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, welcome to February 2026. It's hard to believe that one-twelfth of the year has already sped by but for those sports fans, there will be a delicious glut of events to look forward to. The one around the corner (as in the end of this business week) is the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.
Interestingly enough, Italy also held the Winter Olympics twenty years ago in 2006 in Turin/Torino. Of course, all Japanese broadcasters for the Games had to have some sort of theme song. I actually wrote about the one for the upcoming Games in Milan-Cortina, back number's"Doushite mo Doushite mo"（どうしてもどうしても）on behalf of NHK's coverage, early last month.
For the 2006 Games, TBS brought in Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）February 2004 22nd single,"Masshiro" (Pure White) as the station's official theme song. It's not one of those supremely rousing firebrand sort of Olympic tune but it's a relatively quiet and reassuring number for all involved in a "Hey, everything will be alright. It's all in the hips" sort of way. Plus, as usual with Oda's voice, there is that lovely creamy texture to it so I often think of hot chocolate with that big white marshmallow in the middle.
Now, some viewers might be thinking that TBS was just a little too early with the Olympic themes since "Masshiro" was released a full two years before the Torino Games. Well, that was because it hadn't meant to be an Olympic theme initially. It was actually released as a single to commemorate its status as the theme to a TBS drama which was broadcast during that time titled "Sore wa Totsuzen Arashi no you ni"（それは、突然、嵐のように…Suddenly, It Was Like a Storm） starring Makiko Esumi（江角マキコ）. It peaked at No. 4 on Oricon.
A few weeks ago, I devoted my Reminiscings of Youth article to the 50th anniversary of "Jaws"which came out on June 20th 1975. Coincidentally enough, director Steven Spielberg, who had made us terrified of getting into the water back then, was the same man, now as producer, who thrilled us with a DeLorean, a mad scientist and a hard-luck teenager. Yup, today is the 40th anniversary of the release of "Back to the Future".
When it comes to missing out on first-run releases, I have two regrets. I missed out on watching the first "Superman" with Christopher Reeve in 1978 and then "Back to the Future" in 1985. I wasn't one to go racing to the theatre unless a movie was truly remarkable like "Star Wars" (and I finally only saw that one two years after its release), and to be honest, I never saw "Family Ties" which was Michael J. Fox's breakthrough sitcom so the invested interest hadn't been there. Plus, though I liked Christopher Lloyd's Reverend Jim on "Taxi" several years earlier, it wasn't quite enough for me to plunk down my money for this crazy flick about time travel.
But then a few years later, I finally caught "Back to the Future" on VHS when for some reason, the Japanese-Canadian Students' Association decided to show it at its old home base in the International Student Centre. Even on a far tinier screen, it was quite the thrill to see Marty and Doc in the 1950s fixing time and getting the former back to his 1980s including the crazy climax when everything that could go wrong did go wrong until it didn't.
Now back in 2022, I provided a ROY article on Huey Lewis and The News' "The Power of Love" for the movie's 37th anniversary and even there, I had to include the orchestral theme by Alan Silvestri because it was just that epic.
Well, this time around, Silvestri's theme is now the topic of this ROY because it is just that epic. I remember reading somewhere that when legendary composer Hiroshi Miyagawa（宮川泰）asked about how to approach this proposed theme song for the anime adaptation of "Uchuu Senkan Yamato"(宇宙戦艦ヤマト）back in the early 1970s, he was simply told that it had to be heroic. And Miyagawa probably looked upward to the heavens and went "How the heck?!". Silvestri was apparently told the same thing when it came to "Back to the Future"; something orchestral and something that can be recognized within the first few notes.
Silvestri was coming into this particular project some years after he'd come up with an upbeat theme for a show about California motorcycle cops and many years before he would come up with the ultimate theme for assembling superheroes, and luckily for him (and Miyagawa), he did whip up one mighty overture that would help immortalize the first movie and the franchise (though I've enjoyed the former more than the latter). I can't remember scenes from the movie without having that theme play out in my head.
I have to finish off this ROY by including Silvestri's rousing dedicated theme to the final movie in the trilogy "Back to the Future III". It has parts of the original theme but it also contains elements of the composer's obvious love for the themes from Westerns such as "The Magnificent Seven" and "Bonanza".
This particular Off-Course（オフ・コース）single comes under the question of "Why hadn't I put this up sooner?".
After all, "Boku no Okurimono" (My Gift to You), which was the band's 4th single from February 1973, has an intro filled with Off-Course's familiar sublime harmonies that has been known to me for years and years. Written and composed by Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）, it's a gentle folksy ballad about a truly smitten poet type who offers this particular song to a young woman during the seasons of spring and autumn, the times when love has its biggest transitions for good and bad. Apparently, the song fills the gaps for what's missing in those transitions within those seasons which have also been placed in between the major seasons of summer and winter to fill in the gaps. Take some time to let that soak in. But let it be said that this is a lovely song by Oda with those key changes and then the string coda that takes things into a more uncertain way; if there had been more of those strings, I would have also classified "Boku no Okurimono" as a Fashion Music tune.
