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.
Showing posts with label Kuniko Fukushima. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kuniko Fukushima. Show all posts
I have another new face to bring onto the blog. Her name is Kazumi Ouchi（大内和美）and this is another singer whose information is very sparse indeed. In fact, I could only get what I could from Discogs and apparently, she released about 6 singles between 1983 and 1988 with no idea whether she also released any albums. As well, she changed her professional name to Hitomi Mitsui（三井一美）in late 1984.
In June 1983, Ouchi released her second single "Yokohama Shock". Written and composed by Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）with added lyrical assistance by Akira Inami（伊南岳）, it's a pleasant City Pop/sophisticated pop concoction with some of that bossa nova flair. Yes, I did give the song that hybridized categorization since I can also feel that there is some of that kayo kyoku in there. I mean, if it had been released a decade later, I could have even said that it was a form of New Adult Music.
Welcome to the penultimate Sunday in November. Over here, we know the Holidays are just around the corner when American Thanksgiving is a few days away and the Santa Claus parade is taking place in downtown Toronto as I type this. Mind you, the stores and malls have already been playing Christmas music for a few weeks.
Nothing Xmas-y here since I won't be starting anything of the Yuletide variety until November 25th. In fact, even for singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）, this is something out of the ordinary. I've already put up a fair number of her songs over the years onto KKP and they've usually been of bluesy City Pop.
This time, though, I bring you to her track "Magical House" from her October 1982 fourth album"Mugen"（夢幻...Visions）. And this time, Fukushima's creation is more New Wave peppy with a hint of Asian exoticism as if we're being treated to a whirlwind tour of Hong Kong or Taipei. Plus, Kuniko herself sings "Magical House" as if she's the sultry mistress of the residence. And that's as far as I will go with my insights.
When the original breakdancing craze hit North America back in the 1980s when I was a high school student, I could have thrown a rock into the existential television landscape and I would have been more than likely to hit a breakdancer mid-spin in a video. Breakdancing was pretty much everywhere...except in Japan, that is.
As much as Japan loves to soak up the pop culture from the United States and elsewhere, for some reason, breakdancing didn't seem to be the one thing that the young Japanese wanted to try. Well, it took a while but finally one person gave it a go on the airwaves.
I recall seeing Shingo Kazami（風見しんご）on an episode of "Yoru no Hit Studio"（夜のヒットスタジオ）, and he and his crew brought their brand of breakdancing onto the polished floor of the Fuji-TV studio as the young male aidoru sang his fourth single"Namida no Take a Chance" (Take a Chance While Crying) which was released back in December 1984. Kazami had been called the pioneer of breakdancing in Japan but to me, it was more like he was the only guy of breakdancing in Japan since after that, I didn't see any other examples of the famous street dancing by any other act in the country.
Written by Toyohisa Araki（荒木とよひさ）and composed by singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）, "Namida no Take a Chance" didn't sound anything like a composition that would accompany a breakdance. Kazami himself sounded like he was in the Masahiko Kondo（近藤真彦）vein of aidoru-dom so it was an interesting combination, to say the least.
The song hit No. 10 on Oricon and became the 45th-ranked single for 1985. It was also a track on Kazami's 2nd studio album "Whoopee ~ Gyappi no Hanran"（Whoopee〜ギャーピーの叛乱〜...Gyappi's Revolt）. As for who or what gyappi is, an edition of "Myojo"（明星）stated that it's just a word that the singer came up with. Kazami has gone into all facets of entertainment and when I was there, I saw him often enough as a TV personality with a rather acid tongue.
I've been gathering together a number of singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima's（福島邦子）songs for quite a while now, and it's too bad that she's been one of the lesser-known chanteuses out there because I've found her music a nice example of City Pop and New Music in the late 1970s going into the 1980s.
This time, I'm going back to her very first single"Good-bye" which was released in February 1978. Written and composed by Fukushima with both her and Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）handling the arrangement, it starts out with a slow lone piano before things strut off into a soft disco direction highlighted with a twirling keyboard riff. Fukushima's vocal shuffle goes off into a kiss-off of a now-erstwhile paramour often punctuated by a rollicking honky-tonk piano and a solid background chorus.
The B-side, "Subete wa Futari ni"(It's All Down to the Two of Us), was completely taken care of by Fukushima, and it's a more elegant sunset ballad that has feelings of blues and soft rock. This time, the electric guitar has some centre stage of its own.
