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.
Wow! Those were the days back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the Bubble Era was about to burst like an overripe grape. Yet, the good times were still rolling on Japanese TV with all sorts of fluffy trendy dramas showing young beautiful folks celebrating the good life but not quite hitting the mark in the romance department.
I don't know which trendy drama was being played in the above video although I can recognize at least early 80s aidoru Iyo Matsumoto（松本伊代）. And at the same time, I'm wondering whether this Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）song "Kanashi ma nai de" (Don't Be Sad) was the theme song. I hadn't done this one before although as soon as I heard the playful piano tinkling in the intro, I could recognize it as a Nagai tune, and Nagai was quite the sassy and brassy lass during that turn of the decade.
"Kanashi ma nai de" was the coupling song to Nagai's April 1989 single"Ready Steady Go!" I have yet to hear or re-recognize "Ready Steady Go!", but "Kanashi ma nai de" is the perfect Nagai vehicle for its stupendously upbeat arrangement involving a friend helping another friend out of the blues. Listening to this a few times will probably get anyone in a funk doing a jig on the floor. Lyrics were by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）under her pseudonym Airin（亜伊林）and the melody was by Mamoru Taniguchi（谷口守）. The single itself went up to No. 32, and it was only some months away before Nagai got her first Top 10 hit in "Miracle Girl"（ミラクル・ガール）.
I heard this one for the first time in a long while on the car radio last weekend. Definitely reminiscing here.
When this song originally came out near the end of October 1989, I had already been a few months into my two-year stay in Gunma Prefecture on the JET Programme. The thing is that the first time I got a good listen to Janet Jackson's propulsive "Rhythm Nation" single, it was via a Japan Air Lines commercial in which I got to see Ms. Jackson strutting it up with her squad in military uniform in an airport.
It wouldn't be for another several months before I finally got to see the award-winning and eye-widening music video. Music videos featuring a ragtag group of rebels attempting to bring light into a dystopia were nothing new by the end of the 1980s but I don't think anyone had ever seen anything this amazingly choreographed. Certainly not by me...before then, I'd only known Janet as Michael's kid sister and a cast member of "Diff'rent Strokes" on NBC.
The song and the video had such an influence on Japanese viewers that singer Akiko Wada（和田アキ子）practiced and performed the "Rhythm Nation" dance on the annual New Year's Fuji-TV program "Kakushigei Taikai"（かくし芸大会）which features celebrities of all stripes tackling feats that they normally wouldn't do. In Canada, "Rhythm Nation" made it No. 6 on the charts while in the United States, it peaked at No. 2.
So, what was coming out as singles in Japan in October 1989?
Along with the Miki Imai（今井美樹）song that I've just put up, Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）is another singer-songwriter from the 1980s and 1990s that I haven't posted about in a good long while. Both artists will always be imprinted into my mind as performers of that particular time and space.
It was only last Friday on the usual Urban Contemporary segment of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" that I noted Yukari Ito's（伊東ゆかり）"Mariko"（マリコ）from her 1982 album"Misty Hour". Well, I've got Mariko Nagai's "Mariko" as well now from her January 1988 second album"Genki Yohou"（元気予報...Energy Report）. To be honest, when I first saw that title for this particular singer, I kinda had this sort of face: 😏 I started thinking if Lady Gaga had come up with her newest song called "Lady Gaga".
But Nagai isn't Lady Gaga through any bit of imagination. Nagai has always struck me as the impish tomboy/country girl type with tons of energy and a soupcon of naughtiness...the type that would suddenly put her hand down someone's back inside that person's shirt and pretend that she just deposited a live frog. Nagai herself came up with the lyrics for "Mariko" with Katsuki Maeda（前田克樹）composing the softly upbeat melody, and I figured that this track from "Genki Yohou" is a sung autobiography about how the singer-songwriter climbed up past all of the self-doubts and setbacks to reach the top of that mountain to success. Nothing wrong with that.
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.
I might have to have a word with young Kayo about the appropriate clothing in an austere winter Japanese café...says the overly cautious father, J-Canuck.😨
Going on, one of the peculiarities of Japanese music is how for some reason, Christmas has been brought into the summer despite the home nation not located in the Southern Hemisphere. I guess it might be because Xmas in Japan has usually been seen as a second Valentine's Day holiday and of course, summer is a season that also benefits from lots of beach time romance, so putting them together is perhaps a natural consequence.
