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.
Here I was, getting ready to put up R&B chanteuse Momoe Shimano's（嶋野百恵）party-hearty "Hot Glamour" a few minutes ago, only to realize that I had already done so back in 2019. I notice that I began the article by ranting about some technical issues with Blogger; no such technical issues today with the platform but I did have to replace my computer mouse due to age this afternoon.
In any case, I wasn't going to let go of Shimano without a fight since I don't get all that much of an opportunity to post about her, and as it turns out, there is her "Nemurenu Tsuki" (Sleepless Moon) which is a track from her April 1999 debut album"5.3.1". Unlike "Hot Glamour", "Nemurenu Tsuki" is a relaxing slow jam written by Shimano and composed by Keiichiro Muto（武藤敬一朗）. I always enjoy a nice battery of mellow horns including the fluegelhorn and this is a tune for the after-party as we all cool down before sunrise Saturday.
Around Christmas time in 2012, when I decided to start writing about some of the J-Xmas tunes that I've known and loved, one of my articles was on singer-songwriter Momoe Shimano's（嶋野百恵）"Apple". There was a mention of Christmas Eve in her lyrics, but the sound was of the coolest R&B for the time. For whatever reason, I never mentioned about the circumstances of how I found out about Shimano, and right now, I try my best not to limit an article to two paragraphs (though it still happens occasionally) as I did in that one.
The above video comes from the YouTube channel, Japan Walking Channel, and it's a leisurely stroll around JR Chiba Station. It's the easternmost terminus for the yellow Sobu Line which cuts through Tokyo, and when I was teaching at the school that was smack dab in the middle of town, I would take that line all the way to the end at Chiba Station on Monday afternoons. One of my company classes was all the way out there, and it took me over an hour to get from the school to Chiba where I would still have more than half an hour to dawdle before the heavy industries company minibus arrived at a specified corner to pick me and other employees up for the 20-minute drive to the factories.
Along with a hamburger joint where I often had an early dinner, there was also a CD shop where I browsed for any good music. One time I was there, I heard Shimano's "Apple" playing on the speakers, and the rest was history. I parted with my yen and the CD was mine. Speaking of the station, it's been about 18 years since I was last there, and looking at the video, there are some familiar sites, but I think that there have been some major changes, too.
Y'know...I should have paid more attention to the discography of Shimano since I think that I missed out on an opportunity to discover this single earlier. Her 3rd single was the follow-up to "Apple", and "45℃", released in March 1999, is quite the kakkoii song. Shimano provided the lyrics while Maestro-T took care of the bouncy melody and arrangement. I wouldn't mind hearing some more of this beat in the current slate of tunes.
"45℃" made it all the way up to No. 48 on Oricon, and the original version was a track on Shimano's debut album"5.3.1." which was released in April 1999; it hit No. 12 on the album charts. The song was also used as the theme for a 1999 live-action TV series (by WOWOW, the second time today that the station has been mentioned) adapted from the manga "Tennen Shōjo Man"（天然少女 萬...Man, The Natural Girl）, about a 15-year-old schoolgirl by the name of Man Kouda（香田萬）with a great talent for hand-to-hand combat. The series was directed by Takashi Miike（三池崇史）. Below is the New Jack Swing remix of the song.
OK, first off, I've been having some technical issues with Blogger today for the first time that I can recall. I cleared my entire cache which took quite a lot of time but it looks like that wasn't the issue; it's probably Blogger itself. In any case, for some reason, I haven't been able to scroll up or down or even view completed articles properly. However, I figured out that I can still compose an article albeit with me going on manual instead of automatic, so to speak, with some of the functions.
Anyways, one of the many rhetorical questions that I've had concerning Japanese pop music over the years is "Why didn't Momoe Shimano（嶋野百恵）become all that big a J-R&B star?". At the time of her debut in the late 1990s, the genre of R&B was starting to take off with the music of artists such as Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）, Misia and m-flo, and personally I thought that Shimano was one of those singers that could have hit the really big time. She had her own distinct voice with that breathy sultriness.
