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 figured that leader Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）of Mr. Children could wear emotions on his sleeve such as ardent love and excitement, but I think that with this song, it was all about anger, fury and frustration.
"Machine Gun wo Buppanase" (Spray That Machine Gun) was Mischiru's（ミスチル）12th single from August 1996, and there is some pretty urgent and raunchy rock going on here as Sakurai unloads on listeners about all of the craziness taking place within humanity and between countries, and yet, people are more than willing to ignore it all to do their own thing. Mr. Children has been compared to The Beatles, and the melody and arrangement with "Machine Gun wo Buppanase" had me thinking of an irate John Lennon whipping up an anti-war song. Perhaps in this case, it was Sakurai penning an anti-complacency tune.
I was kinda wondering about that extra title of "Bootleg". According to the J-Wiki article for the song, during the recording of Mr. Children's June 1996 album"Shinkai"（深海...Deep Sea）, "Machine Gun wo Buppanase" hadn't been placed onto the album...whether that was on purpose or by accident, it doesn't say but the fact that it did eventually get shoehorned in got it that extra title. The single hit No. 1 and went Triple Platinum, becoming the 33rd-ranked single of the year.
The song was something that I heard often in excerpts while I was living in Ichikawa, because it kept getting featured in the "CDTV" ranking show highlights. If the full music video is around, I would love to see that.
For NHK asadora fans, this may not be something that you want to read here, but the last time that I actually watched the usual 8:00~8:15 am morning serial drama (via TV Japan) was almost ten years ago with "Ume-chan Sensei"（梅ちゃん先生）. I thought that "Ume-chan Sensei" was a bit more down-to-earth than usual and therefore easier to watch for me, especially since the setting was in the postwar years when Japan was starting to rehabilitate itself.
So usually when the asadora comes on, I usually retreat back to my room...ostensibly to start up on another KKP article. However, I am aware about what asadora is happening at the time. For example, I do recall this particular morning serial on NHK from a few years ago called "Beppin-san"（べっぴんさん）that ran between 2016 and 2017. If I'm not mistaken, it told the story of a young girl who grows up during the key decades of Japan in the 20th century to become a famous apparel maker.
The other thing I remember is the theme song by Mr. Children, "Hikari no Atelier" (Atelier of Light). Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）, who wrote and composed the song, and his band have straddled the line between rock and pop, and this time, I think it's safe to say that "Hikari no Atelier" is fully in the pop genre. And just from listening to the melody, it's made perfectly for an NHK asadora since it's so bouncy and cheerful. Along with the regular members, accordionist Koharu（小春）from the sister duo Charan-Po-Rantan（チャラン・ポ・ランタン）contributes her talents as well.
My compliments to the music video with its unique puppetry skills on display. "Hikari no Atelier" was released as Mr. Children's 36th single in January 2017. It hit No. 1 to later become the 37th-ranked single of the year, going Gold in the process.
Man, I heard this song all the time back in the late 1990s, especially on the old NTV Saturday night program "Yoru mo Hippare"（夜もヒッパレ）, a televised version of celebrity karaoke...yes, years before James Corden's"Carpool Karaoke". If the tarento were getting into this one, then I can only imagine how popular it was in the karaoke boxes with the regular folks.
As I've said before, I never became a big Mr. Children fan; I only have 2 CD singles by Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）and his band: "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "[es] ~ Theme of es". However, there is no doubt that back in the 90s that Mr. Children were up there with Dreams Come True and all of the singers associated with Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）as the premier music acts of that final decade of the 20th century.
Mr. Children's 11th single from April 1996, "Hana ~ Memento-Mori"(Flower)has had the benefits of a memorable title and a refrain that simply loves to invite everyone in for a massive singalong. I had always wondered about what the significance of the addition of the Latin memento mori was. Apparently, it means "Remember that you must die" according to Wikipedia. At first, I thought that I just encountered the most buzzkill Latin phrase but then I put it alongside another Latin phrase, carpe diem(Seize the day) and figured that it can also be thought of as being advice to live each day to its fullest because we all have temporally limited lives here on Earth.