As an example, I bring you Mariko Nagai's（永井真理子）29th single from July 1997, "Manatsu no Eve" (Midsummer's Eve). It was used as the theme song for the 2nd "Tenchi Muyo!"（天地無用! 真夏のイヴ）movie of the same name (the official English title was "The Daughter of Darkness") in which the main character Tenchi finds out he's a father. Much hilarity ensues. Nagai was responsible for the lyrics while Masato Nakamura（中村正人）from Dreams Come True took care of music and arrangement. "Christmas Eve" and "illumination" do show up in Nagai's lyrics and the story is of enjoying each other as a couple in the hot summertime since at least one of them can't wait another five to six months before the Yuletide for the romancing to begin.
Hearing Nagai's voice and those synths bring the nostalgia back as I used to hear her all the time while I was living in GunmaPrefecture. The song reached No. 38 on Oricon and it was also a track on Nagai's 10th album "You're..." from July 1998. That album managed to hit as high as No. 49 on the charts.
This article took a bit of thinking and re-thinking before becoming this final result. I had been under the assumption that the Gosanke（御三家）file was done after Noelle's and my contributions over a number of months including my latest on November 26th for the enka-based Ikemen 3（イケメン3）. However with the Xmas season once again upon us and me hitting the J-Christmas tunes, I realized that there was another kinda one-off agglomeration of singers.
I'm talking about singer-songwriters Akiko Kobayashi（小林明子）, Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）, Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）and Reimy（麗美）who at one point in the late 1980s were under the Fun House label. The four of them got together and came up with their own Xmas album in November 1989 titled "Merry Christmas to You", and I came up with a posting for the title track way back on Christmas Eve 2012. As far as I know, it was just for that one album but I figured that if I could classify Ikemen 3 as a Gosanke for simply one song, I can do the same for Fun House Ladies' Vocal for an entire album of their group and individual efforts. Nagai is already part of the Gosanke club as one of my own imagined groups.
But then, I wondered whether I could post something on the four's harmonious rendition of Mel Tormé's classic "The Christmas Song". I'd even already written it down on the byline at the top but then looking at the article for "Merry Christmas to You", I realized that I'd already written about it in the article. So, it was back...finally...to the original idea of mentioning the fact that Kobayashi, Nagai, Karashima and Reimy were this Yuletide yonin known very casually as the Fun House Ladies' Vocal although their individual names were much more front and centre.
Back on my wistful and whimsical imaginary Gosanke（御三家）series where I come up with my own trio of singers depending on my own times and experiences. Last week, my musings took me to the harmony-laden vocal groups of my past. Today though will be more about four (!) individual female singers that I remember fondly while I was on the JET Programme between 1989 and 1991. Now of course, I knew more than four female singers but these are the ones that hit my psyche the best during my time in Gunma Prefecture.
Now, I was just going to go with Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）, Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）and Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）as would be the case for the typical trio of singers. But then, I recollect that I got to know Miki Imai（今井美樹）for the very first time while I was having tea in a stylish lodge-style café on the way home after a JET seminar, and I was absolutely smitten. So, you'll forgive me if I push the envelope a tad and extend beyond the usual Sannin Musume（三人娘）to Yonin Musume（四人娘）.
Oh, boy... Mariko Nagai. I can’t help but frequently revisit her albums. The singer always managed to deliver catchy and upbeat pieces that felt as if taken straight out of anime shows of the 1980s. In this post, I would like to take a closer look at her rock/pop song “Time ~ Song for GUNHED” and its cinematic connection.
The story of the song begins with a Tokusatsu movie simply called GUNHED (1989). I have already went into great details about the behind-the-scenes history of the film in my blog editorial, but let me recapitulate here that the production was initially supposed to be a Godzilla flick when the Toho Studios decided to turn the screenplay into a cyberpunk spectacle but without the King of the Monsters.
All in all, the film is a guilty pleasure which enjoys a modern cult following (even James Cameron proclaimed himself as a fan of the film). Well, the special effects and Blade Runner-like production design are definitely the main advantages of the motion picture, but the screenplay and editing are a major disappointment. Basically, the plotline of this movie is Ripley and Hicks from Aliens (1986) trying to stop Skynet from The Terminator (1984). I think that the best way to describe this film is to call it a compilation of live-action cutscenes from a cancelled PS1 game. They do not work well together at all, but they please the eye.