Apparently, some fifteen years later, Oda as a solo artist opted to do a self-cover of "Boku no Okurimono" as a March 1988 single. Perhaps taking the more fantastical essence of the lyrics into consideration, he basically made the song into a more kid-friendly version (with a kids' chorus, to boot) with even some contemporary funky syncopation placed into the arrangement. It can also be found in his second solo studio album"BETWEEN THE WORD & THE HEART" which was released in the same month as the single.
Welcome to another tour of the AI Gallery where we take song titles and throw them into the Bing AI art generator just to see what we get. The hilarious one in today's trio will most likely be Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）"Love Story wa Totsuzen ni"; the man was so desperate to meet the love of his life, he didn't even let a bookshelf and dislocated shoulders stop him.
"Happy Days Are Here Again" is an American standard that's been around since it first made its appearance in 1929 according to Wikipedia. Lots of interpretations have been done of it in its first century but the one that I've been most familiar with is the one by the Norman Luboff Choir that was a track on my parents' copy of "50 Years Of Hits In Stereo", the 5-LP set that we got with our RCA stereo. It's about as happy a version as I've ever heard from the Normal Luboff Choir which I usually associate with some of the more melancholy takes of standards. But here, the original by Milton Ager and Jack Yellen is given that 60s mambo-tinged martini-friendly lounge music touch which probably cheered up a lot of listeners (the vodka helped out, too, obviously).🍸
Well, as I've noted in the byline, I've watched the NHK coverage and read the "Japan Times" article "Japan's Nikkei index surpasses 40,000 points for first time", and the media has suddenly grabbed that old footage of the Bubble Boom era of the late 1980s in the nation. To be specific, the index closed today at 40,109.23 points. Is it time to be saying that happy days are here again in Japan? Hmmm...I'm sure stockholders are pretty buoyant along with exporting companies, and certainly depending on the country, tourists will be making their reservations for Japan. Not sure though about importers, Japanese tourists or even those supposed to be going to international conferences from Japan this year.
Mentioning that the mass media has started excavating the scenes of the bubbly times, I'm always going to be thinking about the famous Juliana's in Tokyo with all of those bodicon dancers and their plume fans. Supposedly, this new meteoric rise in the Nikkei is based on something far more stable than was the case in the late 1980s but...tongue-in-cheek...I keep wondering about gold flakes scattered on virtually every dish and million-dollar golf club entry fees once more.
The Nikkei record at the peak of the Bubble Era happened on December 29th 1989 with a close of 38,915.87 points. So I was left thinking about the music that was hot at the time, and strangely enough, I was actually in the nation back on that day...most likely, I was either in Osaka or Wakayama Prefecture with the relatives for the New Year's holidays. I couldn't find anything for that day exactly but I did find something for January 1st 1990 at this site. Therefore as such, here are just a few of the songs from the Top 10 on that auspicious day along with their rankings.
Well, I figured that if I could come up with a Yonin Musume（四人娘）of my days on the JET Programme in Gunma Prefecture between 1989 and 1991, I should have my own Goyonke（御四家...The Big Four） during that time as well, as opposed to the traditional Gosanke（御三家）; permit me my whimsical side. Of course, I'm referring to the quartet of male performers that garnered the attention of my ears and memories from that time.
There are a number of movies that I regret not seeing at the theatre including a couple of recent superhero movies. One of the earliest that I never got to catch on the big screen was "Superman" with Christopher Reeve (though I ended up seeing "Superman II" five times!), and then there was "Back to the Future" which will soon celebrate its 37th anniversary this year. I actually caught that one a few years later for the first time on VHS at a showing by my university's Japanese-Canadian Students' Association event.
I can only imagine what it must have been like in the theatre especially in the above scene where Marty was racing the DeLorean to get back to 1985, and it seemed like fate was trying to put up as many roadblocks as possible to prevent that from happening. The moviegoers were most likely screaming like crazy and then cheering when Doc managed to get that bolt of lightning to provide the 1.21 gigawatts of power to the car/time machine. With Alan Silvestri's heroic theme for the entire franchise blasting away, the scene has gone down as one of the most satisfying and exciting in history.
Of course, along with Silvestri's score for "Back to the Future", there is "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and The News, and this song along with the movie are so inextricably linked that whenever I hear this Huey hit or see Marty on his skateboard, the other invariably comes to mind immediately. For that matter, "The Power of Love" is one of the big songs that has me waxing nostalgically about the 1980s in general. I think it's become Michael J Fox's theme song as well; I recall seeing a Japanese car commercial starring the guy while the song was playing.
I'd already known about Huey Lewis and The News by the time that "The Power of Love" hit the airwaves. I don't think that this particular song was the breakthrough hit for the San Francisco band; they'd already had a number of hits and other recognizable tunes but "The Power of Love" which was released in June 1985, not too long before the movie started showing up, ended up being their very first No. 1 hit on Billboard's Hot 100 (and a chart-topper in Canada, too).
Of course, being released in the 1980s, there had to be a dance remix version released as well. Hey, it's all good. As I mentioned above, there are plenty of other Huey Lewis and The News hits out there so I'll have to cover some of those as ROY articles.
So, what was occupying top three spaces on the Oricon chart for June 1985?