Sakurai himself used the phrase for the title because he was impressed by a 1983 book of the same title written by the photographer and author Shinya Fujiwara（藤原新也）. According to the J-Wiki article for "Hana", Sakurai wrote the lyrics from a woman's point of view and from reading the English translation, it seems like the protagonist has come to the realization that after a portion of her life has been spent disappointed with friends getting married and raising families, she will take a new tack and live life as it comes without getting too worked up.
I felt that Sakurai's melody followed that same pattern with the opening verse sounding melancholy before the hopeful singalong refrain bursts forth. Intriguingly, although the statement hasn't been sourced (a common J-Wiki issue), the J-Wiki article points out that Sakurai generated the melody in his head while playing baseball under a hangover after a night of drinking. Maybe that Latin title came in handy for a second reason.
"Hana" became a million-seller as it hit the top spot on Oricon for two weeks straight and ended up as the No. 5 single of 1996. It also currently holds the 81st ranking in Oricon's All Time Single Rankings. The song also became a track on Mr. Children's 5th album"Shinkai"（深海...Deep Sea）which was released in June of that year. It was also a No. 1 hit and was No. 5 on the yearly album rankings. Not surprisingly, "Shinkai" also has a place in Oricon's All Time Album Rankings, coming in at No. 31.
Oh, I remember this song getting lots of love on NTV's "Yoru mo Hippare"（夜もヒッパレ）. In fact, I think that I heard it being sung more as a karaoke tune by celebs than I heard it by the actual band itself.
I am talking about Mr. Children's 10th single"Namonaki Uta"(Nameless Poem) which was released in February 1996. This song was getting plenty of airplay everywhere; certainly it helped that it was also used as the theme for the Fuji-TV drama "Pure"（ピュア）, and that show was slotted in the much envied prime time of 9 pm on Monday nights, so I think there was a huge benefit for both series and song.
Vocalist Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）took care of both words and music. I hadn't paid attention to the lyrics at all during the heyday of "Namonaki Uta". All I knew was that this enjoyable melodic car ride was the usual Sakurai combination of heartfelt delivery and jangly pop/rock. But looking at the translation of "Namonaki Uta", I've realized that Sakurai was going for a balls-out confession of love but not with any grand promises but an explanation of who he is, warts and all. Apparently, he can't really express this crazy thing called love so it wouldn't do to place a title on his love song.
As I said, the emotion is there in Sakurai's delivery and then there is that one point in which he just speeds through one verse with all of the nervous energy of a kid finally blurting out that invitation for a date with that special someone for the first time. There is that feeling of anticipation and happy giddiness within the song. One other thing that I noticed was that although "Namonaki Uta" is undeniably a Mr. Children single, there is a musical riff included in the refrain that kinda reminded me of some of the parts of music that characterized Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）, the big romantic band that was popular in the 1980s when compared to Mr. Children's reign in the 1990s.
No surprise that "Namonaki Uta" was another No. 1 hit for Mr. Children. In fact, in its first week of release, the single sold 1.2 million copies, the first time in Oricon history that any song broke the 1-million barrier in its first week of sales. Ultimately, it ended up selling 2.3 million copies, becoming the No. 1 single of 1996. As of this writing, it currently occupies the 12th rank in terms of the top singles in Oricon history.
The single was also placed as a track on Mr. Children's 5th album"Shinkai"（深海...Deep Sea） which came out in June 1996. It also hit No. 1 on the album charts and was the 6th-ranked album of the year. In terms of historical precedence, it is ranked 31st in the list of top albums in Oricon history. with close to 3 million albums sold.
Happy Sunday to you all! A little drier out there and some nice and comfy temperatures. Nope, still haven't caught "Avengers: Infinity War" but that should be rectified by around the middle of next week. Try as I might, I haven't been able to avoid some of the plot material leaking out, notably the death count.
