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.
For those viewers of anime from way back, there was the 1980s "Miyuki"（みゆき）starring a pre-aidoru Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子）as the main character. As well, the show was also well known for folk-pop duo H2O's contributions to the theme songs with the opener "10% no Ame Yohou" (１０％の雨予報）and then the two ending themes "Omoide ga Ippai"（思い出がいっぱい）and "Goodbye Season"（Goodbye シーズン）. "Omoide ga Ippai" has gone on to become one of the evergreen representatives of graduation-themed tunes.
Well, in between the two H2O enders, there was a second ending theme which showed up on the TV screen for a period of several weeks. Titled "Summer Holiday", this was sung by Michiko Kawai（河合美智子） as a seasonally-reflective romantic number and its old-fashioned standard-style arrangement had me thinking of early Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）and Kaoru Sudo（須藤薫）. Thanks to Masahiko Yoshida's（吉田雅彦）melody and Katsu Hoshi's（星勝）arrangement, it's so Beach-Blanket-Bingo tenderhearted that I can sink a fork into the song and take out slices. Tsuzuru Nakasato（中里綴）was responsible for the lyrics, and for Kawai, this was her 2nd single from July 1983.
Back in the spring, I contributed an article for actress Michiko Kawai（河合美智子）under her enka singer Aurora Teruko（オーロラ輝子）persona because of a hit kayo she had in the mid-1990s, and I mentioned that she had once sung some pop stuff early in her career.
Well, the commercial is all too brief but Kawai had her film debut in 1983 with "Shonben Rider"（ションベン・ライダー）. There is unfortunately no Wikipedia entry about this movie involving junior high school kids who run into some yakuza but there is a French Wikipedia article (albeit really sparse) that has the title translated as "P. P. Rider" and I'd say that this would be accurate. If you understood that immediately, then you're in! Ahem. In any case, both the trailer above and J-Wiki state that the movie was a double feature alongside the anime "Urusei Yatsura: Only You"（うる星やつら オンリー・ユー）.
The movie release parlayed Kawai's debut with her first single"Watashi~Takan na Koro" (When I Was Impressionable) which was also the theme song for "Shonben Rider". The single made itself known in January 1983, about a month before the movie's release.
Kawai played the role of Bruce, a tomboy who insisted that she wasn't a girl and always referred to herself as "boku", the informal masculine form of the first person rather than the female equivalent, "atashi". The cover of "Watashi~Takan na Koro" indeed has the teenage Kawai in some short-cropped hair but I think that she looks more pixyish than tomboyish.
The lush ballad style of the song instantly struck me as something that was created by the brother-sister songwriting duo of Etsuko and Takao Kisugi（来生えつこ・来生たかお）, and sure enough, it was indeed the Kisugi siblings behind it with Katsu Hoshi（星勝）taking care of the arrangement. In fact, Hoshi was also behind the soundtrack for "Shonben Rider". Actually, the involvement of the Kisugis was interesting because the way that Kawai sounds and the sound of "Watashi~Takan na Koro" are similar to another more famous prior Kisugi creation for a young actress/singer with a similar look and singing style: Hiroko Yakushimaru（薬師丸ひろ子）and her "Sailor Fuku to Kikanjuu"（セーラー服と機関銃）.
For the longest time, I'd always wondered about this lady who called herself Aurora Teruko（オーロラ輝子）since often when she appeared on television, there was a name in brackets next to it, Michiko Kawai（河合美智子）. Now I've known that singers in the past have taken on stage names but they've never advertised their real names next to them in the graphics on screen. So, what was up with Aurora Teruko/Michiko Kawai?
Well, it turns out the actress Michiko Kawai, whose name is a stage name in itself for Kanagawa Prefecture-born Kazue Suzuki（鈴木一栄）, took on a role in the 1996-1997 NHK morning serial drama "Futarikko"（ふたりっ子...The Twins） as enka singer Aurora Teruko, known as the Diva of Tsutenkaku in Osaka. Apparently, she was so impressive as the character and for the song that she sang that Aurora broke down the 4th wall in a way and released "Meoto Michi"(The Path of a Married Couple) in-character as one-half of a debut single in November 1996 with the other song being "Magokoro no Hashi"（まごころの橋...True Heart Bridge）.
Written by Hikaru Tsushiro（津城ひかる）and composed by Tetsuya Gen（弦哲也）, everything is rather grand about "Meoto Michi", and even the introduction by the host in the above video asks the audience to get their hankies out. There is a certain tongue-in-cheek element since Aurora seems to want that spinning Tsutenkaku hat on her head as she's singing away about a wife who may be losing her grip on her wayward husband, a bit of a lyrical twist since usually with a title of "Meoto Michi", the usual impression is that it's about the proud journey of a rock-solid couple. I will probably have to ask Noelle Tham's opinion on this one since she's our resident enka expert on the blog, but I think that even the arrangement seems a bit more enka than usual for such a song. In any case, Kawai as Aurora really plays it up a notch. According to J-Wiki, the actress based her character on enka singer Reiko Kano（叶麗子）.
I don't know how "Magokoro no Hashi/Meoto Michi" did on Oricon but it must have been fairly successful because Kawai did get her invitation onto the Kohaku Utagassen in 1997 to perform "Meoto Michi" and there was another single under her alter ego that was released earlier that year in July. Kawai has a long filmography but since the beginning of her career in the early 1980s, she was also putting out singles as a pop singer. I will have to cover at least one of those songs soon.