One of the YouTube channels that I've been subscribed to for some months is the Japanese-language Yukkuri Fudosan（ゆっくり不動産...Laidback Real Estate） whose raison d'etre is to visit and tour some of the more unusual real estate properties in Japan, although in a few rare cases, the camera even goes overseas to cities such as New York and Honolulu. I've encountered an apartment with seven balconies in Tokyo, a unit whose bathroom is smack dab in the centre of the living room, and the above shows a tiny two-bedroom pre-fab home. The above is also one of the few videos that has English subtitles.
Architecture and interior design have been more passing interests rather than ardent passions, so when I come across channels such as Yukkuri Fudosan with its light sense of humour and unusual looks at homes, I'm pretty much hooked. Touring through these places makes me wonder how I would entertain friends if I ever lived in them.
Strangely enough, TV Japan has been advertising one of NHK's dramas, an adaptation of a currently running manga titled "Shojiki Fudosan"（正直不動産...Honest Real Estate）. Starring Tomohisa Yamashita（山下智久）, formerly of the Johnny's Entertainment group, NEWS, it's all about a young go-getting real estate agent, Mr. Nagase, who will do anything to get a sale, including lie through his teeth. But then one day, he meets up with something supernatural and then he ends up not being able to fib no matter what, which forces him to change his approach to his job and presumably his life. It kinda sounds like the Japanese real estate version of Jim Carrey's"Liar, Liar".
Though I'm not interested in watching "Shojiki Fudosan", the theme song definitely has my ears and mind since it's created and performed by Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）. "so far so good" is a pretty lush and reassuring song about doing the right and happy things for people to become happy themselves. It's an ongoing process...taking it day by day, week by week, year by year. This is the type of song that Oda can whip up like the best meringue and it's always soothing to hear his voice in uncertain times.
"so far so good" has been available as a digital download single since April 13th this year. According to the J-Wiki article for the song, Oda had been informed that "Shojiki Fudosan" would be a comedy-drama, but even leafing through the source manga, he couldn't find anything really funny about it (the former Off-Course leader has always struck me as being a very serious fellow). However, he plowed ahead in making the theme song by going for a light and cheerful approach giving an impression of someone trying to be even a little helpful without causing any trouble.
I was wondering who was behind the chorus. Well, it turns out that it's actress/singer Takako Matsu（松たか子）and Sho Wada（和田唱）, vocalist of rock band Triceratops.
Yup, I know...the opening episode of the third season of the "Kaguya-sama" series, "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai ~ Ultra Romantic"（かぐや様は告らせたい-ウルトラロマンティック-）has just appeared to everyone's joy and anticipation. Of course, that means that we get another Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之） (sorta) spectacular in the opening theme "GIRI GIRI", but I'll get back to that song at a future date.
(14:14)
Instead for today, I'll go with Martin's 8th single from December 1989, "Watashi no Onegai"(My Request). This was released right after his big hit of "Wakare no Machi"（別れの街）, my own introduction to the cool J-R&B crooner, and as with that single, Off-Course's（オフコース）Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）wrote, composed, arranged and provided backup chorus for this ballad.
The song may sound very elegiac but luckily, going through Oda's lyrics, Suzuki actually sings about being devoted to his one and only love and asks that she do the same. I can imagine that this could squeeze out quite a few tears at a wedding reception, especially with that Martin delivery. I don't know how the song did on Oricon, but it's included on his 3rd solo album"Dear Tears" from September 1989 which peaked at No. 14.
Well, I namedropped him on my previous article, Yume Suzuki's（鈴木結女）"NITE FLITE", and I figure that there was nothing wrong with mentioning another Suzuki on the same day, so why not do a Martin article?
Vocalist of the band Tulip（チューリップ）and singer-songwriter Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）has had a long history on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", but the last time that his name was up on the title byline was when contributor nikala wrote up about this amazing 1985 collaboration among him, Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）of Off-Course（オフコース）and Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）all the way back in early 2013! The product of their working together was the special one-off single "Ima Dakara"(Because It's Now) which was a percolating pop song of its time with some City Pop here and some Technopop there.
Guess what? Zaitsu is back up on the byline and strangely enough, it's for his own cover of "Ima Dakara" on his special album of covers "Z-shi no Warui Kuse"（Z氏の悪い趣味...Mr. Z's Bad Habits） released in December 1987. What's really intriguing about his solo take on the original 1985 single is that the arrangement seems to take a slower and more mysterious journey through the darker areas of town, so to speak. Gone is the technopop perkiness which is replaced by a richer glaze of synthesizer and other more introspective keyboard work (maybe a hint of Tangerine Dream?).
There is a far more haunting approach in Zaitsu's vocals and I guess in reflection of that film noir-like album cover and the mystery within his "Ima Dakara", there also has to be a femme fatale in the form of his singing partner. Sure enough, I have yet to find out who she is but she does add that extra level of sultriness in what strikes me as "Ima Dakara" filtered through a Mickey Spillane novel. Well, I'm not sure that Spillane would enjoy this sort of music, but hey, I'm OK with it!
Some of the truths that I've discovered from doing "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for the past 7+ years: newer videos by Johnny's Entertainment groups can get taken down so fast to give me whiplash and the happy observation that there are indeed many people out in the world who do love their kayo kyoku (thus fulfilling the main mission of this blog).