Anyways, speaking of heroes...with all of us being fans of Japanese pop music to varying extents, imagine being back in the 1990s and hearing a couple of singing superstars collaborating on a single together. One has already become a legend of sorts while the other fronts a band that is eating up the rankings like candy.
Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）of Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）and the band Mr. Children did just that when they joined up to do their part for the Act Against AIDS movement and released a charity single "Kiseki no Chikyuu" (Earth of Miracles) back in January 1995.
I remember "Kiseki no Chikyuu" always showing up on the Oricon rankings and the countdown shows, but for whatever reason, it wasn't quite enough for me to buy the single which only had a limited selling time between January and June of that year.
I have to admit, though, now that I have heard the full recorded version, that the funky arrangement with the horns makes "Kiseki no Chikyuu" hum pretty well. Almost think that Kuwata and Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）of Mr. Children could have played cool and hardened police detectives out on a case in a conceptual music video. While Kuwata wrote and composed the song, Takeshi Kobayashi（小林武史）and Mr. Children handled the arrangements.
My initial indifference aside, the song blasted up to the top spot of Oricon and ended up as the 7th-ranked single for 1995, selling 1.7 million copies (Kuwata's top-selling single as a solo artist). I don't think that I've ever encountered a single that actually went Quadruple Platinum before, and in terms of the top singles in Oricon history, "Kiseki no Chikyuu" is ranked at No. 48.
I can imagine that the original single must be a pretty expensive and rare item at the auction sites, if it even exists there. However, the song is on Kuwata's 2nd BEST compilation"Top of the Pops" that was released back in November 2002. It also hit No. 1 for 2 weeks in a row and became the 4th-ranked album for 2003, breaking the 2-million barrier.
I actually thought that Mr. Children's"Sanbyaku-rokujuu-go-nichi" (365 Days) was one of the band's singles, so I tried to search through their long list on J-Wiki but only came up with bupkiss. I mean, Kazutoshi Sakurai's（桜井和寿）inspirational love ballad is so uplifting and romantic that I assumed that the studio had been chomping at the bit to release it as such.
However, the fact is that it was "merely" a track on Mr. Children's 16th hit album"SENSE" from December 1st 2010 although it was used as an NTT campaign song. I encountered this song by accident last night on YouTube. As I said in my very first Mr. Childrenarticle back in 2013, I never became a huge MisChiru fan even though I do like the songs by the band that I've written about, and so I didn't keep too much focus on Sakurai and company throughout the years, especially once we all entered the new century. I've basically seen them as one of the quintessential 90s bands.
Therefore, listening to "Sanbyaku-rokujuu-go-nichi" for the first time, I just opined that Sakurai could still come up with epic ballads with tearjerking capabilities. It's not surprising that I've seen private YouTube videos of the song being the musical background for weddings. And according to the J-Wiki article on the album, the tune may not have been officially released as a single but it's treated as one of Mr. Children's trademark efforts.
As the NTT commercial attests, the song is all about maintaining those connections no matter how long the distance. "SENSE" went to No. 1 for 2 weeks straight and at the speed of warp became the 5th-ranked album for 2010 (I did say that it was released right on the first day of the last month), going Triple Platinum. It even hung in there to become the 36th-ranked album for 2011. Strangely enough, there were no singles released from the album at all with just a digital download available for one of the tracks, "fanfare".
Happy Monday! And it truly is a happy sunny Monday since we may be breaking temperature records today with the high possibly reaching into the low 20s Celsius. Even if it's the beginning of the work week, I'm betting that there will be a flood of folks swarming the al fresco restaurants later tonight. Good thing it's plenty warm, too. We had a fairly large power outage covering several neighbourhoods earlier this morning so it would have been horrible if we had to go through the weather that we had last week which was perpetually cold and rainy.
If I were to be asked which areas of Tokyo were my favourites, it would be initially difficult since I enjoyed the wide variety that was available in the Big Sushi. However, one of them would be West Shinjuku. The hotel area still has that gleaming futuristic look after all these decades with all of those skyscrapers soaring into the blue sky. And although the area doesn't have a lot in terms of restaurants and stores (though obviously a lot of accommodations), I still find it a nice place to walk through. One of the things that got me interested in the nation of my ancestry in the first place was a tourist poster of West Shinjuku, perhaps by JAL or JTB, which shows the sun setting between two of those super structures. Looking at that poster, I knew that I had to go to Tokyo!
