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.
Ah, Miyuki Imori（井森美幸）...always the bright presence in Japanese commercials and variety shows. It can be very easy to forget that she did start out as a 1980s aidoru.
The first and only Imori tune up to now that I put up was back in September 2016 and that was appropriately her debut as an aidoru, "Hitomi no Chikai"（瞳の誓い）in 1985. She only put out four more singles and one album up to the middle of 1986, and then came a temporal desert of nearly three years before she released her 6th and final single in May 1989, "Sepia-Anata-Kamo" (Sepia Might Be On You).
Actually. her last time in the recording booth might be the charm for me. It's got plenty of catchy synths and hooky lyrics (sasotte, sasowarete...) thanks to lyricist Kumiko Yoshizawa（吉澤久美子）and composer Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）, and I think "Sepia-Anata-Kamo" is a tune that could also have been ideal for Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）who I thought was the 80s aidorufor dance music. Yoshizawa's lyrics relate the trials and tribulations of a young lady finding love in the big city although I couldn't quite get the significance of a sepia eye beam targeting the guy of her dreams. I had always thought the colour of sepia was connected to all things nostalgic.
Then, I figured it out from J-Wiki which showed the two tie-ups between her singles and commercials. Imori's debut"Hitomi no Chikai" was used for an antiperspirant ad while "Sepia-Anata-Kamo" was to promote the Suzuki Sepia Scooter. In other words, perhaps the translation for the title ought to be "You Might Be On A Sepia".
Ahhhh....Miyuki Imori（井森美幸）. She has been one of the chatty and cheerful tarento mainstays on Japanese TV for years and years. Of course, she's also appeared on tons of commercials and I remember her especially for her work for Mondamin Mouthwash. Incidentally, she hails from the prefecture where I had resided over a quarter-century ago, Gunma Prefecture, although she was born (1968) and raised in the southwestern part of the province while I was assigned up north in the Japanese Alps. Apparently her hometown of Shimonita is famous for its green onions.
If she has a best friend on TV, it would be former aidoru Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）since I always saw them together in some cooking segment on one of the morning wide shows, and I believe they were fellow panelists on the monomane specials.
In 1984, she entered the 9th Annual Horipro Tarento Scout Caravan by Hori Productions, one of the big talent agencies, and won the Grand Prix over 120,000 other hopefuls including actress Honami Suzuki（鈴木保奈美）of "Tokyo Love Story".
Then in April 1985, Imori made her official debut as an aidoru with "Hitomi no Chikai" which has been translated as "Promise On Your Eyes" in the music video (unfortunately taken down) and as "Swear By My Eye" in the Wiki article for the lass. Although written and composed by the big duo of Chinfa Kan and Tetsuji Hayashi（康珍化・林哲司）, it is pretty much a run-of-the-mill aidoru tune that isn't horrible but will probably disappear from my memories within several minutes (mind you, they were responsible for a big hit for another singer). Then again, the vast majority of songs ever sung by the huge throng of 80s aidoru would be classified similarly. Still, "Hitomi no Chikai" did OK on the charts, peaking at No. 32, and winning her the Excellent Newcomer Emerald Award at the Megalopolis Song Festival. She released another 5 singles up to 1989 along with one original album and two BEST compilations many years later.
(Unfortunately the video has been taken down.)
Here is Imori performing her debut song on an episode of "Utaban" (うたばん) with hosts Takaaki Ishibashi and Nakai-kun looking humourously bemused. I'm surprised that the former fellow didn't just attack her as he usually would. Looking at her swaying and bouncing around like that, I think that seemed to have been the default "choreography" for an 80s aidorusince I've seen many a teenybopper girl from the earlier years do those movements.
And speaking about "choreography" (I'm retaining my quotation mark rights for a reason here), Imori is also notorious for a dance number she did in her audition at that Horipro Tarento Scout Caravan in 1984. It has apparently gained legendary status and like those annoying parents who pull out the video or photographs of their daughter (much to her horror) doing something embarrassing in her early years, Imori's fellow tarento like to pull out that footage occasionally to get her screaming and to educate/remind viewers. I've seen the audition many times now on TV and she kinda looks like Barney the Dinosaur on Red Bull.
However, showing that she's a good sport with a sense of humour, she didn't resist too much at being teased about that very same dance years later.
With her debut in 1985, her contemporaries are Minako Honda（本田美奈子）, Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）, Yui Asaka（浅香唯）, Yuki Saito（斉藤由貴）, Yoko Minamino（南野陽子） and the Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）among others. And according to her profile on the Horipro website, one of her talents is ripping magazines. Well, I gather after being razzed about her dance video all these decades, she has probably gotten quite good at it.
