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 Maison book girl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maison book girl. Show all posts
Hope everyone has been enjoying their weekend so far. I've just gotten up from a nap as would be the case for a guy my age.
Anyways I'm happy to say here that one of our Kayo Kyoku Plus contributors, Joana Bernardo, has come up with her own twenty-minute video regarding a major segment of Japanese popular music titled "A History of Japanese Idols" so I hope that you can give that a gander. Very proud of her hard work there. I was able to learn some good information from the video including someone who has been called the very first aidoru, Matsuko Ashita（明日待子）, from the early 20th century. I rather liken her to a Japanese version of Mary Pickford who was known as "America's Sweetheart" but was actually born right here in Toronto.
I'd actually been hoping to track down a YouTube video of Ashita's first recorded song from 1946, "Tanoshiki Ashita"（楽しき明日...A Happy Tomorrow）, but alas I couldn't find anything of it or even anything substantial on Ashita herself unfortunately. Maybe someday.
However, in keeping with the theme of aidoru, I've decided to devote this article to one of the more contemporary aidoru groups with that indie streak. I have already written one article on Maison book girl through their song "lost AGE" due to what I discovered in a local free magazine, and then Joana herself was even able to see them live in Brighton, England back in May 2018.
"Yami-Iro no Asa"(Dark Morning) is a track on their July 2019 single"umbla", and one commenter under the video made a humourous remark about the song and the music video traumatizing the kids if NHK's"Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）ever got their hands on them. Musician-songwriter Kenta Sakurai (サクライケンタ), the man who brought together everyone for Maison book girl, was behind the words (translation by Kimono Beat) and music for this brightly-sung and nimble-footed song whose whole effect with the video is a mix of despair and a Salvador Dalipainting. The only thing missing is the melted clock.
When my boyfriend started getting into the alternative idol scene, one of the first groups I remember him showing me was Maison book girl. Before I knew it, I already had several of their songs in my phone in heavy rotation everyday, as I went from home to college and back.
The group, formed in 2014, is composed by 4 girls: Megumi Koshouji, the leader (part of the original formation of BiS - probably the most well-known alternative idol group ever), Aoi Yagawa, Yui Inoue and Rin Wada. Their producer, Kenta Sakurai, is also the composer and arranger of the songs. Their arrangements use similar sets of sounds, which match the overall minimalist image of Bukuga (as they're affectionately known), but the key to their uniqueness is the composition, which gives each tune its flavor.
Bukuga soon became one of my favorite modern idol and J-pop acts, as well as my boyfriend's, and as soon as we knew they were performing in the United Kingdom, we started planning a trip - to Brighton, the first date confirmed and the one more suitable to our schedules. This would be my first time leaving Portugal, my first live idol act, and an unforgettable experience.
Brighton Station
Our schedules left us with only two days to spare for our trip, so we landed in Luton before lunch and grabbed something to eat before heading to Brighton by train (a two-hour trip). We didn't really look up much about the place; we essentially knew it was a beachside destination with a pier. But it proved to be a very interesting and especially lively place, with a big Asian community and an active alternative music scene. The concert we were watching was part of a bigger festival, The Great Escape, with venues all over the city.
After checking into the hotel, we had some spare time. It went by really fast, since among other things, we had to go get our festival wristband and enter in the venue (The Arch nightclub, right in front of the beach) soon enough to catch a good spot.
From @maisonbookgirl on Twitter
We managed to see Maison book girl enter the venue, and we were positively surprised by how cuter they look in person, rather than in the pictures and videos we were used to see. And I got really embarrassed, lol. It's hard to admit, but it was the first time I really got into my head that the idols I see through a phone or computer screen are real people.
We got really nice spots, right at the front, but the venue didn't seem too packed, though I stopped paying attention a while before the live started. There were a few dedicated Japanese fans by our side, but zero wota dances or yells, understandingly. Bukuga's style makes them feel like they're not your usual idol group, but somehow they are.
The live started at 8pm and lasted 30 minutes. Besides the songs featured in their first UK single, bath room and karma (which opened and finished the show, respectively), they featured some other songs, such as lost age (covered by J-Canuck around the time they visited Canada) and faithlessness, the one I started this post with. There were short talk segments, where we heard the girls speak some English, and that allowed them some rest. (Being a person with little physical ability, I admire idols' well-maintained skills to simultaneously dance and sing for long periods of time.) The lightning complemented the experience, making for a great performance.