To get to the area from JR Shinjuku Station, I just need to walk through a long covered passageway from the west exit extending to West Shinjuku. The passageway shows up in the above video for Mr. Children's breakthrough song and 5th single, "innocent world".
"innocent world" was a song that had come out some months before I got to Japan to start my second stint of life there. My knowledge of Mr. Children really began with the following hit, "Tomorrow Never Knows" and went on from there. But "innocent world" was one of those songs that had been in the relative fog of my knowledge about J-Pop spanning between 1991 and 1994 when I was actually here in Toronto trying to earn my certificate in TESL. However, since Mr. Children has arguably become the premier band of the 1990s, that single kept popping up in retrospectives of the band.
My first glimpse of "innocent world" was through the inevitable excerpts of the official music video, notably showing vocalist Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）all in white trying to shelter himself from the rain while the film seemed to be ripping. I finally got to see the entire video today (!) and realized that it wasn't all avant-garde, although the director really liked his blacks and whites.
Sakurai wrote and composed the song which starts off with a melody that feels as if the protagonist is confidently and sturdily heading off to another day. It's all very uplifting so I wouldn't be surprised if it has gotten onto some list (and Japan absolutely adores pop culture lists) pertaining to uplifting and positive experiences. The lyrics also seem to describe the fellow's past relationship which is now definitely in the past but also expresses hope that he and his old flame can still have a reunion although as good friends rather than lovers.
According to Sakurai in an interview on the NTV Friday-night music show "FAN" (and yup, I saw a few of the episodes) via J-Wiki, he remarked that it was extremely hard for him to come up with the lyrics. Supposedly that innocent world didn't particularly refer to some place that was envied or desirable but a place that at times will be separated from you. So I gather that that place (or situation) actually can exist but perhaps fleetingly before the inevitable change. Feel free to discuss.
The song, as I mentioned above, was the big break for Mr. Children. Released in June 1994, it not only hit No. 1 on the Oricon weeklies but became the No. 1 song of the year, selling 1 million copies in about 2 months and ultimately selling just a little under 2 million. It is currently the 3rd-most successful single in the band's history, after No. 1 hit"Tomorrow Never Knows" and their 10th single, "Na mo Naki Uta"（名もなき詩...Nameless Poem）. In terms of Oricon history, "innocent world" is currently ranked No. 26 in all-time sales.
Mr. Children also earned a Grand Prize at the 1994 Japan Music Awards on New Year's Eve but no one was there to collect it since the entire band was on site in Australia filming the music video for "Tomorrow Never Knows". That kinda strikes me as rather strange since that single was released in November; they hadn't bothered getting a video done before the release of the single?
For the band, the even better benefit was that the success of "innocent world" led listeners to go back and explore their first four singles. Single No. 4, "Cross Road" and "innocent world" are on their smash hit album "Atomic Heart" which came out in September 1994.
I've compared Mr. Children to The Beatles, and if someone asked me for an example, I wouldn't have to go much farther than this song "[es] ~Theme of es~", the band's 8th single from May 1995.
When I listened to the CD single for the first time, I thought that Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）and crew were trying to emulate something from The Beatles' more introspective period, post-"Sgt. Pepper's". And although the songs are completely different, I couldn't help but also get reminded of Billy Joel's"Scenes From An Italian Restaurant".
Whatever the inspiration, "[es]" definitely has sweep. Starting with Sakurai and a simple guitar melody in balladeer mode, the song slowly goes into a crescendo as more of the band and an orchestra come in to provide an epic conclusion. The song was used as the theme song for a documentary on Mr. Children so at the time, I hadn't been sure whether Sakurai had wanted to create a ballad to document the history of the band. I was certainly curious as to what the "es" was all about.