But outside of releasing 11 singles and 3 original albums between 1998 and 2003, that was pretty much all she wrote unfortunately. And I have a soft spot in my heart for her because of her second single, "Apple" which I thought was really cool.
Well, enough commiserating from me. Allow me to introduce Shimano's 4th single from October 1999, "Hot Glamour". There are a couple of different mixes for the song with the above being Original Flava and the one below being the more club-friendly Incognito Main. Written by Shimano and composed by Hitoshi Harukawa（春川仁志）, this has got plenty of oomph especially with that bass in the intro and a slightly jazzy instrumental in the middle. Plus, hearing her voice again has brought plenty of nostalgia from 20 years ago. This was actually the singer's most successful single, peaking at No. 30. "Hot Glamour" also got onto her 2nd album"Roots", which came out in June 2000 and got as high as No. 18 on Oricon.
I realized that my original article for "Apple" was quite short and that's my bad since I realized that I had a story to go with that song. Furthermore, it has to do with my choice of Chiba Station in the video at the very top of the article.
You see, whenever I hear "Apple", I always get reminded of JR Chiba because it was in a surprisingly large CD store (I believe it was Shinseido) within the station there that I had bought the CD. And the reason that I was there was that I was usually there once or twice a week because I had lessons to teach at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The ride on the yellow Sobu Line from my school in central Tokyo all the way to the end of the line in Chiba (and no, it's nothing like how it's portrayed in "Neuromancer") took more than hour, and then walking from the station to a street corner, I waited for the Mitsubishi minivan to pick me and other employees up for a 20-minute ride to MHI itself.
Being the music fan, I remember with some fondness about that Shinseido shop. As well, I also often reminisce about the monorail that I never got to take coming in and out of the station. That was, of course, 20 years ago, and looking at the YouTube video of Chiba Station now, it looks like things have expanded quite a bit since then.
Anyways, I'm getting so nostalgic that I will leave you with a remix of "Apple". I'm also happy to point out that Shimano is still actively performing according to her website. Apparently, she had an event just over the weekend. Now, I hope that my blog will be back to 100% tomorrow.
The only other Momoe Shimano（嶋野百恵）entry in the blog dates back to late 2012, so it's time to update. For that entry on "Apple", I remarked that I wasn't quite sure when I had first heard the song but it was so catchy that I just had to get it. Well, since then I remember much better now and as it turns out, I heard it at a Shinseido branch at JR Chiba Station right under the monorail line. At the time, I was assigned to teach classes at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and the minibus taking me to the factory always stopped across the street.
In any case, the other song that was massed in with the various remixes of "Apple" was a track called "baby baby, Service" that I've finally started appreciating quite a bit more. It was actually her debut single from July 1998, and it's got that nice groove with the title refrain being cooed in the background. Shimano wrote and composed "baby baby, Service" with Shinichiro Murayama（村山晋一郎）and K-Muto helping out on the music. I'm not sure how much more her profile was raised over the years but it's kinda too bad that she didn't quite attain the level of fame of Misia.
Now that I remember the origins of my relationship with Shimano, I think I'm always going to associate the R&B singer with Chiba Station. It wasn't exactly the coolest of neighborhoods but I gather it's nice to give it a funky theme at least in my memories.
Not sure when I first heard this song....it was probably in a CD shop at either a listening post or just through the speakers in the store. But having listened to an excerpt of it, I knew I just had to get it. I just loved the intro....it doesn't really sound like an Xmas song, but it's got a fine groove and Shimano mentions Xmas Eve at least twice.
Momoe Shimano（嶋野百恵） from Osaka made her debut in July 1998 with "Baby Baby Service". "Apple" was her 2nd single released in December of that year. I'm not sure if she's still recording music now since her last recorded single was in 2003, but she is keeping up a blog right here.