Although I'm not a gamer like some of my friends, even I heard about "Cyberpunk 2077" with Keanu Reaves when it was time to roll it out in 2020. I did hear about some of the issues that it was having when it was introduced, though. However, in the last couple of nights, I've been encountering some of the drives and strolls through the game's setting of Night City, and I have to say that I'm really impressed. It's all grungy, scary, breathtaking and futuristically attractive, and for a guy who's fascinated by future architecture and whatnot, this has been quite the bee's knees!😂
Just my luck then that I had this particular song on standby. One of the neighbourhoods in Night City is Japantown and I've been hearing someone doing some banter in the language and maybe some music. Perhaps Kuniko Fukushima's（福島邦子）"Rhapsody" can be that other song which could be hauntingly echoed over the wet streets of Japantown. Written and composed by Fukushima as her July 1983 single along with Makoto Yano's（矢野誠）arrangement, there's something (to me, anyways) regarding "Rhapsody" that could fit the mood there and then with the City Pop beat (including the sax) and the technopop keyboard that sounds as if it came from a Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）tune back around the same time.
It's been just around two years since I posted a Fukushima song on KKP. The last one was "Gypsy"（ジプシー） from February 1979.
I'm finding singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）to be one of those underrated gems that people are hopefully finding out more about. She can trip the light fantastic among City Pop, AOR and rock with a smile and a swagger. I've already written a few articles about the Okayama Prefecture native including the road-trip honky-tonk of"Bye Bye City" and the downtown boogie strut of"Boogie-Woogie"（無偽遊戯）.
Fukushima's 3rd single released in February 1979 was "Gypsy" which is slightly slower than "Boogie-Woogie" but still has that downtown strut. It really feels like that walk through Shinjuku at the turn of the decade, and the addition of the strings at the end of each chorus amps up the epic feel while the bass keeps things nice and cool. Speaking of bass, Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）arranged Fukushima's melody and Machiko Ryu's（竜真知子）lyrics talk about a couple of people who may be on the run from town to town like the titular gypsies.
As I mentioned in "Boogie-Woogie", the singer is quite photogenic with her album covers, and her debut album"I'm Ready" which came out in June that same year is no exception. With that guitar, she definitely looks ready.
Let's consider the above photo of the Mori Tower in Roppongi Hills at night as one that had been taken by a guy who enjoyed a little too much of the strong stuff. Plenty of bars in Roppongi, y'know...especially the notorious Gas Panic.
Anyways, that's one mighty fine cover of singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima's（福島邦子）1981 album "Grace". Moreover, I've also been enjoying one of the tracks there, her June 1981 single"Boogie-Woogie". Written and composed by Fukushima and arranged by Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）, there's some funky boogie and strut going on as the song moves in the same way as that photographer that I just mentioned above after a few drinks along the main Roppongi strip. The piano and the electric guitar are having an especially good time.
Just another Friday night in Roppongi. Even when I was living there in the 1990s and 2000s, it was still quite the happening place. I can only wonder what it was like in the 1980s as Japan was heading into the Bubble Era.
There is a trope at the "TV Tropes" website which is called "Early Installment Weirdness", and it refers to everything from advertising to TV shows to real life. For television, it talks about the early days of a particularly long-running/famous program when perhaps the cast, crew and writers were still groping for their distinct identity and hadn't quite settled into what the familiar patterns and rhythms are.
For example, in the first couple of years of the American sitcom "Happy Days", it had Fonzie in a light blue jacket instead of his Smithsonian Museum-worthy brown leather jacket and Richie and Joanie actually had a big brother named Chuck before he conveniently disappeared once the show went on before a live audience from Season 3. In the original "Star Trek", Mr. Spock was surprisingly emotional in the first several episodes of that inaugural season (he really needed a Kolinahr back then) and instead of Starfleet, there was the United Earth Space Probe Agency.
When I think of veteran singer Anri（杏里）, and I believe when many of her longtime and newbie fans think of Eiko Kawashima（川島栄子）, the images that percolate through are her R&B/City Pop funky hits that made an 80s aerobics instructor swoon. I'm thinking of "Cat's Eye" (the first Anri song that I ever heard), those amazing and dynamic tunes in the Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）years in the early 1980s through albums including "Timely!!", and then her collaborations with lyricist Yumi Yoshimoto（吉元由美）and arranger Yasuharu Ogura（小倉泰治）in the late 1980s/early 1990s in releases including "Circuit of Rainbow".