I found out from J-Wiki and Wikipedia that the title was the German word for the psychological term "id", that part of a human's personality providing the basic primal drives. And from what I could understand of Sakurai's lyrics, the singer wants to strip himself of all of the fame and accolades and just reveal his true self to the one he loves, to reach true joy. I found a full translation of the song at an English fansite for the band so you can peruse the lyrics there to get that meaning.
The melody has that feeling of a condensed journey so I'm hoping that Sakurai was able to find his rainbow at the end of it. As I mentioned, the lead vocalist was responsible for words and music while producer Takeshi Kobayashi（小林武史）arranged it. "[es]" stayed at No. 1 for a couple of weeks and was the 12th-ranked single for 1995. The song is also included on Mr. Children's 6th album, "Bolero" from March 1997 which also hit No. 1 and was the 2nd-ranked album of the year. In the history of the Oricon charts, it is currently the 14th-ranked album all-time breaking through the 3-million barrier.
I used to remember the CG official music video that went with Mr. Children's 7th single, "Everybody Goes" along with the hurried rock beat of the song and Kazutoshi Sakurai's（桜井和寿）repeated "Everybody goes, everybody fights" without getting too deep into the lyrics. But getting into them now, it was obvious that Sakurai, who had also provided them, was making his statement on life in contemporary Japan.
The subtitle that goes with the song is "Chitsujo no Nai Gendai ni Drop Kick"（秩序のない現代にドロップキック）that can be translated as The Drop Kick to the Chaotic Generation of Today. Sakurai sings of the typically harried company man from the boonies who is giving his usual 9-to-9 (or more) to the corporate machine, and then leaps forward in time to give that warning about what his wayward daughter may be up to. After years of watching news on topics such as enjo kosai and karoshi, I've gotten the impression that Mr. Children may have been keeping their collective eyes on the news as well. Certainly another image I got from listening to the song is seeing all those working people running around Tokyo like ants searching for that sugar pile.
"Everybody Goes" was released in December 1994. It hit No. 1 on Oricon and managed to sell over a million copies, and becoming the 21st-ranked single for 1995. It is also a track on the band's 6th album, "BOLERO" which came out in March 1997. The album also was a No. 1 for Mr. Children and became the 2nd-most successful release of the year, selling about 3 million copies.Sakurai also composed the music with help from producer Takeshi Kobayashi（小林武史）. Kobayashi launched his own band, My Little Lover, in 1995, and the lead vocalist, Akko, was part of the backing vocals for "Everybody Goes".
The song was to have been the coupling song for previous hit "Tomorrow Never Knows", but the buzz around "Everybody Goes" was so good that it was hastily made into its own single. Fine decision.
As much as I will always associate Mr. Children's lead singer, Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）, with his singing on the top of a bluff for the video of "Tomorrow Never Knows", there is also the band's tribute to all things Elvis Costello via the hit, "Seesaw Game: Yukan na Koi no Uta"(The Song of Brave Love). First off, the Sakurai-penned 9th single released in August 1995 has a hint of that New Wave Costello, and then even with the video, there is a tip of the hat to "Pump It Up"(1978) and "Everyday I Write The Book"(1983) with Sakurai looking less earnest and more fun-loving as he takes on the Costello persona.
And I think the whole video seems to have a bit of Beatles footloose-and-fancy-free-ness....complete with monkeys, animated and real-life. I also enjoy the song since Sakurai also gives a shout out to one of my favourite games as a child, The Game of Life (it was always hard at the Day of Reckoning space).
No Elvis sightings in the concert above, but I don't think the audience minded too much. As soon as the first familiar notes launched out of the speakers, they gave a delighted roar. The music stores were also plenty delighted as "Seesaw Game" cracked the million barrier in sales as it started life in the rankings at the No. 1 position. It became the 5th-ranked song of 1995, but even more important, it is still the most successful non-tie up song in Japanese music history (that is, no connection to commercials or TV programs/movies).
Give the Mr. Children video a comparison with Costello's "Pump It Up".