Groovy music score was composed by Toshiyuki Honda and Takayuki Baba, but it was Mariko Nagai who was given the job of providing the song for the end credits of the film. Unfortunately, the song is only featured in the Japanese version of GUNHED, so if you have an old, English DVD release of the film, then you won’t be able to hear “Time”.
In my opinion, “Time” does not fit the tone of the movie at all. GUNHED tries to be a gritty science-fiction tale, whereas the song seems to be just yet another theme proposal for Patlabor: The Mobile Police anime.
This is not to say that I dislike “Time”. To me, it is a cracker. Fast beats and Mariko’s powerful voice (especially when she’s singing “twenty hundred plus one!” and “20 seiki koete” lines) make this song truly epic. It’s just better to listen to it on its own, without the contextual burden of a movie that led to its creation.
The song was released on Mariko’s albums Miracle Girl and Zutto: Everlasting Collection. There was also a separate single edition. In addition, some hardcore fan made a music video coupling the song with GUNHED clips. You can find both full screen as well as widescreen version of the video on Youtube.
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.
Ah...yes. "Yawara!"That fashionable judo girl. The anime series lasted longer than the time I was in Gunma Prefecture on the JET Programme so I missed out on the final season. Not that I could be a regular viewer of the show on Monday nights anyways since I was regularly asked to dinner to have some English conversation with an elderly couple then.
Well, watching that loopy-and-flashy opening credits sequence that regularly launched a "Yawara!" episode, it looks like the final season finally saw the show's raison d'etre, namely young Yawara Inokuma achieving her mission to make it to the 1992 Barcelona Games for a medal in judo, come to fruition. I never saw that final season but I hope that she did get that Gold.
Also, I didn't know that perky Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）had one more go-round with the opening theme song. My very first Nagai article was "Miracle Girl" which served as the opening theme for Season 1, and so Nagai performed the theme for Season 3, "YOU AND I"...not to be confused with Keizo Nakanishi's（中西圭三）soul tune with the same title that came out a year later.
(karaoke version)
Nope, Nagai's "YOU AND I" was written and composed by singer-songwriter Taizo Jinnouchi（陣内大蔵）as her 16th single in April 1992. It is a song that I had heard before although I didn't know about its connection with "Yawara!" and it plays to her usual strengths of happy and inspiring. The song broke into the Oricon Top 10 getting as high as No. 7. I wouldn't have asked for a better song to finish the series on.
Yup, City Hall's Xmas tree has been up for some weeks now. The weather has started to get even more wintry and there is supposed to be a good dumping of snow from tomorrow night so that Yuletide feeling is beginning to come in. Plus, I've got the usual get-togethers for the season from next week. There will be 3 consecutive days and nights starting from Thursday with end-of-year thingies so I'm feeling that old sensation of bonenkai season from the old Gunma days.
Well, I guess it's then time for another Xmas tune but this one is going back quite a few years. I had actually been searching for the Xmas version of "Zutto" by Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）which does exist on a compilation of J-Pop Christmas tunes but not seeing it on YouTube, I did find another Yuletide song that the perky singer had recorded.
Titled "Lonely Christmas", it's another in a long line of bittersweet songs about spending the Holidays alone without that loved one due to various circumstances. My impression is that death wasn't the culprit here for the protagonist...just the usual unavoidable business trip or schooling overseas. Composed by Katsuki Maeda（前田克樹）, the style of the music is just as nostalgic as the theme of Xmas itself here. The lyrics were whipped by Airin（亜伊林）who usually goes by her real name of Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）.
The song was recorded especially for the Xmas album, "Merry Christmas to You" crafted at the recording company Fun House back in November 1989. Featuring four of the female singers who belonged to Fun House at the time, Nagai, Akiko Kobayashi（小林明子）, Reimy（麗美）and Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）, each of them had their own contributions to the album but the four of them then got together to provide their own group tune which became the title track. Hard to believe I wrote about that one almost 4 years ago.
Doing the Gunma part of "Memories of my Standout Singers" had me thinking about the spritely Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）once more after a long time. In fact, I decided to pull out her ballad album "yashishikunaritai" from 1992 and put that onto the player. It was nice to hear that bright voice again since it did musically represent my days in the Japanese Alps to a good extent. There was her very genki "Miracle Girl" and the ballad "ZUTTO" that will always rattle around in my memories of 1989-1991.
