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, we're into another work week and things are bitterly cold out there. But all it takes in my neck of the woods is just layer up as much as you can, and things are much more bearable outside. I'm currently awaiting a couple of textbooks for my student so I may have to rush out to greet the Amazon guy.
It's been almost a couple of years since I put up a Meiko Kaji（梶芽衣子）number, and my impression of her has been that of a tough-as-nails woman done wrong in the big city thanks to her movies and music. Par exemple, here is her September 1975 single"Meinichi" (The Anniversary of Your Death). The title pretty much says it all, but although the music by Toshiaki Arai（新井利昌）is far from upbeat and bouncy, it's still lighter than the Jun Asaki（浅木じゅん）lyrics of a lady who had promised her lover's parents that she would take care of him, only for her to mourn his untimely passing some years later. The feeling is that she's totally on her own now, wracked with guilt since she feels that she abandoned him to his fate.
There is a folksy touch to "Meinichi", probably thanks to that piano that makes it stand out since I've usually thought of Kaji as more in the Mood Kayo vein. However, another standout is her vocals which sound as clear as the sake that's probably been swallowed to numb the pain of the lady's loss.
As a kid, I'd heard about this genre of movies which dealt with men or women in prison and how they adapted to what was probably a Hell on Earth.
But if truth be told, the only example that I ever saw was the "SCTV" parody "Broads Behind Bars" with Catherine O'Hara, John Candy, Andrea Martin and Eugene Levy. All I can say is the conclusion is pretty ironic considering Canada and marijuana now.
As much as I love the above part of Canadiana, we should move onto something Japanese. And it looks like the movie industry there also had its share of female prisoner flicks such as the franchise "Joshu Sasori Series"（女囚さそりシリーズ...Female Convict Scorpion）beginning in 1972 starring actress/singer Meiko Kaji（梶芽衣子）as Prisoner #701 Nami Matsushima（松島ナミ）, aka The Scorpion.
Kaji also provided the theme song for the entire series, the melancholy "Urami Bushi" (Song of Grudges) which was released as a single in December 1972. With the lyrics provided by the director of the first three movies of the franchise, Shunya Ito（伊藤俊也）, and music by Shunsuke Kikuchi（菊池俊輔）, there's not only the Mood Kayo aspect, but also an arrangement that reminded me of the lone wolf samurai warrior getting his revenge on those who had murdered his lord and master. I could also imagine Kaji's character of Nami finally singing it years after her release when she's set up her own bar in Shinjuku's Golden Gai. There's a similarity with the late Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）in her delivery although Kaji's vocals are a bit lighter than Fuji's.
The above is the series of trailers for the movies.
Considering that "Urami Bushi" has that Mood Kayo feeling, it was a bit of a revelation to find out from her J-Wiki profile that the Tokyo-born Kaji hasn't drunk a single drop of alcohol.
Yes, it's indeed a Saturday night. Perhaps it's time for something a bit more shibui. So, get those tumblers and ice buckets out. Old Parr coming up!
I found a song on that compilation of Mood Kayo tunes photographed at the top of the article titled "Shinjuku Blues". Seeing a title like that, I would have immediately thought of Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）, the Queen of Kayo Blues, but actually I couldn't find any video on YouTube with her. And that is also because the original version was sung by a singer-actress from Hiroshima Prefecture named Hiroko Ohgi（扇ひろこ）.
Debuting in 1965 with "Aishuu Kaikyo"（哀愁海峡...Sorrowful Strait）, she had a huge hit in 1967 with "Shinjuku Blues", the story of a disconsolate lady slowly pacing through the streets of the area after losing a love. Ironically, there had been naysayers, presumably before its release, crowing that the single wouldn't sell outside of Shinjuku itself and that the lyrics were too dark. Well, it looks like the Japanese version of the cry-in-your-beer ballads was becoming the big thing in kayo kyoku at that time, so "Shinjuku Blues" made its mark.
The remarkable thing about Ohgi while performing "Shinjuku Blues" is her delivery which is mostly in the lower registers but then suddenly soars up high above the izakaya and bars. That slow steady performance accompanied by the organ really gives this song a elegiac feeling. I could imagine Ohgi in her kimono sadly walking through streets like Golden Gai holding a framed picture of her lost love as if he left this mortal coil suddenly.
"Shinjuku Blues" was written by Akiko Takiguchi（滝口暉子...not sure if that is the correct reading of the first name）and composed by Kanae Wada（和田香苗）. On the strength of the ballad, Ohgi found herself appearing on the 1967 Kohaku Utagassen for the first time. She would appear one more time the following year. Oddly enough, although she is listed as an enka singer on J-Wiki, there is no listing of her discography aside from this song and a couple of others.