Yet another truth is that it's been awfully difficult to find a YouTube video with an original Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）song. In fact, the last one that I was able to successfully find was his 2002 single"Kira Kira"（キラキラ）back in August 2015 when I wrote up the article.
However, in recent days, I've been able to find "Tashika na Koto"(Sure Thing). This was the former Off-Course（オフコース）vocalist's 23rd solo single from May 2005. It also got onto his 7th original album"Sou kana"（そうかな...Oh, Really?）which was released a month after the single. If I'm not mistaken, from listening to the song once more, I think Sing Like Talking'sChikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）was providing backing chorus.
I do remember the song since I heard it on a Meiji Yasuda life insurance commercial. For something like life insurance, wouldn't an Oda ballad be just the thing? After all, everything about many an Oda ballad is very soothing and comforting, and perhaps a policy ought to have that feeling for the policyholder. In fact, the singer-songwriter recorded another song that was used in a commercial for another life insurance company several years earlier.
"Tashika na Koto" was also used in a docudrama based on the life of the late baseball manager Senichi Hoshino（星野仙一）in that same year. The song was also another Top 10 ballad, peaking at No. 8 and going Gold, although in terms of the yearly rankings, it placed in at a very modest 160th place at the end of 2005.
As I write this, Japan is now in the last 24 hours of the Heisei Era, a period of time that I was happy to have spent much of in Gunma and then Tokyo/Chiba. Of course, being the sentimental and nostalgic guy I am, I've decided to put out a small list of the singers and bands which fairly screamed "HEISEI" to me. I'm not going to so much highlight any particular songs but rather put them up as representatives in this Author's Picks this time around...just the artists themselves. Moreover, this is a personal list; I'm not basing this on Oricon charts and numbers of albums sold. It's all about the affection for certain folks that hit the big time during this time, and to be honest, my picks will mostly be in the 1990s.
1. Wink
"Samishii Nettaigyo" was a title that I couldn't remember or say at all even though this was a Wink single that had just gone gangbusters when it was released in July 1989, a few weeks before my arrival in Gunma Prefecture to teach at the junior high schools there. All I could say was "that WINK song"! With expressions and movements reminiscent of porcelain dolls, Sachiko Suzuki and Shoko Aida struck me as being the anti-aidoru: no smiling and no skipping around. Their time at the top was relatively brief but boy, did they pack their hits in.
2. B'z
As I mentioned in the actual article for "Bad Communication", this was the song that woke me up during my mornings in the first year of my Gunma stay because of Rie Miyazawa in those computer commercials. Takahiro Matsumoto and Koshi Inaba did it fun and did it loud and have continued to do so right to the end of Heisei with other rockers such as "Be There" and "Love Phantom". I always wondered which would win the ultimate battle between Inaba's voice and Matsumoto's guitar.
3. Kazumasa Oda
(covered by Chris Hart)
Still awfully hard to find any of his original solo songs on YouTube but that hasn't deterred me to include the former member of Off-Course on the list since this was an artist who managed to come up with his own sound separate from the one that he and his bandmates created back in the 70s and 80s."Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" was just one example of how he put together those synthesizers and those other instruments to come up with tunes for himself and other singers that would put him up as an urban contemporary balladeer in the last decade of the 20th century.
4. Namie Amuro
I guess for a lot of people that when Namie Amuro announced her retirement from the music business a couple of years ago, they figured that the Heisei Era really was heading for its end. She was one of the first singers that I heard on landing at Narita to start my second stint as an English teacher, this time in Tokyo. She wasn't just dynamic, she was a dynamo! Dancing, singing, showing off her fashion, Amuro started off a pop cultural trend all her own for a few years and I think she was one of the factors in the Komuro Boom that took over J-Pop for the middle years in the 90s. In fact, I still remember being in an Ikebukuro game centre one Saturday night and while my friend was doing his games, I was in a music video capsule watching her "a walk in the park".
5. Ayumi Hamasaki
I wasn't ever a huge fan of Ayumi Hamasaki but as much as Amuro had taken the Japanese pop world by storm around the middle of the 1990s, Hamasaki carved her huge slice of the pop culture pie by the end of that decade and into the new century. There isn't too much exaggeration involved here when I say that ads plugging her next big single and her appearances on "Countdown TV" were basically everywhere.
6. Dreams Come True
This was another band that was making its mark especially in the early 1990s. When I saw that "Music Station" episode on my host family's TV back in 1989 and Dreams Come True make that introduction with a beaming ear-to-ear Miwa Yoshida declaring herself in English, I felt that there was a seismic shift in pop music. I had equated Dreams Come True as a Japanese version of Swingout Sister but that wasn't quite accurate. They also had their own unique voice of sunny uptempo songs and heartbreak ballads.
7. Sing Like Talking
These guys may not have become hugely known on television per se, but I am so glad that I found out about Chikuzen Sato's amazing band and purely by mistaken identity. Cool and urban with plenty of soul, Sing Like Talking was a group that I had thought was another band whose name and output have largely disappeared from my memory. SLT, on the other hand, has stuck with me all these years and I've got a number of their albums to show for it.