However, her 15th single"Yasashikunaritai" (I Want to Be Kind) was released in November 1991, a few months after my return to Toronto. In terms of tone, this lovely song is situated quite nicely between "Miracle Girl" and "ZUTTO" as Nagai seems to be singing about a girl's feelings in the hours before she makes up her mind to confess her feelings to a guy she likes in school. Just pure speculation from me, but I kinda wonder if lyricist Airin（亜伊林）, aka Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）, had Nagai herself in mind as that protagonist since my impression is that the girl is a tomboy who rather wants to appear more feminine in front of her love.
Makoto Kitano（北野誠）must have been on the same wavelength as well since he creates a melody that starts off as an amiable theme for the tomboy but then suddenly brings in these wonderfully lush strings into the refrain and bridge that signify this potential transformation into this beautiful swan to get that guy's heart to flutter. And then at the end, it sounds as if the girl is drawing in her strength and heading to school to make that fateful confession. A nice little 4-minute story.
"Yasashikunaritai" made it all the way up to No. 5 on the charts and the album "yasashikunaritai" hit No. 1. The single was also a campaign song for a yogurt commercial since perhaps Vitamin B12 is just the thing to get through those love confessions. As for Nagai herself, she did get married and have that kid not too long after the release of this song.
Although my excitement at the time was understandably all focused on starting my very first post-university job in a foreign country and finally living life on my own, my bona fide collection of Japanese pop music started with my arrival in Gunma Prefecture for the JET Programme. I wasn't aware of it at the time, but years of owning a few LPs and tapes bought in Chinatown and taping episodes of "Sounds of Japan" would transition into a ravenous habit of purchasing tons of CDs in Tsukiyono-machi, the regional capital of Maebashi and the megalopolis of Tokyo over the next two years.
Looking back on those years and then comparing them to that July 1981 trip which launched my musical journey in the first place, I find it fascinating at how different music was between the beginning of the 80s and the end of that decade. The scene of fluffy-cute aidoru in frilly dresses and questionable bridgework had changed into a small cadre of mellow singer-songwriters in tandem with girl bands who wanted to rock out with their guitars or their voices. Plus, there was even more synth work but not to show off any blippity-bloppity technopop but to anchor songs in a somewhat more mature style.
When I moved into my room atop my host family's chiropractic practice, I turned on my TV and saw Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）, the super-dynamic aidoru of the mid-80s simply acting away in a drama. Things were indeed a-changing. In any case, I welcome you to Part III of the series.
1. B'z
Being blasted awake every morning by "Bad Communication" by B'z made sure I was aware of this band. B'z was part of the realization that I was no longer in kayo Kansas. Koshi Inaba and Takahiro Matsumoto（稲葉浩志・松本孝弘）were the introduction to the part of J-Pop that was now in full thrall to more eclectic bands.
2. Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）
(cover version)
I had to find out from one of my English teachers in class about who Kazumasa Oda really was. On finding out that he was that distinctly mellow voice on many an Off Course (オフコース) ballad, it was a revelation on how urban contemporary he became as a soloist. "Little Tokyo" was the template sound to me for this new Oda who was already turning out to be one of the coolest middle-aged guys in music.
3. Wink
My impression between 1989-1991 was that the old-style aidoru phenomenon was finally starting to peter out. And yet, when I arrived, the Wink duo of Sachiko Suzuki and Shoko Aida（鈴木早智子・相田翔子）had already made a huge splash with a style that seemed anti-aidoru: no bopping about and no emotion. Just near-robotic moves and expressions reminiscent of exquisitely handmade dolls. "Samishii Nettaigyo"（淋しい熱帯魚）is the song that I will always remember them for.
4. Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）
Speaking about anti-aidoru, Mariko Nagai may have had plenty of bopping dance style but I couldn't ever see her as an aidoru. There was a cuteness to her, to be sure, but not of the early 80s calculated variety but something that was far more girl-next-door and down-to-earth. In many ways, "Miracle Girl"（ミラクル・ガール）is the one representative song that symbolized the female pop sound of those years in Gunma.
5. Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）
I already knew about Misato Watanabe while I was still an undergrad at U of T but spending the turn of the decade in Japan, I got to know far more about her thanks to the hit singles (such as "Summertime Blues") and albums that came out during my time there. And "Summertime Blues" was another one of those happy songs that also signified my 1989-1991 period.
6. Miki Imai（今井美樹）
(karaoke version)
If it hadn't been for that stopover at that comfortable lodge cafe between Maebashi and Tsukiyono, I may not have been able to discover the wonders of Miki Imai. Well, that's not true...the lady with the mile-wide smile was already gaining so much popularity that I would have found about her eventually. But that cafe setting while hearing the relaxing sounds of her "Natsu wo Kasanete"（夏をかさねて）pretty much imprinted my falling for the lass. A lot of girl spunk out there but Imai was lovely and mellow.
7. Princess Princess
There was no place to avoid Princess Princess and the band's megahit "Diamonds". The very happy song was all over media and it was already a favourite tune to play during the schools' Sports Day outings. Girl pop/rock was all the rage at the time I arrived in Japan and Princess Princess was the band to beat.
8. Noriyuki Makihara（槇原敬之）
Noriyuki Makihara broke out just a month before I was to leave Japan for home. But his "Donna Toki mo"（どんなときも）was so infectious and positive that I simply had to obtain the CD single before getting on that last plane home for Canada. And I finally got it in a department store in Kumamoto City. It may have been the first disc that I ripped open on getting back to my family's condo.
Although the above are my standout singers, there were so many others who together with those above trailblazed a new path into Japanese popular music, and things got more interesting when I returned to Japan a few years later for a far longer stay.
My impression of both good buddies Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）and Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）is that they are, for the lack of a better word, clean...as in squeaky clean. Karashima has that elegant look which befits her nickname of Karashima-sensei; if she had gone into the acting world, she could have easily been typecast as the pretty old-school marm. Meanwhile, my image of Nagai has always been of that slightly rambunctious but basically decent tomboy-next-door; she might get herself muddy from playing out in the fields, but her mother guaranteed that she would always be out the next day in the brightest and cleanest of T-shirts.
Before Nagai hit it really big at the end of the 80s with songs like "Miracle Girl", there was her 2nd single from November 1987, "Hitomi - Genki" which was composed by Karashima and written by Natsumi Tadano（只野菜摘）. At the time that I first heard it, I didn't know it was one of her very early contributions to her discography. It's more of a slightly slower ballad but even so, the song has a hard time to keep down the irrepressible Nagai cheer completely. As for the translation of the title, I wasn't sure if the "hitomi" was referring to a girl with that name or her eyes themselves, and the lyrics don't really make that crystal clear although they describe a very happy young lady going through her life. For the sake of argument, though, I'll just go with the former choice and translate it as "Cheerful Hitomi".
For some reason, the arrangement and Nagai's slight echo in her vocals has often gotten me into a very nostalgic zone. Her vocals, by the way, come off as being very crystal-clear...and clean.
Strangely enough, the first time I had ever heard of "Hitomi - Genki" was through the old Fuji-TV Monday night comedy-variety program "Shimura Ken no Daijoubuda" (志村けんのだいじょうぶだぁ...way before "HEY! HEY! HEY! Music Champ"). Comedian Ken Shimura (formerly of The Drifters) had a number of warped characters that he played, and one of them was the elderly and innocently deranged Hitomi（ひとみさん）. In a bit of a tribute montage to the character, the show used Nagai's single as a theme of sorts.
Since at the time, I hadn't known the exact title of the song, I wasn't sure if I would ever hear it again. But some years later, I ended up buying a Mariko Nagai album, "yasashikunaritai"（やさしくなりたい...I Want to Be Nice）, a BEST album of her ballads up to 1992, and luckily enough, the single was included in there. I'm not sure if the original single ever got into the Oricon rankings but "yasashikunaritai" did get No. 1 status on the album charts. The original was also on her 2nd studio album,"Genki Yohou"（元気予報...Happy Forecast） from January 1988; it peaked at No. 35.
(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)
Well, how about that? I was able to get a fan-made montage for the Shimura character and the Nagai song!
Karashima did a cover of "Hitomi - Genki" a few years later as a single released in December 1992. Although her version has a bit more of an urgent beat to it, Sensei's pure and crystalline vocal quality still come through...almost as if it were an even more refined version of Nagai's voice.
