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.
Japan's annual Golden Week holidays came to a close a few hours ago and I hope that everyone there had as good a time as can be had under the current COVID restrictions. Until the pandemic hit, it had all been about Bullet Trains at over 100% capacity, fully booked planes and highways that always became the longest parking lots in the world. For that very reason, Golden Week for me meant stay-cations. In all my time in the country, I never went on any vacation outside of the megalopolis during GW and although the usual tourist areas in Tokyo were fairly crowded, I was happy to walk quite more freely through other areas such as Ginza and Nihonbashi during the holiday period. Things were mellower in the big city.
When I was covering composer/arranger Katsuhisa Hattori's（服部克久）works via a Creator article soon after his passing almost a year ago, I came across one of his creations for the 1980 anime "Tom Sawyer no Bouken"（トム・ソーヤーの冒険...The Adventures of Tom Sawyer） which was the opening theme, "Dare yori mo Tooku e"（誰よりも遠くへ...Farther Than Anyone）, a jaunty contemporary-sounding tune with the addition of that banjo to reflect Tom and his surroundings.
The ending theme is, as would befit the oft-used pattern of lively opening theme and mellow ending theme, has a softer arrangement by Hattori. Titled "Boku no Mississippi" (My Mississippi), once again as well, Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）provided the lyrics while Maron Kusaka（日下まろん）sang it. It does have that feeling of Tom and Huck lying on the grass along the banks of the Mississippi, at least the beginning verses do, before the grand refrain comes out. The full version has some wonderful strings and a romantic electric guitar helping out.
Kusaka herself had a very brief career as an anison singer. In addition to the themes for "Tom Sawyer", she only sang the opening and ending themes for the anime "Wan Wan Sanjuushi"（ワンワン三銃士...Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds） the following year, before deciding to retire.
Some sad news from the world of Japanese music in that composer/arranger Katsuhisa Hattori passed away today at the age of 83. His name is one that has been familiar to me through television since he not only provided theme songs for a number of shows of different genres but he sometimes appeared on them as well. Hattori also belongs to a large family of music makers including his father, composer/arranger Ryoichi Hattori（服部良一）, his son, composer/arranger Takayuki Hattori（服部隆之）, and granddaughter, violinist Mone Hattori（服部百音）.
One thing that I hadn't known not being a gamer was that Katsuhisa and Ryoichi co-arranged the first music CD for the composer Nobuo Uematsu（植松伸夫）for "Final Fantasy" in 1989. In terms of Katsuhisa's touchstones for me, I remember him for contributing his services for Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）when the latter released his Xmas album in 1993.
In a way, Hattori was a regular presence in terms of his music since I had been a regular viewer of Fuji-TV's long-running music show "Music Fair". He was the original arranger of the classy theme song created by Kougo Hotomi（保富康午）and Naozumi Yamamoto（山本直純）.
Moreover, he was also behind the exciting and sweeping opening theme for TBS' "The Best 10". Hattori provided a lot of theme songs for other television shows such as this detective show called "Kyodai Keiji"（兄弟刑事）for which I've already provided an article.
Hattori also provided a number of themes for anime such as "Tom Sawyer no Bouken"（トム・ソーヤーの冒険...The Adventures of Tom Sawyer）. The opening theme for this 1980 series was "Dare yori mo Tooku e"（誰よりも遠くへ...Farther Than Anyone） as sung by Maron Kusaka（日下まろん）with lyrics by Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）.
His list of kayo that he composed for specific singers is quite short, though. One example is Tessei Miyoshi's（三好鉄生）"Sugoi Otoko no Uta"（すごい男の唄）, and there is this one for enka singer Aki Yashiro（八代亜紀）, the sunny "Hanataba ~ Bouquet"（花束）released in 1990 for which the late Yu Aku（阿久悠）provided the lyrics.
Organizations and events also benefited from Hattori's work. To celebrate the 120th anniversary of the Keikyu railway corporation, he composed a song titled "Ningen ga Suki Dakara"（人間が好きだから...Because We Love Humanity）which was written by Kyoko Tanaka（田中京子）and Toyohisa Araki（荒木とよひさ）with the vocal group Circus（サーカス）performing it. Since, according to the Wikipedia article on the company, Keikyu goes all the way back to 1898, I'm assuming that the song was created around 2018.
Although Hattori didn't provide many direct compositions for singers, he did arrange a lot of them that had been created by other songwriters. One that has already been talked about on the blog is his more regal version of the classic "Sotsugyo Shashin"（卒業写真）as performed by Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）in 1975 with Yumi Arai（荒井由実）as the original lyricist and composer. He also handled strings arrangements for many other artists such as the aforementioned Tatsuro Yamashita, Masashi Sada（さだまさし）and Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）.
The one big surprise that I've had in Katsuhisa Hattori's file thus far was in his 1985"Juicy and Crispy" album for his long-running "Ongaku Batake"（音楽畑）series. The second track is "Secrets", one lovely AOR piece that was written by Linda Hennrick; I'd never imagined that Hattori would come up with something in the light and mellow genre but out of all the songs featured in his long discography, "Secrets" has been the one tune by him that I would make a beeline for if I were having a bad day.
Discovered another couple of great tunes from Side B of "Juicy and Crispy". At about 21:00 is "Japonica" which seems to be Hattori's attempt at T-Square sports-loving goodness, and then at about 26:40 is "Costa Del Sol", a wonderful tropical cocktail of fusion. Really would love to get my hands on this album although my first attempt at it a few years ago sadly ended in failure.
From video games to classical music, Hattori has left a lot of fans with a wide variety of music that we will probably need years to discover and re-discover. He took up the baton for songwriting passed on by his father and now he has given it over to his son and potentially future generations.