The "Early Installment Weirdness" of Anri's career (not to say that Anri is weird, all right?) then comes with her first three albums between 1978 and 1981. I've already written an article on Album No. 3"Kanashimi no Kujaku"（哀しみの孔雀）and will get to her second release "Feelin'" in due time. I want to focus here on her debut album"Apricot Jam" released in November 1978. I found that in all three, it was very much of an exploratory time for Anri and the people around her in terms of what she could and wanted to sing about. There weren't any of that snazzy Kadomatsu or Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）arrangements, and things were more subdued although there was already that sense of summer in a number of the tracks in "Apricot Jam". Anri was just starting out and she was only a high school sophomore at the age of 17 when this was released. This was recorded in Los Angeles, to boot, which awakened her desire to record her albums overseas whenever possible (and apparently she's now living in LA). But I can't even imagine what she must have felt going to a foreign country as a teenager during summer vacation to record non-aidoru material with professional session musicians, so I shouldn't be surprised that things seemed far more sedate on this debut album when compared to her later releases.
Opening "Apricot Jam" is the classic karaoke fan favourite and her debut single"Olivia wo Kikinagara" （オリビアを聴きながら）which was the subject for one of my earliest articles for "Kayo Kyoku Plus". As much as her really uptempo hits later on characterize the singer that is Anri, this first release is also a trademark tune and it fits as a reflection back to her origins with that innocent-sounding keyboard intro and the shy vocals. Incidentally, all of the tracks were arranged by Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）.
Of the tracks for which I could find separate videos on YouTube, one is "So Long", a mellow tropical tune that was actually composed by Anri herself and written by Fumiko Okada（岡田冨美子）. As the title intimates, "So Long" goes into a bit of bittersweet farewell as a summer romance comes to an end. The arrangement had me thinking more of Jamaica rather than Shonan.
Ami Ozaki（尾崎亜美）was responsible for the creation of "Olivia wo Kikinagara" and she also came up with "Chinese Doll"（中国人形）, a mid-tempo song about a young lady possibly comparing herself to the titular porcelain figure: all fragile and looking for someone to love her. This is one of the tracks that made me realize how young Anri was at the time, and her delivery back then seemed rather similar to folk/City Pop singer Sumiko Yamagata（やまがたすみこ）. My other observation is that it must have been a genuine thrill for her to have had a few songs created for her by Ozaki since according to her J-Wiki file, she grew up listening to her along with Yumi Arai（荒井由実）, Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）, Yosui Inoue（井上陽水）and others.
Anri then dives into a bit of the funk and City Pop with "Blue City" by lyricist Okada once more and a composer named Al Hoffman who has no connection with another composer by that name since he passed away in 1960. Perhaps it's a pseudonym...I don't know. In any case, Okada weaves a story of a rather jaded seen-it-all and done-it-all city resident who is just trying to make his way through the metropolis without dying of boredom.
The album ends with "Fade Out"（フェイド・アウト）which was written and composed by singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）, and it's an appropriately elegiac way to end "Apricot Dream" with the 1970s soft rock/country balladry. Perhaps as much as the first track, maybe "Fade Out" also has some tribute given to Olivia Newton-John since I could envisage the Australian singer tackling this one, too.
This video has the entire album so perhaps I can quickly go over the rest of the tracks. For example, at 4:38 is the second track "Rhapsody"（ラプソディー）which is one of the more uptempo songs on "Apricot Jam" with that bouncy electric piano and the City Pop haze. This was written and composed by Tomohiro Kobayashi（小林倫博）and perhaps should go along with a cup of really strong coffee before a shopping spree.
At 12:32 is "Nishibi Usurete"（西日うすれて...Fading Sunset） which is another Okada and Hoffman concoction which has Anri doing a cute vaudeville jazz number that screams for a soft-shoe dance interlude. Her protagonist is playfully wondering about her ideal boyfriend and when she's actually going to go for the gusto and grab him.
Ozaki is back with another uptempo track in "Flying Gozen Juu-ji Hatsu"（Flying 午前10時発...Flying at 10 am） at 19:32, a traveling pop song about a woman who had thought that she would be making her tropical trip from Tokyo with her beau only for a breakup to get in the way. Hate it when that happens. Ozaki's lyrics may come across as rather bittersweet but her melody illustrates that the lass isn't gonna let heartbreak stop a fun vacation.
Finally at 28:18 is "Keyword wo Sagase"（キーワードを探せ...Look For The Keyword）, another playful tune observing a likeable cad and his attempted conquests. This was written and composed by singer-songwriter Keiko Maruyama（丸山圭子）who had also provided another track from "Apricot Jam" that I've written about in the past, the more City Pop"Sozorosamu"（そぞろ寒）. This time, though, there is some more of that tropical clime feeling with a bit of a reggae beat.
