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.
Looks like Kayo Grace has decided to spread her wings a bit professionally and go into a rock band. Well, good for her.
Back last August, I first wrote about heavy metal and rock singer Misako Honjo（本城未沙子）and her "Emergency" which was her debut single from 1984. Unfortunately, the video for that one has been taken down due to the usual reasons and I can only provide a link to "Billboard Japan".
Hopefully though, the above will last longer. "Wanna Be a Superstar" is a track on Honjo's August 1985 album"Foresight". Written by Kayoko Fuyumori（冬杜花代子）, who had also been the lyricist for "Emergency", and composed by Takehiko Kogure（木暮武彦）, Honjo anthemically proclaims her ambitions. Loud and proud, she is! The intriguing thing though is that her vocals don't get super-shreddy; they are actually pretty smooth despite the usual volume involved in a metal adventure. Not sure if she ever became a superstar but here's hoping that she was able to get a loyal base of fans over the years.
Yup, earlier this afternoon, I finally caught the latest Marvel movie, "Thor: Love and Thunder". Again, as was the case with "Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness", it wasn't the greatest of the superhero movies but it was fun enough and it was far different from the latter movie despite the fact that both had their mystical elements. The music was interesting in that compared to the techno aspects in the previous "Thor" movie, "Thor: Ragnarok", the fourth entry here was having fun with hard rock and heavy metal, spearheaded by Guns N' Roses' classic "Sweet Child O' Mine".
Well, I kinda figured that I would probably do something in the rock and heavy metal field when I got home tonight. Happily, I could find this one from the backlog, and it's the first time that she's appearing on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", so please give a warm welcome to Tokyo-born Misako Honjo（本城未沙子）. Incidentally, her uncle on her mother's side happens to be producer Daiko Nagato（長戸大幸）, the founder of Being Inc., and so there might have been some of that influence on her musical choices.
Even as a student attending Seijo Gakuen High School in 1982, she had already released her debut album"Majo Densetsu ~ Messiah's Blessing"（魔女伝説...Legend of the Witch）, but her debut single didn't come out until 1984. "Emergency" was written by Kayoko Fuyumori（冬杜花代子） and composed/arranged by George Agatsuma（ジョージ吾妻）. My knowledge in differentiating the various rock subgenres is about as good as my knowledge on doing the same with techno...i.e. not very, so just to cover all of the bases, I'll throw in both the J-Rock and Heavy Metal genres in Labels.
Her J-Wiki article doesn't reveal who any of her influences were. Maybe they were Yuki Katsuragi（葛城ユキ）and 1980s Ann Lewis（アン・ルイス）, but the arrangement of "Emergency" and her vocals make me wonder whether Honjo herself may have influenced later turn-of-the-decade girl rock bands such as Princess Princess and Pink Sapphire. It's fascinating how similar she sounds to Princess Princess' vocalist Kaori Okui（奥居香）. In any case, she released just one more single in 1989 but has put out many more original albums up to 1990. However, that final album to date "Shall We Dance?" is more in the pop vein.