I'd only heard about the band Mr. Children by hearsay and reputation when I was back in Toronto in the early 90s, but such was their growing popularity that the news about them managed to filter all the way to eastern Canada.
Then, just 6 days after I arrived at Narita Airport in November 1994, the band released their 6th single, "Tomorrow Never Knows", a song whose video was a regular fixture on the music shows. I will always remember seeing lead vocal Kazutoshi Sakurai（桜井和寿）belting out the refrain on that dramatic cliff over the ocean (according to J-Wiki, it's on the Great Ocean Road in the State of Victoria, Australia). I never became a huge fan of Mr. Children (something that in my doddering middle age, I may try to change by getting a BEST compilation sometime) but this song was something that I was drawn to. It just seemed to remind me of the great song "The Way It Is" in the piano line by US band Bruce Hornsby & The Range almost a decade prior.
The lyrics and music were provided by Sakurai, and they express a warning about the costs of too much ambition as the protagonist speaks from a position of superior wisdom and superior regret. The beautiful melody as well hints at innocent but cocky youth progressing to mature and wistful adulthood through the keyboards, while Sakurai gives a heartfelt plea to those young folk who would listen. His voice is especially soulful here....right up there with Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）of Sing Like Talking. By the way, the translated lyrics and the original version written in romaji can be found at the "Mr.Children English Fansite".
According to Sakurai who later appeared on music show "Utaban"（うたばん）: before its release in November 1994, the song had had the temporary title of "Ashita e no Kakyou"(明日への架橋....Bridge To Tomorrow), but advance reviews of the song brought so many comments such as "This will be SO money!". I got this information via J-Wiki, and although the article doesn't directly say that Sakurai had changed the title for that reason, I could imagine the leader trying to stave off any over-optimism by using the new and permanent title. Officially, the song was titled after The Beatles song by the same name. Interestingly, Mr. Children has been compared to The Fab Four.
Mr. Children had already been enjoying a huge year which included the band's 4th album, "Atomic Heart"(released in September 1994) which would sell over 3 million in sales, when "Tomorrow Never Knows"came out. The song itself would nearly hit 3 million on its own, and quickly become the 22nd-ranked song of the year (peaking at No. 1 on the weeklies). And in fact, it is currently the 7th-ranked song in the entire history of Oricon. "Tomorrow Never Knows" would get on the band's 6th album, "Bolero", which was released in March 1997.
"Tomorrow Never Knows" is also apparently one of those miracle songs that got written in the proverbial wink of an eye. On the English Wikipedia article for the song, it's mentioned that it had been written during the band's "Innocent World" tour. The J-Wiki equivalent had something more interesting about the song's origins in that Sakurai had come up with a portion of the lyrics while jogging through Shakujii Park in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, and that his 'A' melody and producer Takeshi Kobayashi's（小林武史）ideas for the chords matched up immediately; the two of them had been so energized by the song that it was written up within 30 minutes. Kobayashi had gotten inspiration for those chords from Cyndi Lauper's"Time After Time".
The song also became the theme song (and a good match) for the Fuji-TV drama, "Wakamono no Subete"（若者のすべて....The Young's All) starring Masato Hagiwara, Takuya Kimura and Anju Suzuki, a story about twentysomethings trying to make their way into a harder world....this sort of drama had become popular in the early 90s as Japan entered its economic malaise compared to the bubblier trendy dramas during the more successful 80s.
Years ago, I heard an admittedly odd theory that during economic recessions, ballads become more prominent. I'd probably say that based on that theory, "Tomorrow Never Knows"came at the right time. Even now, almost two decades later, it's a song that still resonates with a lot of people, within or without the karaoke lounge.
Mr. Children -- Tomorrow Never Knows
Just for the record, the lineup for Mr. Children is as follows: Kazutoshi Sakurai (vocal), Kenichi Tahara/田原健一 (guitar), Keisuke Nakagawa/中川敬輔 (bass) and Hideya Suzuki/鈴木英哉 (drums).