Considering her later success, Anri's"Apricot Jam" may be quite an eye-opening revelation for those who are listening to the album for the first time. It did rather modestly on Oricon, peaking at just No. 51. However, despite the relatively quieter arrangement on her debut album, I think that there were seeds in there for what was to germinate in terms of how her music would be described in her heyday. Still, there were a few more years and albums to explore around for what her musical identity would become.
Found this one last night by singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）from Okayama Prefecture. As the title above indicates, this song has got some slinky moves.
Titled "Slow Dancer", this was a single by Fukushima released in October 1978. Fukushima came up with the sultry strut through Shinjuku or Roppongi while Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）wrote the lyrics about a disco diva who won't tolerate any surrenders of fatigue from her partners at the midnight hour and is more than willing to strand all of them on the curb (won't even call them a taxi home) while she continues tripping the light fantastic well into the morning. The Lexington Queen may have had its hands full with her in the club.
Fukushima's music comes across as the personification of the Slow Dancer from the bass hips and legs to the strings cattiness/kittenish-ness to the keyboards representing everything else. She's sexy and she knows it. Some cool City Pop striding down the street back in the late 1970s.
After doing that article for an Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）song that singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）had composed, I decided to see if there were any other tunes that the Okayama Prefecture-born artist herself had recorded.
Sure enough, I was able to find a fun one called "Bye Bye City" that she had released back in 1979 and was also a track on her debut album"I'm Ready" from June of that year. "Bye Bye City" has the feeling of a good road trip song as Fukushima sings about getting a fresh new start somewhere other than her old burg where her friends were drifting away. Fukushima's melody was paired with Takashi Matsumoto's（松本隆）lyrics.
I like the tune for that airy happy tone of 70s American AOR/pop and perhaps even a bit of New Wave through the keyboards especially in the intro. In a way, her voice reminds me of the delivery of Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）in a more down-home environment. I read on both her J-Wiki entry and the YouTube comments for the song that "Bye Bye City" was used as the campaign song for Nihon Car Ferry, now known as Marine Express Co.,Ltd.
It's sometimes a bit jarring to see Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）now, and then compare her to how she started out in the music business over 30 years ago. When some of us Akina fans on the blog talk about her, we can't help but express some concern considering that fragility she has displayed for many years. And yet, my impression of her early days was that the Tokyo aidoru of the early 1980s had initially been groomed to be the anti-Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）through her music: a punk girl in a school uniform with the big booming hairdo talking rough and tough. Perhaps she was the Rolling Stones to Seiko-chan's Beatles although some of those cute smiling photos of her in "Myojo" and "Heibon" magazines (as above) probably undercut that tsuppari image.
Being an Akina fan, it was those very early days of her career in the early part of the decade that I actually know the least about since my interest in her and her music didn't begin until the middle of the 1980s. So there is stuff to learn about still.
I've come across this track from Akina's 3rd album"Fantasy ~ Gensoukyoku"（ファンタジー〈幻想曲〉...Fantasia）which was released in March 1983 titled "Aitsu wa Joke". Now, as for a little bit of Japanese vocabulary information, aitsu isn't exactly the nicest word to use in public discourse since although it is technically defined as another word to represent the third-person singular (he/she), practically it can mean "that jerk" or worse. So perhaps in the intention of imbuing the translation with Akina's feelings, I will probably go with "Jerk's A Joke".
Written by the late Tsuzuru Nakasato（中里綴）and composed by Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）, "Aitsu wa Joke" has that sound that I've often associated with early aidoru Akina uptempo tunes: wailing electric guitar, sweeping-and-staccato strings and a slightly lower-than-usual aidoru voice that can straddle between defiance and pleading. I can also hear and understand why Nakamori had been compared to the big aidoru of the previous decade, Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）.
Going through the song's lyrics, Akina spends virtually the entire song castigating a former beau as if he were the most offensive cockroach oozing from under the refrigerator only to give hints that her vitriol may just be a front until the very last line where she basically confesses that he still pines for the lug through the tears reflected in the mirror. I still haven't gone through many of Akina's songs during this time but thematically, the words remind me of one of her early hits "Shojo A"（少女Ａ）in which within all the tough talk, there is that vulnerable hidden center inside of her. Perhaps this was a common trait with her songs.
As for "Fantasy", it did hit No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies. Well, perhaps this can be another item on the wish list.
The French "Je t'aime" seems to be one of those popular expressions that used to find itself in a handful of Japanese pop songs and even some of the titles way back when. It is rather ironic that for a people who don't (didn't?) express affection too openly, the ardent l'amour did make its way into kayo lyrics.