8. Misia
It was through the above video that I first got to know Misia. She among a few others symbolized my opinion that good ol' soul was coming back into Japanese popular music for a while from the late 90s, and that voice of hers was just incredible. One of my wishes that she will participate in the Opening Ceremonies for next year's Olympics...preferably to do a cover of Minako Yoshida's "TOWN".
9. Morning Musume
Just when I thought that the concept of female aidoru had gone onto the pop culture heap of history, Tsunku from Sharam Q took this group of runners-up in a television show singing contest and molded them into the core for Hello! Project. Morning Musume had some successes in their early years, but "Love Machine" in 1999 was the booster rocket that sent them soaring, and for a few years, the hits and the TV shows and the new members kept rolling in. It might be all about the alphabet teams now but for me and some of my contemporaries, Morning Musume was our beloved girl group.
10. SMAP
As was the case with Hamasaki, I was never a dedicated fan of SMAP's music although I did buy a few of their singles such as "Celery" and the super-catchy "Shake". But again, for many years, it just seemed that every one of their songs was destined to reach the top of the Oricon charts or at least hover in the Top 10 for several weeks. It didn't hurt either that all of the members achieved fame in other facets of mass media as well through dramas, variety shows, specials and commercials. I did enjoy my "Bistro SMAP", and wouldn't it have been something if it had still stayed on the air to host The Avengers?
My list is not a complete one by any means but I did want to keep things at 10, and obviously any music memories that you might have of the Heisei Era may be vastly different from mine. So I offer the invitation to commenters and fellow contributors alike...if you have your own Heisei list, by all means, let us know! Meanwhile, let's get ready for Reiwa.
Exactly two months ago, I did a BEST article on Masayuki Suzuki's（鈴木雅之）"MARTINI II", a compilation of the soul crooner's hits of the early 1990s. Well, I'm going backwards here since I will now be taking care of Martin's very first BEST album, "MARTINI" which was released in June 1991. Allow me to show the lineup along with that cocktail.
Now, if you compare this article here with the one that I wrote for "MARTINI II" back in February, you'll notice that there are more links for the above playlist since I've already talked about a lot of these tunes. I simply couldn't keep a good man's songs down all these years.
"Tatoe Kimi ga Doko ni Ikou to" (Suppose If I Ask You Where You're Going) is one of those few singles that I had yet to cover, and to be honest, it isn't among my Top 5 favourite Martin songs. However, it IS a Martin song with plenty of soul and strut, and I still can't deny its cool factor. Released as his 11th single in February 1991, it was written by Saeko Nishio（西尾佐栄子）and composed by Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）with its first album appearance being right here. The lyricist relates the urban story about a fellow who has feelings for a woman but is struggling the right way to approach her. It managed to get as high as No. 38 on the charts.
Although it already has its own article, I couldn't resist but put up "Misty Mauve" again. This song IS in my Top 5 Martin singles, and after all, it was created by the killer tandem of Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）. Just that horn section in the bridge would be worth the price of admission but of course, we get the whole package including Martin's golden vocals.
"Dry Dry" was Martin's 3rd single from March 1988 and it's some dynamic funk that was written by Nishio and composed by Suzuki himself. If I'm not mistaken, the song is about a woman who's really playing hard-to-get. Rising to No. 36 on Oricon, it was originally placed on the singer's 2nd album"Radio Days" which came out the following month that year. James Brown may approve.
And once again, I'm gonna be putting up another song that I've already parsed about since it was the first Masayuki Suzuki song that I fell for all the way back in my Gunma days between the 1980s and 1990s. As I mentioned in that article, "Wakare no Machi" was the campaign tune for Camellia Diamonds, a company whose TV commercials invited some pretty cool tunes. Damn fine sax and trumpet solos. Plus, of course, this was all whipped up by Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）.
"MARTINI" peaked at No. 6 on Oricon. So, for all of those who have gotten onto the "Love Dramatic"（ラブ・ドラマティック）craze, this album provides some more of the good stuff from the so-called King of Love Songs.
I've been checking the pageviews over the past week and it looks like the winner has been the opening theme for this season's anime "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai ~ Tensai-tachi no Ren'ai Zunousen"（かぐや様は告らせたい〜天才たちの恋愛頭脳戦〜）, "Love Dramatic"（ラブ・ドラマティック）.
So, all I can say to the main singer is:
Congratulations, Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）. You are now the proud father of an earworm! Please feel free to get your sunglasses at night by the door.
I've been checking out for any comments on "Love Dramatic" online and most of them have been very positive about the song. The other thing that I've found is that a number of folks have only discovered Martin just in the past few weeks because of the theme song.
So although I was already thinking about doing this first BEST article for 2019 since I discovered that Suzuki did provide his first anison, the comments that I saw over the past few days have pretty much cemented my decision. Therefore, without further ado, I introduce the second of his BEST compilations, "MARTINI II" released in October 1995.
