why haven't I played this some more?"
It's a fine album to be sure with not only Tamaki's proven amazing voice but also a variety of genres among the tracks. By the way, that quote above is simply something that I made up thinking that it could be what the Hokkaido-born lead vocalist for 80s rock band Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）would have said when comparing his band output of moody music in the early 1980s to the songs that he has crafted as a soloist since then...songs that I see and hear as material that I would love while Tamaki is entertaining a close group of friends around a campfire or in front of a cottage in a snowy hinterland.
"Love Song Blue" had Tamaki writing and composing all of the songs with some help by Ko Tanaka（田村コウ）on some of the tracks while Akira Sudo（須藤晃）and Katsu Hoshi（星勝）co-produced along with the singer. I already have one track from the album represented which is the romantic "Futari nara"（ふたりなら）.
The album begins with "Seigi no Hero"（正義の味方...Hero of Justice） which is pretty much as it says on the title: an inspiring start to the album with Tamaki singing and encouraging folks to do their best at the right thing. It's got the brassy synths pushing the way and the arrangement reminds me a little of the first track from Anzen Chitai's"VI" album, "I Love You Kara Hajimeyou"（I Love Youからはじめよう...Let's Begin With I Love You) . This was actually the coupling song to Tamaki's 9th single from June 1995, "STAR", but I think this would have made a nice theme tune for any J-Drama or even a tokusatsu series.
Track 2 is "Ii Kao de"（いい顔で...Put on a Good Face）, another encouraging track although this time, it's all about the game of love, and somewhat differently from what I was describing some paragraphs above about Tamaki going for that down-home approach, the setting is more downtown with some real horns as the singer exhorts folks not to sweat any temporary setbacks and just go for it and have some fun while at it. It was with "Ii Kao de" that I started comparing "Love Song Blue" as the solo Tamaki equivalent of what Anzen Chitai was doing with their "V" album...pushing through the envelope away from that distinctive sound that they had broken through with in their earlier albums.
Seeing Tamaki perform in the video above is probably how he really likes to let loose at a concert when compared to his Anzen Chitai performances on the music ranking shows at least when being stoic as possible was the usual performance stance. And I mean, he would have to let loose for this good ol' rock-n-roll"Aishiteru yo"（愛してるよ...Love Ya） which seems to be depicting one of the most passive-aggressive courtships that I've ever heard.
(karaoke version)
"ROOTS" is Tamaki at his charismatic down-and-sultry as I think his lyrics are describing some major boot-knockin' that was going on back in the day. However, the surrounding music also puts in hints of peril...sounds like the plot of a 1980s romance-thriller.
"Saikou desho?"（最高でしょ?...Isn't it the Best?）is an interesting mesh of bluesy jazz and rock as Tamaki sings about a fellow's week of making up and making out with his beloved. Along with "Ii Kao de", this extravaganza brought thoughts of comparisons between "Love Song Blue" and Anzen Chitai's"V" as I was listening to the melodic odyssey taking things out of the intimate jazz supper club in New York City and into the craziness of the Manhattan streets and back again. Tamaki is one artist who's not content giving a straight-ahead delivery; he loves to play around with his voice and the surrounding musicians in a jam session style. There's probably no difference between him in the recording booth or on a stadium stage.
One more track that I will provide here is "Aishitenjanai"（愛してんじゃない...You Still Love Her, Don't You?）which I was left thinking about wondering about how to categorize it. There is some of that jazz in there but it isn't Big Band or even Cool Jazz. Then I thought it was more in the old-fashioned pop standard genre involving folks like Bobby Darin and Michael Buble who've loved to put their hearts right on their sleeves when performing. As for the story in the lyrics, some poor schlep gets thrown out of the house after a fight with the significant other and would love to forget the whole wreck of a relationship except that he's haunted by the title itself. Just another night in the city.
There are a few more tracks on "Love Song Blue" including two that were a single and its coupling song but I will leave that to separate articles. The album peaked at No. 18 on Oricon, and as I mentioned off the top, Tamaki has provided some of that down-home music but with "Love Song Blue", he's also shown himself to be as much of a showman in a nightclub as he has in front of a campfire with buddies. Nice to make its acquaintance again.
Just finished off writing an article on a commenter-recommended number on his own Happy Song list, and this is also from another commenter with a similar name of Mike with his own smile-creating summer tune.
I'll first let Mike himself talk about this obscure group called Kaja（カヤ）through the comments that he posted:
I suppose my list would start off with “Marine Blue Sky” by Kaja: I listened to it just before reading this post, and it always makes me think of summertime, always puts a smile on my face. Kaja (no relation to the Kajagoogoo spinoff) were another Yamaha Festival act. Award winner at the 19th Popcon in May of 1980, and a finalist at the 11th World Popular Song Festival in November of that year. It seems they only ever recorded one more single, 1981’s“Anata e no sanka.”
Aside from Mike's information, I couldn't find anything else new about this band aside from the fact that they lasted between 1978 and 1982. Their debut single was indeed "Marine Blue Sky" which has been noted on Hip Tank Records as a 1981 release, and from their originating year of 1978, I can assume that Kaja did a lot more touring about than recording singles or albums.
"Marine Blue Sky" is a late 1970s/early 1980s bright summer day of a song, perfect for that drive in the Toyota along the coast from Tokyo to Hakone. There is the disco beat and the resonant soulful vocals by Kayoko Ono（小野賀曜子）who also provided the lyrics of indeed escaping from the city and down to the beaches. As for the melody, that was composed by Norihiko Tachibana（立花紀彦）, the guitarist for Kaja (and the fellow whose YouTube channel has provided this song), and it sounds like the perfect summery tune that I would hear on Japanese radio of those times and also on a number of seasonal commercials. The arrangement was taken care of by Katsu Hoshi（星勝）, formerly of the Group Sounds band The Mops, who I first knew for his work on Anzen Chitai's（安全地帯）"IV" LP. He's also contributed to a number of other singers such as the mysterious Takako Mamiya（間宮貴子）.
As for the other members of Kaja, they are Tohru Uryu（瓜生徹）on synths, Yasumasa Ito（伊藤保正）on bass, Shinji Yoshihara（吉原慎二）on piano, and Takayuki Fujiwara（藤原隆幸）on drums, and Kenji Ito（伊藤賢二）on guitar. Uryu especially lets things rip on his instruments bringing some good ol' nostalgic sounds. I do wonder if "Marine Blue Sky" had ever been used for a JAL or ANA commercial.