I think another sign of success for a song is the number of times it has been covered. I'm sure that Keiko Fuji has covered it sometime but not finding her version anywhere, I did find other covers although I don't know when they were recorded. The late Mina Aoe（青江三奈）gives a slightly more upscale version with the bluesy sax and horns, and to be frank, I think this is the one that I like the most out of the three featured here.
Then, there is "Shinjuku Blues" by actress-singer Meiko Kaji（梶芽衣子）. Strangely enough, although I've had this image of Kaji as being a tough suffer-no-fools-period kickass character in the wilds of Shinjuku, her take on "Shinjuku Blues" is probably the sweetest of the three, thanks to the light piano and flute. It kinda takes things into a more pop vein.
Enjoy your scotch-on-the-rocks while listening to this one!
Last night, I was doing my occasional browsing through YouTube when I saw the above video which had the still of this "don't-fool-around-with-me" lady striking an intimidating pose. Well, I should have known that this was singer-actress Meiko Kaji（梶芽衣子）. She was playing all sorts of deadly rebels and perhaps she is most famous in the West as the singer behind the song that was playing immediately after Uma "The Bride" Thurman scalped her enemy, Lucy Liu as O-Ren Ishii, in "Kill Bill: Volume 1".
Well, the song that she sings here is called "Tokyo Nagaremono" and as soon as I heard the quiet guitar and harmonica and her voice, I knew that the second word in the title had to mean "drifter", and sure enough, the English translation is "Tokyo Drifter". What better way to describe the characters that Kaji has played...that of a lone wolf bumping into trouble or trouble bumping into her and then taking care of it?
"Tokyo Nagaremono" then took me on a short journey which led me to the actual yakuza movie of the same name for which it became the theme song. I've only seen the first few scenes of the 1966 movie and read the Wikipedia description of it and was impressed by the story behind it. The director, Seijun Suzuki（鈴木清順）, was apparently quite the firebrand at his craft and his bosses over at Nikkatsu tried to tone him down (or take him down a few pegs) by slashing the budget for his next film. I'm sure the big guys had initially crossed their arms in glee at the thought of their uncontrollable director finally being made to heel...only for Suzuki and his staff to be inspired as they "....pushed themselves to new heights of surrealism and absurdity."
I caught a few more scenes here and there and there's quite a bit of day-glo colourful psychedelia and even some fast motion almost along the lines of a silent movie but I've got a feeling that my eyes haven't gotten quite the full experience of Suzuki's tour de force film. As for me, I'm not a yakuza film fan at all. However, considering the tidbits I've seen, I would be willing to take a longer look at "Tokyo Nagaremono", the story of a young hitman who has just been laid off, only to get himself involved in some nasty give n' take between two gangs. Who knows? This could have been one of the movies that inspired Quentin Tarentino to make "Kill Bill" in the first place.
Now, to the theme song itself which was released in 1966. The star of the movie, Tetsuya Watari（渡哲也）who plays that young assassin sings "Tokyo Nagaremono" in its full Mood Kayo (with a bit of Hawaiian) glory. And yep, it's that same Watari who would play Yujiro Ishihara's（石原裕次郎）right-hand man in those cop shows many years later. He looked quite a bit burlier back in his early days.
The intriguing thing is that the composer of the song is unknown. Maybe he got rubbed out? And as for the lyrics, they seem to have shifted. Watari sang the song for two different recording studios, Teichiku and Crown Records, each with a different lyricist, Kotoba Takatsuki（高月ことば）for the former and Kohan Kawauchi（川内康範）for the latter company under the pseudonym Kazuko Kawauchi（川内和子）. No matter what the words were, though, Watari's forlorn if somewhat defiant delivery pretty much spoke for his character, Phoenix Tetsu.
That same year, another version of "Tokyo Nagaremono" was released by Osaka-born singer Hiroko Takekoshi（竹越ひろ子）. Once again, the lyrics were done by yet another writer, Hiroshi Nagai（永井ひろし）. With a similarly Hawaiian Mood Kayo arrangement (that steel guitar seems to take a louder role in this take), Takekoshi sounds as if she were the unlucky lady that got dumped by Phoenix.
Takekoshi was born in 1941 and after graduating from Kishinosato Music Academy in 1959, she started performing as a jazz singer in nightclubs and US military camps before making her recorded debut in 1963 with King Records. With her version of "Tokyo Nagaremono" though, she sold 300,000 records in about 6 months which perhaps made it her biggest hit.
(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)
Of course, I cannot finish this article without including Keiko Fuji's（藤圭子）take on the song since she was indeed the Queen of Down-and-Out Kayo. It sounds as if the steel guitar has been replaced with an organ and saxophone, though. Her cover was apparently recorded in 1970 and once more, a different lyricist, Masao Ishizaka（石坂まさを）, put his own stamp on it. I'm kinda wondering if there was an unwritten rule that "Tokyo Nagaremono" could be re-written anytime.