1. Wakare no Machi (1995 acapella version)（別れの街） 2. Koibito（恋人） 3. Mou Namida wa Iranai（もう涙はいらない） 4. Sayonara Itoshi no Baby Blues（さよならいとしのBaby Blues） 5. Chigau, Sou Janai（違う、そうじゃない） 6. Adam na Yoru（アダムな夜） 7. Midnight Traveler 8. Liberty 9. Come On In 10. Shibuya de Go-ji（渋谷で5時） 11. Ai no Okite（愛の掟） 12. Glass Goshi ni Kieta Natsu 1995（ガラス越しに消えた夏1995） 13. Yume no Mata Yume（夢のまた夢 (1995 Remix Version)）
As you can see above, about half of the songs have already been spoken for through past articles, so feel free to link on those. Let's go on with the ones that I have yet to cover starting with the smoky "Sayonara Itoshi no Baby Blues" (Farewell, My Beloved Baby Blues), a track from Suzuki's 5th album,"Fair Affair" from 1992. A whisky-on-the-rocks-worthy soul & blues song about a love gone wrong, the aforementioned drink would be one of the libations needed at that bar with a sympathetic mixologist.
Martin's recording of "Sayonara Itoshi no Baby Blues" was actually a cover of the original song by singer-songwriter Hideki Andoh（安藤秀樹）which was his 17th single from December 1991. The concert video above has all of Martin, Andoh and Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）from Sing Like Talking performing the song, although I think the evening is probably the ideal setting instead of what looked like the afternoon in the video.
(karaoke version)
"Adam na Yoru" is interesting enough just for the title. If I were to translate it as "Adam's Night", perhaps the Japanese would be "Adam no Yoru"（アダムの夜）, but with that "na"（な）in there, maybe it's "An Adam-esque Night"?
In any case, Martin's 20th single from February 1995 was written and composed by the songwriting couple Ryudo Uzaki and Yoko Aki（宇崎竜童・阿木燿子）, who were behind a lot of Momoe Yamaguchi's（山口百恵）later hits in the late 1970s, and though it sounds like the perfect tune to hear while prepping up for a banner night out in Tokyo, Aki's lyrics actually portray a scene right from the "Penny for your thoughts?" moment following a tryst in some bedroom. Looks like Adam and Eve took a huge bite out of that apple.
"Adam na Yoru" was also the theme song for a TBS drama titled "Watashi, Mikata desu"（私、味方です...I'm A Friend）which was televised between January and March of 1995. It peaked at No. 17 on Oricon. Do love those horns. Heck, I think it would be great listening on the car stereo while driving through West Shinjuku.
"Liberty" was actually Suzuki's 3rd single from March 1987 but it has been included here in "MARTINI II". Written and composed by the great Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）with AKI, it's a gospel-influenced tune performed in English, and Yoshida provides some of the background vocals. Peaking at No. 64, "Liberty" also made it onto his 4th album "mood" from 1990.
Martin can really rock those suits, can't he? "Midnight Traveler" was his 17th single from October 1993. It basically has the same flavour as the aforementioned "Adam na Yoru" through Yoshiyuki Osawa's（大沢誉志幸）melody but Kitsuma Ohshita's（大下きつま）lyrics provide more mystery in the story of two lovers on a journey for parts unknown, perhaps unable to come back. I already talked about "Midnight Traveler" through its album "Perfume" but my write-up doesn't have the full version that is right above this paragraph.
In 1991, Suzuki and 80s pop mainstay Paul Young got together as a duet to sing Sam & Dave's 1969 "Come On In" for a bit of that old-time soul. Originally written by Isaac Hayes and composed by David Porter, the Suzuki/Young single got as high as No. 79 and was also included on "mood".
The final track on "MARTINI II" is "Yume no Mata Yume", which I can think can be translated as "Dreams On Dreams". As much as "Liberty" sounds like a Minako Yoshida creation, "Yume no Mata Yume" feels like Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）and the way that he made his songs back in the early 1990s (and he's in the background vocals as well). And yep, it was written and composed by the Off Course（オフコース）singer as Suzuki's 19th single for release in October 1994. In a way, Oda's lyrics can almost describe the tensions in "Kaguya-sama". Peaking at No. 17, it is included in his 7th album"She・See・Sea"which came out in the same month.
"MARTINI II" hit No. 1 and ranked in at No. 27 on the Oricon yearly charts. It also hung in there for 1996 at No. 68. I will have to do another BEST for Martin's immediate predecessor, "MARTINI", since there are some great tunes in there, too but perhaps next month. So until "Love Dramatic" gets out officially on February 27th, you can do a bit of exploration here and on some of the other Martin songs.
I was watching the news this morning when the newscaster read out that two-thirds of Canadians had little interest in Valentine's Day. Perhaps I would have tut-tutted the information and gone onto a reinforced soapbox and exhorted "What is wrong about LOVE?!", but then again, when I'm frankly as romantic as a Vulcan after a successful Kolinahr ritual, I don't think that I really can earn that soapbox.
Anyways, I was still surprised to realize that I had never put out a Valentine's Day list of my own in the 7 years of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", although JTM did release his "Romantic 80s Playlist" back in 2014. Well, it is indeed Valentine's Day today, so allow me to give some of my choices for the Day of Love. There are of course tons of kayo/J-Pop...way too many, in fact, to even sate a comprehensive list of which this is certainly not. In point of truth, there are songs that are knocking me upside the head like a Gibbs' slap at this moment for not being included. So, all I can ask humbly is that if any of you folks have your own choice for an ideal J-Valentine's song, please inform me.