"Heart wo Wash!" (Wash Your Heart!) was Mariko Nagai's（永井真理子） return to her hyper-enthusiastic mode after what was arguably her biggest hit, the ballad "ZUTTO" in 1990. I first heard it as the new theme song for Fuji-TV's Wednesday-night variety series, "Yamadakatsutenai Terebi" （やまだかつてないテレビ）after KAN's"Ai wa Katsu" （愛は勝つ）. As Nagai's 13th single played over the opening credits, Super Mario Kart-like graphics with the cast's faces superimposed over the tiny drivers' bodies zipped along. As "Heart wo Wash!" was released in April 1991, I guess in a way, the song was a happy reset into the new fiscal year to get everyone all hyped up for Spring, and I gather for the program's new season. As much as I've noted that the late 80s/early 90s were a time when a number of female singer-songwriters were coming out with some mellow ballads, Nagai was also going into Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里） territory with her pop/rock hits.
Written by Yuri Asada（浅田有理） and composed by Makoto Kitano（北野誠）,"Heart wo Wash!" peaked at No. 4 on Oricon (thanks, oricon.com) and was a track on Nagai's 6th album, "WASHING", released in June 1991. "WASHING" hit the top spot on the album charts.
Four of the singers belonging to the recording company, Fun House (now BMG Japan): Akiko Kobayashi, Mariko Nagai, Midori Karashima and Reimy （小林明子・永井真理子・辛島美登里・麗美） got together to create this timely song, "Merry Christmas To You" in November 1989 as a track on their titular album. The album also has the individual chanteuses performing their own tunes as well before the big get-together in the middle.
As for the above video, the four ladies get together first to sing a harmonious version of Mel Torme's classic "The Christmas Song" before going into "Merry Christmas To You".
Written by Nagai and Karashima and composed by Karashima, the song reminds me of some of those large gatherings of Western singers for "We Are The World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?" which took place back in the 80s.
This is the live performance of the song, minus Mariko Nagai.
Kuniko Yamada（山田邦子）, a homely but hilariously cheeky comedienne, first found fame on the Fuji-TV Saturday night comedy-variety show, "Oretachi Hyokinzoku"（オレたちひょうきん族...We Are The Funny Guys) which pretty much ran for the entire decade of the 1980s. Her specialty was impersonating singers, but I recall seeing her in a segment in which she drew some surprisingly racy stuff in front of the kids. But with her own star rising, Yamada eventually got her own variety show on the same network from October 1989 titled "Kuni-chan no Yamada Katsutenai Terebi"(やまだかつてないテレビ....Kuni's Yamada Unprecedented TV) every Wednesday night. It was part of my weekly viewing routine during my years in Gunma. The comedienne was her usual hammy self in various skits and segments with other regulars, but a number of musicians also achieved a form of semi-regular status on the show.
So, in March 1991, a double-CD pack which resembled one of those cubic watermelons that Japanese scientists had concocted some years back was released titled "Yamada Katsutenai CD"（やまだかつてないＣＤ....Yamada Unprecedented CD). Being a fan of the show, of course, I just had to purchase my own copy. CD 1 has all of the original songs while CD 2 contains the karaoke versions of those songs. Almost half of them have already been profiled: Kan -- "Ai wa Katsu", Mariko Nagai -- "ZUTTO" and the late Kaori Kawamura -- "Tsubasa wo Kudasai".
Kawamura also had another contribution to the show in the form of "Kamisama ga Oritekuru Yoru"（神様が降りてくる夜...The Night The Gods Come Down), a pop-rock tune which was used as the theme for one of the recurring segments: a parodic feature on medieval Japanese court life. The song was created by Ken Takahashi（高橋研）.
During the turn of this decade, the singing duo Wink had become one of the big acts in show business. Of course, Kuniko Yamada, whose talent lay in impersonating singers, just couldn't resist and decided that she needed to impersonate them. So, she incorporated another segment in 1990 titled "Nihon Zenkoku Sachiko Sagase"(日本全国早智子探せ.... Find A Sachiko All Over Japan) in which her Shoko Aida would find the right Sachiko Suzuki. She found her.... Chie Yokoyama（横山知枝）, a high school student from Hiroshima Prefecture. Together they formed the unit, Yamadakatsutenai Wink（やまだかつてないWink), and their first single was "T-Intersection -- Anata ni Modorenai"(T-Intersection -- あなたに戻れない...I Can't Return to You), an uptempo Eurobeat piece whose lyrics were written by Yamada herself and composed by saxophonist MALTA.