As for me... I was just there, almost standing still, smiling so much my cheeks hurt, and singing everything I knew by heart. I think that right until the end, I was trying to remind myself that that sight was reality, looking at my boyfriend and watching him enjoy it as much as I was. Until a few weeks ago, I thought seeing idols live was almost like daydreaming, that it wouldn't happen this soon.
I felt like in that venue, we were one of the "elites" that were there for them because we were their longtime fans. And the girls acknowledged that - I know they did.
The following act was Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, so I'm still tagging her in this post. Maybe some people will get mad that we didn't give her as much attention as Bukuga, lol, but we do like her, and we watched some of the concert, but from a further spot. The nightclub was tightly packed after we came back from buying merchandise. She sang her most famous hits, and the public was definitely as "decora" colorful as expected from your usual Kyary fan.
Pamyurin from a distance
Concerning Maison book girl, there were no pictures allowed with the fans. We were saddened, but still greatly satisfied for the amazing performance. But, it didn't end there. I won't disclose what happened since it concerns the girls' privacy. I'll just say destiny gave us two more chance encounters that night, which completed our experience.
One of the views from the pier
We had to leave the following day, but managed to plan things well enough to have some free time. That allowed us to walk by the beautiful Brighton Pier, some of the main streets, and calmly have lunch before heading back to Luton Airport and subsequently to Lisbon.
The blues have been quite tough on me since I boarded the plane home. It's proof that it was an excellent experience, but I'm sure it won't be the last. I became more passionate for Bukuga and modern idols in general than before... Way more. Also, I'll keep an eye wider open to J-pop performances in Europe, which I hope will increase in number in the future.
The photo above is of a local free magazine specializing in Japanese restaurants in the Greater Toronto Area called "Bento Box". Even 5 years ago when I got back to my hometown after my life in Japan, I couldn't have imagined that there would be so many ramen restaurants, izakaya and J-restaurants that would have generated the industry's own free magazine. Now, it's become a regular pick-up for my place.
"Bento Box" also has pages devoted to various aspects of Japanese culture and on its last page last issue, there was an article on some of the more eclectic acts that have come to visit various cities in Canada. And that would include the subject of this article, the aidoru group Maison book girl which actually had a gig in Toronto last month.
Formed in 2014, musician-songwriter Kenta Sakurai (サクライケンタ) decided to form this new group around one of the members (Megumi Koshoji/コショージメグミ) of the aidoru group BiS which had initially broken up in the same year (until apparently starting up again this year). Three other women, Aoi Yagawa（矢川葵）, Yui Inoue（井上唯）and Rin Wada（和田輪）joined up to complete Maison book girl.
The J-Wiki article for the group stated that the songs were filtered through a merger of contemporary pop and aidoru music. I've only listened to a few of their songs so far including "lost AGE", and I would say that according to that particular song, Sakurai has created an aidoru group that is anti-aidoru. Not that I'm trying to say that Maison book girl is going out of its way to lambaste the current alphabet groups like AKB48 but there is none of the smiling Disney cuteness and jingle-jangle Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）songs. Plus the choreography seems to be a mix of interpretive dance and something a high school club concocted...it's refreshingly stodgy. Heck, even the video itself is embracing some very un-aidoru-like pallid colours and darkness.
Sakurai wrote and composed "lost AGE" as a track for Maison book girl's first EP, "summer continue" which was released earlier this year at the end of March 2016. The title and the lyrics hint at a schoolgirl going through a rough patch in her life and perhaps becoming a hikikomori, withdrawn and sullen inside the private dimension delineated by her room. The romanized lyrics and their English translation can be found at the website "renai junkie".
Looking at the YouTube comments, "lost AGE" has been polarizing...some loving it, some wanting to throw a rock at it. To be honest, "summer continue" will probably not be on my Xmas shopping list but then again, neither will any of AKB48's discs for the foreseeable future. Still, Maison book girl strikes me as being an interesting creation in a beatnik sort of way...about as indie as an aidoru group can be, I suppose.