Incidentally, all of these already have their own articles so this is more of a summary.
Let's start with something nice and 70s and kayo-like by the adorable Megumi Asaoka（麻丘めぐみ）. "Watashi no Kare wa Hidarikiki"（わたしの彼は左きき）is a spritely and proud tune about the fact that one lady's Mr. Right is always on her left with the premise being that they are blissfully together and in love. Somehow, I've gotten the impression that is not so much a boyfriend-girlfriend situation but more of a just-married couple starting out on their life together.
Those opening notes from Anzen Chitai's（安全地帯）"Koi no Yokan"（恋の予感）are enough to get me all nostalgically moody. I don't think the song was ever meant to be recorded with Valentine's Day in mind but there's something about Koji Tamaki's（玉置浩二）delivery and the songwriting by him and Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）that makes this ballad ideal for an intimate dinner or a romantic walk in a park on February 14th (we are talking about Tokyo...not Toronto).
If I'm doing a Valentine's Day list of Japanese pop songs, then Sayuri Kokusho's（国生さゆり）"Valentine Kiss"（バレンタイン・キッス）has just got to be included. No exceptions! When compared with the mature themes of the above "Koi no Yokan", "Valentine Kiss" possesses the spirit of a 1950s novelty pop confection and the image of a junior high school girl nervously leaving homemade chocolates secretly in the school shoe box of a boy she likes. From personal experience, I hope that the lucky lad gets to the box early enough, lest those sugary creations end up smelling like feet! By the way, "Valentine Kiss" peaked at No. 2 on Oricon and ended up as the 14th-ranked single of the year.
"Anniversary ~ Mugen ni Calling You"（無限にCALLING YOU...Eternally Calling You） is probably one of Yuming's（ユーミン）most heartfelt ballads about a bride ready to take the walk down the aisle, and she's absolutely sure of her life choice. I think that people in that situation would need to grab for a Kleenex when they hear this special single. Although I don't think that this particular song has made it up to my own Top Ten list of Yuming songs, "Anniversary" has most likely made it onto BEST lists by other fans.
"Zutto" was forever and always a love song that wafted through the air and inside the karaoke boxes and bars around that time. And it's the reason that Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）has stayed with me as one of the notable singers during my years in Gunma Prefecture on the JET Programme. Her plaintive "ZU-TTO, ZU-TTO, ne" strikes a nearly automatic Pavlovian response in listeners to start swaying from side to side.
Reimy（麗美）may not have become a huge superstar on the level of Yuming or Miyuki Nakajima（中島みゆき）, but she still has gained a loyal cadre of fans including me for the lyrics and music that she created. "Marry Me" is one of my favourites as an intimate love letter of a ballad with a down-to-earth arrangement and a great guitar solo. Plus, of course, the title itself is an invitation for my list.
Kanchi! Ahhh...life and love in one of the biggest and most vivacious cities on Earth, and with a theme song that brings to mind a certain time and place. Poor wishy-washy Kanji Nagao in "Tokyo Love Story" had to make that difficult choice between the ever-lovable yet unpredictable force-of-nature Rika and the more down-to-earth Satomi, his old crush from high school in Ehime Prefecture. Not exactly an ideal Valentine situation but I still had to include "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni"（ラブ・ストーリーは突然にー）as a song of the season with oomph. The above video is a short clip of the song but at least, it actually has Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）singing one of his best songs.
I not only think that "I Love You" by the late Yutaka Ozaki（尾崎豊）is the song to be performed at a wedding reception but I could easily see it as the ideal proposal ballad. Plus, wouldn't it be something if the proposer sang it with a guitar bandied over his shoulder? An old friend of mine actually did just that when he popped on a Shinkansen from Tokyo to his girlfriend's home hundreds of kilometres away, although I don't know whether he sang this particular Ozaki ballad. But obviously since they did get happily married with kids, it was all good.
Anyways, this was just a sampling of some of my choices for a February 14th custom. Nothing happening here at home today but perhaps I will pick up a chocolate bar tomorrow.
Yup, don't those 90s CD singles look cute? If I were at one of my old music store haunts such as RECOfan right now, they would probably be going for something like 50 yen a disc. Would like to peruse the bins again someday.
Good evening, folks! And in commemoration of the 7th anniversary of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I would like to put out my 90s playlist...those go-to songs from the decade of the Komuro Boom, guitar pop/rock bands and the return of aidoru via Hello Project. I think it was about time since it was at the end of 2013 that I put out the 80s playlist and the middle of 2014 when the 70s playlist got written up. So it's been about 4.5 years between the last time and this list. Also, another reason for finally putting up the 90s list is that I was inspired by Noelle herself putting up her 60s playlist.
As with those lists, I searched the old memories for my favourite Top 10 from the 1990s, and once again, it was another lip-biting and mind-grimacing process of whittling down the list to just ten entries. So, for example, I had to sadly let go entries by Dreams Come True, Pizzicato Five and Original Love. The interesting difference between this list and the other two lists is that for a lot of the songs here, I was actually in Japan when they first saw the light of day due to my time on the JET Programme and then my early years as an inhabitant in Ichikawa.
So, without further ado...
