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.
I gather that Golden Week has reached the halfway point so according to NHK this morning, the U-turn rush has already begun with the cars heading back to Tokyo stuffing the highways rather than the opposite.
As of 2007, May the 4th became known as Greenery Day in Japan so I'm not sure whether there are (or were, as of this writing) any horticultural events throughout the country but hopefully, the plants and trees are growing luxuriantly. In Japanese, Greenery Day is translated into Midori no Hi（みどりの日）so I thought that it would be nice to have an Author's Picks on some of those songs sung by ladies with the given name of Midori.
Ahhh...yes, that familiar scene of a salaryman filled with drink and food slumped into slumber at a small watering hole in Japan. Apparently, it's always nice to have the motherly master of the establishment nudge you gently awake to let you know that it's closing time. I've had a few such folks as students inform me that they've ended up sleeping it off on the subway of the evening and completely overshoot their home station to end up somewhere deep in the boonies. The spouses were of course far from pleased.
In any case, before I end up overshooting the premise of this article myself, allow me to present Midori Oka's（丘みどり）most recent single, her 10th, "Kami no Tsuru"(Paper Crane) from February 2019. With plenty of violins, plucky guitar, and accordion (?) to fill an enka-loving soul with grateful nostalgia, Oka sings about an unrequited love for someone (perhaps an old customer) who has since gone away. In the video (which has unfortunately been taken down and replaced) she seems to have acquired a certain amount of contentedness as if she's happily resigned that the fellow has most likely found his own love of his life while she continues to pour drinks in her nomiya.
Daizo Saito（さいとう大三）was behind the bittersweet lyrics while Tetsuya Gen（弦哲也）provided the gentle melody. I found out about the song while watching an episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）a while back.
Speaking of "Uta Con", I had heard over various episodes that Oka used to be known as an enka aidoru, and during her early days, she was famous for performing while wearing a tight midriff-bearing get-up.
Well, what I hadn't known is that in the early 2000s, Oka was once the third-generation member of a Kansai-based aidoru group known as HOP (Horipro Osaka Paradise) CLUB until she graduated in September 2003 after a year there and started to walk the path of enka. At that time, she had used her real name of Misato Oka（岡美里）. Not sure if she's actually in the video above. HOP CLUB had their time between 2001 and 2012.
Last night on "Uta Con"（うたコン）, the show was devoted to the works of composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, and it was right that a good chunk of it featured his many songs. In fact, I was somewhat flabbergasted just now when I realized that Tsutsumi may have the largest number of entries on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for any songwriter, singer or band at 109 (including this article). And I wrote up my first Creator article on the Tokyo native more than 3 years ago.
Basically, it's come to the point that whenever a kayo composed by him pops up anywhere now in front of a relative neophyte fan, I'm convinced that the fan will exclaim "OMG! He made that, too?!" Yep, the guy who came up with "Blue Light Yokohama"（ブルーライト・ヨコハマ）for Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）and "AMBITIOUS JAPAN" for TOKIO is one and the same.
Not surprisingly then, I became aware of some more Tsutsumi tunes that I hadn't heard before. For example, this one by duo Tsunaki & Midori（つなき&みどり）titled "Ai no Banka" (Love Elegy), a drunken and sultry number about lamenting a lost love although the fellow who did the dumping was probably a first-class heel. Lyricist Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）joined in to create this debut single for this married couple that was released in December 1972. It was the duo's biggest hit by peaking at No. 15 and selling about 150,000 records.
(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)
Not sure how long the above video will stay up but it is straight from last night's "Uta Con" in which enka singers Midori Oka（丘みどり）and Keisuke Yamauchi（山内恵介）did the honours by providing a straight-up version of "Ai no Banka". The setting is some sort of tiny hole-in-the-wall where the woman is drowning her sorrows in drink while wondering where the lout ran off to. The volume goes up and down during the performance (just in case some of you wanna try it at karaoke) to reflect the brassiness of the song and perhaps also to show the trashed state of the protagonist.
As for the original singers, Midori Tashiro（田代みどり）was discovered by the late Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）for her singing power; she had already been singing at a jazz cafe at the age of 7 when Hirao brought her to Tokyo from Osaka at the age of 10. A couple of years later, Midori made her debut with "Sweet Nothings" and had a huge hit with "Pineapple Princess" in 1961 (I gather that these weren't message songs).
Tsunaki Mihara（三原綱木）was a member of the vocal group Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets（ジャッキー吉川とブルー・コメッツ）of "Blue Chateau" fame, and he and Midori got married in 1970. After leaving the Blue Comets in 1972, he soon recorded "Ai no Banka" with his wife. Together they made 7 singles and 2 albums before they broke up professionally and personally in 1977.
Premium Friday! Looks like the Japanese government has launched another new business concept alongside the old Cool Biz to alleviate the stresses of the corporate cog workers. I only heard about Premium Friday this morning on NHK's "Newswatch 9" when several companies were encouraged to let their employees finish work at the ungodly hour of 3 pm on the last Friday of every month so that they can either relax or, better yet, go shopping since consumption hasn't exactly been robust as of late.
The results for this very first Premium Friday? Decidedly meh...it was really only a handful of companies that decided to get with the program in this workaholic nation. Apparently, most of the unleashed employees decided to go home to sleep. During the NHK feature, one small nomiya in the business district in Osaka that decided to open early in the afternoon to receive any potential customers among the Premium Friday folks got just one customer up to 5 pm. Mind you, it might be kinda weird to many folks to suddenly chug-a-lug a chuu nama and down some yakitori at the same time that others are sipping tea. Hey, it's a work in progress and I think it's a pretty good idea in the long term, although I also think that Premium Friday should also take into consideration the fate of the part-time workers who just get paid by the hour.
Anyways I gave all that preamble at the top to let folks know that it is a Friday so as is the case here as well as in Japan, TGIF is very much in force. So I'm sure folks in Japan were hitting the bars and izakayas as usual. Of course, for older generations that could probably mean some good ol' drinking and perhaps even some shibui karaoke at the boxes.
A few nights ago on the weekly "Uta Kon" (うたコン), the theme was drinking songs (although there was a somewhat disappointingly brief tribute to the works of Toru Funamura at the beginning), and I heard this tune by enka singer Midori Oka（丘みどり）titled "Sado no Yubue"(The Night Whistle of Sado). It was quite pleasing to the ear since there was something in there that brought back the old days of enka. From what little I know of Sado Island off of Niigata Prefecture, it's the home of those internationally famous kodo drummers.
"Sado no Yubue" was written by Toshiya Niitani（仁井谷俊也）and composed by Tetsuya Gen（弦哲也）as Oka's 8th single released just a few weeks ago on February 8th. It is another case of bittersweet parted love as the singer relates the story of a woman pining for his love as he leaves the island while hoping beyond hope that she will hear the sound of that whistle signaling the return of that ship.
Oka has been a pretty regular guest on "Uta Kon" and its predecessor "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）and I see her as one of the next shining generation of enka singers. She's got quite the powerful voice, too. And perhaps all of her success can ultimately be due to her mother since according to J-Wiki, Oka had been a painfully shy girl when she was a child so to draw her out of her shell, her mother entered herself and her daughter into minyo lessons. Later on, at her very first minyo contest when she was in Grade 5 of elementary school, Oka won the championship! A star was indeed born.
A couple of mugs of beer will probably help anyone come out of their shell...or put them to sleep, as in my case.