In the following year, the ersatz Wink came up with a ballad titled "Sayonara dakedo Sayonara janai"（さよならだけどさよならじゃない...It is and It Isn't Goodbye), which was also written by Yamada and composed by regular guest KAN. It was created partially as a tribute to Yokoyama who was on her way to graduating from high school and onto college. However, it's become a graduation song for just about everyone. It did become a hit, peaking at No. 2 and ending up as the 49th-ranked song of 1991. The entire disc set itself was able to hit the top spot on Oricon as well.
There is also a Xmas song by the duo on the CD, but let's save that for a more appropriate time.
Yamada Katsutenai CD
Discs to help me remember the late 80s and early 90s
Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）was one of the artists who stood out from my time in Japan between 1989-1991. The pixieish singer often came up with happy pop music. However, "Zutto"(Forever & Always) was her hit love ballad released in October 1990. It was used as the ending theme song for one of my favourite variety shows on Fuji-TV starring veteran comedienne Kuniko Yamada（山田邦子）. The song was composed by Takayuki Negishi（根岸貴幸）and written by Airin aka Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）. It hit No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies and ended up becoming the 30th-ranked song of 1991.
The show was "Kuniko-chan no Yamada Katsutenai Terebi"（邦子ちゃんのやまだかつてないテレビ.....Kuniko-chan's Yamada Unprecedented TV) which was televised on Wednesday nights at 9 p.m. from 1989 to 1992. It had the usual skits and musical interludes but was also a welcome stopover point for pop singers such as Nagai, KAN and Senri Oe（大江千里）. They practically became semi-regulars on the show. And sometimes, the odd anime character would show up.
"Miracle Girl" by Mariko Nagai（永井真理子） was never an official Olympic theme song for any of the Japanese networks. However, it was the theme for the 1989 TV adaptation of a popular manga, "Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl" created in 1986 by Naoki Urasawa（浦沢直樹）. In both forms, the story dealt with a young girl who is an initially reluctant entrant into the family martial art of judo before realizing that she has the same talent as her previous generations. The story ultimately leads to Yawara Inokuma heading to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics to compete for that gold medal, and the anime ends at around the same time.
"Yawara" was one of my memories of TV during my 2 years in Gunma Prefecture. I came home on Monday nights to often, if not always, watch the anime at 7:30 on NTV. And as you can see from the opening credits above, Yawara-chan is featured as this adorable girl who is as comfortable in the latest fashions as she is in a judo-gi. I only get to see judo during the Summer Olympics, so my interest in the martial art is pretty limited, but it was nice watching the show since Yawara, the most settled of the characters, usually had to deal with some of her more eccentric loved ones such as her grandfather.
"Miracle Girl" was Mariko Nagai's 10th single released in October 1989. Having been in Gunma for just a couple of months, Nagai was one of my first new singers that I discovered during this era of life in Japan. As you can see from the official music video for the song, Nagai has this pixie-ish energy that has always been her most notable characteristic. Looking almost like a little boy in that tomboy haircut, I also think she could've come off looking like Ichiro Suzuki's little sister. That same uptempo energy also comes out in the song. It wasn't a big hit apparently since it didn't show up in the Top 100 in 1990 but because of the anime and the happy-happy-joy-joy feeling, it has affixed itself permanently in my brain as one of my favourite tunes of the time. The music was provided by Hirokazu Fujii（藤井宏一）while the lyrics were composed by Airin （亜伊林）, better known as Yoshiko Miura (三浦徳子）who wrote a number of Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子） songs nearly a decade previously.
In one of those amazing coincidences, at around the time that "Yawara!"was enjoying its success on the bookshelves and TV, one of the world's foremost judo-ka, Ryoko Tani (nee Tamura) was just starting her road to success. On winning the silver medal at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, folks noted her similarities in terms of ability, height and age to the fictional Ms. Inokuma, and thus her permanent nickname was born. After that she attained her status as a Japanese sports heroine by capturing 2 gold medals in Sydney and Athens. Tani is now a member of the Japanese Parliament's Upper House, and is one of the 50 or so members to recently defect from the governing Democratic Party of Japan to launch a new smaller protest-based party, People's Life First.