1. Kazumasa Oda -- Love Story wa Totsuzen ni (1991): Finding the Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）original is currently impossible (as it usually is) although there are plenty of covers, so let me go with Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）here. I realize that this hit was going up against Chage & Aska's"Say Yes", but in the end, I had to go with this magnum opus by the lead singer of Off-Course（オフコース）. What is it about "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni"（ラブ・ストーリーは突然にー）that still continues to thrill me right from the intro? It just seems to possess that feeling of excitement and drama of living in one of the world's biggest cities as these complicated love relationships play out on Fuji-TV.
2. Noriyuki Makihara -- Donna Toki mo (1991): From the drama of "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" in the early months, I encountered the happy joy of Makihara's（槇原敬之）"Donna Toki mo"（どんなときも）just when I finished my time on JET and did a final trip around southwestern Japan. I was so drawn by this song that whenever I got into a department store, I made sure that I coursed through every CD shop to track the single down. I finally got it after a few tries. Yeah, my first attempts only saw it sold out.
3. trf -- Boy Meets Girl (1994): I had heard of this technopop tune even before I made my return trip to Japan at the end of 1994. Never heard of trf, never knew about Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）creating his huge steamroller of acts and never realized that "Boy Meets Girl" was meant to sell cola. All I did know was that this song was percolating through my head for days. It ended up being one of the first CD singles that I bought during my Ichikawa life.
4. Sing Like Talking -- Mitsumeru Ai de (1994): And to think that I bought my first SLT album, "Discovery", as a pure mistake. Best mistake that I ever committed. Thus started my happy hunt to get more of their albums, and from "Discovery", I discovered the urban and urbane "Mitsumeru Ai de"（みつめる愛で）created by Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）and keyboardist Satoru Shionoya（塩谷哲）. To be honest, it was difficult to come up with a song by Sing Like Talking since the band has had so many scrumptious contributions but "Together" has already been put up on a couple of lists, and it was time to give some more love to this one.
5. Namie Amuro -- Chase The Chance (1995): Granted that a lot of Amuro（安室奈美恵）fans will probably go with other bigger hits by the just-retired Okinawan singer, but I've always gravitated to "Chase The Chance" for some reason. I guess that I will always be attracted to high-energy tunes that give off that sense of action although this song was used as the theme for a show about a crusading hero chef. Those were good times.
6. B'z -- Love Phantom (1995): For me, if it comes to a B'z ultimate favourite, I would have to go with either "Bad Communication" or "Love Phantom". Considering that this was a promotion song for TV Asahi's broadcast of "The X-Files" (which I did watch on my remote-less, dial-only TV every Wednesday night), this may go down as the quintessential cool J-Halloween song. I can no longer listen to this song without images of Mulder, Scully and Fluke Man forming in my head.
7. Toko Furuuchi -- Dare Yori Suki Nanoni (1996): Another beautiful ballad to remind me that some soul music still existed since the transition from kayo kyoku to J-Pop. Whenever I think of the 90s brand of popular Japanese music, "Dare Yori Suki Nanoni"（誰より好きなのに）never fails to pop up in the head. The arrangement of Furuuchi's（古内東子）representative song also has me thinking back to the 1980s. It's no surprise that it has been covered by other singers since its release.
8. Maki Ohguro -- Atsukunare (1996): As much as one of my favourite songs by Furuuchi always calms me down, Maki Ohguro's（大黒摩季）"Atsukunare"（熱くなれ）works very well in getting my blood flowing at beyond the official speed limit. In fact, I'm typing faster (and making more typos) since I'm listening to it as I get this paragraph down. NHK chose wisely in adopting this for the 1996 Games in Atlanta, and I can hope that the network can find a song that ups the ante in excitement for the 2020 Games next year.
9. Misia -- Tsutsumikomuyouni (1998): Man, did Misia make a splash. Along with Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）and bird, the three of them along with some other artists heralded a J-R&B boom, and Misia brought some good old-fashioned R&B of years past and present. "Tsutsumikomuyouni"（つつむ込むように）is still a title that has problems sticking in my head due to its length and pronunciation, but there is no doubt about the music there.
10. Morning Musume -- Love Machine (1999): At the beginning of the 1990s, I do remember aidoru acts such as Wink and CoCo, but then it seemed like the whole teenybopper thing that wound its way through the decades since the 1960s finally petered out. For a lot of my time in the final decade of the 20th century in Japan, female aidoru struck me as being extinct although Johnny's Entertainment had SMAP and other groups going on the male side of things. But then came the whole Tsunku-led Hello Project umbrella of aidoru groups and individual aidoru, and it all started with Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）. Things were moving slowly but steadily in the early years of the group but then it all exploded into super fame and popularity with "Love Machine"（LOVEマシーン）, and soon, the various members were showing up on their own myriad TV programs for a few years before more groups started forming. "Love Machine" became the funky choice to sing at the various karaoke boxes and year-end parties before the turn of the century, and Morning Musume took a new electrifying direction in their career.
Man, that was quite the decade, and there were so many other songs and singers that I would have loved to have included in the list, but I'm keeping it to ten. However, if any of the fellow collaborators would like to give their own 90s lists, they're more than welcome and commenters are also very welcome to provide their own contributions.
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