One example that is well known to me since I'm a big fan of the singer is "je t'aime" by Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）. Released as her 7th single in October 1984, the song may have all of its title in small letters but the way song comes out, it really seems to pour out all of the desperation of love and heartbreak like an avalanche. Going through the lyrics, I saw a lot of the tropes for the unhappiness involved in romance such as the dried and crumply leaves of autumn, the mark on the finger where a ring used to be, fog and even that new woman on the old flame's arm.
"je t'aime" isn't one of my favourite Ruiko songs partially due to the arrangement with a strangely dated synthesizer and because I usually like Kurahashi in a more languid style. But the song still pops up in my brain occasionally when her name comes up. It was written and composed by singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）.
The other song by her that I wanted to put up is "Itsuka Happiness"(Happiness Someday). This is one that I do like very much since it is in that languid style that I always associate with her. I'm not exactly sure when the song first appeared although it wasn't an official single. The first time I heard and fell in love with it was through its existence on a compilation tape that I got at Wah Yueh in Chinatown but it's also on the CD that is featured at Apple, her "NEW BEST NOW" disc from 1987.
Written by Kei Murayama and Junichi Kosugi（村山恵・こすぎじゅんいち）and composed by singer Yukio Sasaki（佐々木幸男）, I'd always assumed that "Itsuka Happiness" was about that leisurely Sunday morning brunch at home. It just sounded really relaxing. However, the lyrics really talk about a lass waiting for that phone call in a foggy Tokyo one morning from her beau so that she can tell how she feels about him. Well, it's not exactly the same scenario but perhaps she could still be eating a bagel and lox. In any case, this is more my type of Ruiko.
I took a look at that listing I wrote up on the Red and White teams for the 32nd edition of NHK's Kohaku Utagassen on New Year's Eve 1981, and I've written individual articles on some of the songs that were performed that night such as Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）"Natsu no Tobira"（夏の扉）and Hitomi Ishikawa's（石川ひとみ）"Machibuse"（まちぶせ）. But the fact is that I haven't covered all of them due to failing memory.
One such song is "Bossa Nova" as performed by singer-actress-tarento Naoko Ken（研ナオコ）. Listening to it again after so long, I remember that rock guitar starting things off. And as I heard the song, I realized that although there was some Latin, it didn't sound anything like a bossa nova tune at all.
In fact, I would say that it was straight-ahead City Pop. And looking at the lyrics (and music) by singer-songwriter Kuniko Fukushima（福島邦子）, the bossa nova was actually a plot point and not the description of the melody. To explain, the story involved a woman remembering with a dollop of bittersweetness about the end of a relationship through a final dance to a bossa nova tune. In short, she would dearly love to get rid of the bossa nova from her memory. I think Ken's demeanor as she sang it above in the video pretty much said it all. I love the melody and her smoky vocals.
"Bossa Nova" was Ken's 28th single released on December 21st 1981. I mentioned the exact date since she did get onto the Kohaku a mere 11 days later so I'm kinda wondering how she was able to get onto the NHK stage in such a short time especially when the single got no higher than No. 69. Not that I'm complaining too much since my re-acquaintance with the song has me enjoying its City Poppiness.
The single was also on Ken's 9th album"Renairon"（恋愛論...Theory of Love）, a collection of cover singles released in November 1981.
And that brings me to my next point in that Ken's single was indeed a cover of the original single by Fukushima herself. In fact, "Bossa Nova" was her 4th single from 1979. Judging from her performance on Fuji-TV's"Yoru no Hit Studio"（夜のヒットスタジオ）, the original version by the Okayama-born singer-songwriter had that same Latin-tinged City Pop feeling but was lacking that oomph of the electric guitar in the intro and perhaps those smoky vocals of Ken. Still, her style is reminiscent of Junko Yagami（八神純子）and early Miharu Koshi（越美晴）. The song was also on her 2nd album"To" from May 1980.
I'm glad that I was finally able to get this article about a Kuniko Fukushima song on board since I had come across another song by her in the past several months but have yet to put it onto the blog. Now I've gotten that kick to put more of her material into play. Born in 1954, she debuted in 1978 and released 15 singles and 11 albums. Along with Naoko Ken, Fukushima has also provided songs for other acts such as Anri（杏里）, Checkers（チェッカーズ）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）.
According to her J-Wiki profile, she is a writer but going to her official website, apparently she is still giving concerts even in the United States and teaches piano and voice.
