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.
Showing posts with label NHK Jido Gassho Dan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NHK Jido Gassho Dan. Show all posts
Although February 11th 2026 has already passed into history in Japan as I'm typing this, it's still February 11th here so allow me to give a belated Happy Birthday to the nation via its National Foundation Day. As such, I was wondering what song I could contribute to commemorate the day and I remember that I had yet to post this one onto the blog.
"Sakura, Sakura" is a traditional folk song that I've known since I was only yea high. I'd assumed that this was a truly ancient creation going back a thousand years or so, but its birth was relatively recent...being sometime during the Edo era (1600-1868). No songwriter was ever identified and actual lyrics for the song weren't included until around 1888.
I guess in a way then that the mystery surrounding its origins fits the mystique of "Sakura, Sakura" since it sounds so hauntingly beautiful with lyrics that talk about how fleeting the existence of things are...illustrated by cherry blossom petals. My early years of listening to the song were only via the instrumental version that I heard often enough whenever my family went to Nikko Gardens, one of Toronto's first Japanese restaurants. Basically, I had thought that "Sakura, Sakura" was the patron saint song of Japanese restaurants. I would always remember whether I should choose the teriyaki set or the tempura set while it was playing on the speakers. The above version, by the way, is performed by the NHK Jido Gassho Dan（NHK東京児童合唱団...NHK Tokyo Children's Choir） while the one below (with a slightly different arrangement) is performed by Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）.
It's pretty safe to say that over the decades, whenever a traditional Japanese music group comes over to the West for recitals, "Sakura, Sakura" is pretty much obligatory performing. As for my initial assumption on the age of the song, I'd thought that I would actually break a new record of how far back I could go in time with a new ancient year in Labels as opposed to 1597, but I guess I will go for the aforementioned 1888.
Hello there! Some of you faithful viewers of KKP may have noticed that I was absent yesterday from any new articles. That is because Monday was saved for a computer parts shopping spree downtown with my good friend who is also someone very blessed with computer-creating and computer-repairing skills. We brought back everything to my place and he used a few hours to give some fine upgrades to my two computers and they're now humming with increased speed and capacity now. My great gratitude to him. There's still one more part to come in but basically we're done.
As such, I thought I would put up another Author's Picks with the theme here being songs which have something to do with computers. One entry might seem a bit odd but in that case, you can take a look at its original article to find out why I chose it.
Happy Weekend! Now that we are truly getting out of the Holiday season, things are getting back to normal which includes the inevitable and dreaded payment of credit cards, and in Japan, television broadcasting is veering away from special New Year's programming. As well, this also means that the AI art gallery is back open again.
This time, I'm involving some of the acts that we saw on the recent Kohaku Utagassen. I have to warn you that the images this time around are bizarre and a touch unsettling.
Man, this has been the most difficult Creator article and this has been the most difficult Author's Picks article that I've ever written...in a good way, of course. Ryuichi Sakamoto has been a music producer, musician, composer and arranger for so long and for so many other artists that his breadth of work is simply too huge to cover adequately, and I'm not going to pretend that I can even try to do that (in fact, a list of his works needed a separate page on J-Wiki). Therefore, I will take the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup approach and merge the Creator and Author's Picks here for this one article.
On top of that, that list is so big that I have decided to narrow things down by just including my very favourite songs (and yup, most of them are on the technopop side) by the Tokyo-born music man, and those are creations that he has provided other singers. Therefore, none of his Yellow Magic Orchestra or his solo material are included. Even so, I had to cram the Labels section to the 20-item limit so I couldn't even include all of the genres that he has dabbled in, but perhaps I can do so here: along with the Pop that I could squeeze in on the side, there are techno, New Wave, Latin, and City Pop among others. He's also been known to have helped in the formation of genres such as hip-hop and electro but otherwise, you can get the full biography at Wikipedia.
Finally, the entries that I've given here are ones that already have representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", so the usual links will be present. However, some time in the next little while, I hope to get a second part of my tribute to The Professor up on the blog which will cover those songs of his that I have yet to get acquainted with.
This is a Sakamoto instrumental but it was included on his YMO bandmate Takahashi's（高橋幸宏）solo "Saravah!" album. With "Elastic Dummy", I think about my favourite salad that I bought from convenience stores such as Lawson and 7/11 with all sorts of bright and leafy vegetables with the much-vaunted protein of chicken chunks and a spicy-sweet dressing. In other words, "Elastic Dummy" has got everything of nutritious urban contemporary value: disco, detective drama soundtrack, City Pop, jazz, samba, technopop noodling, Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）and perhaps even a look into early 2000s J-R&B. Y'know, I wouldn't mind hearing this ball of fun (how much coffee did The Professor have when he created this one?!) being played over some ending credit sequence for a movie.
A track from Rajie's 1979"Quatre" album, Sakamoto created this funky late 1970s Bee Gees-esque tune along with Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）. It's got the technopop in there, too, but it's not merely a YMO song with Rajie as the featured guest vocalist. The singer is leading the way here with her high and floaty voice about the "Nantonaku Crystal" lifestyle in the big city.
Choosing one from the Ohnuki/Sakamoto file was quite the task considering that the two had worked together on oodles of material for several years from the late 70s well into the 1980s. Ultimately, though, I had to go with "Decade Night" from "Romantique", Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）1980 album and the LP that introduced a new direction for the singer-songwriter. Sakamoto produced "Romantique" and a majority of its tracks including the enigmatically attractive and quirky "Decade Night" that simultaneously reminds me of New Wave, avant-garde and a 1960s Hollywood romance soundtrack.
Sakamoto was applying that technopop touch through a number of genres at that particular time, so he probably figured why not do the same to the kiddies' song. And so he arranged Ryoichi Ito's（伊藤良一）"Computer Obaachan" about one cool senior citizen as a popular song on NHK's "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた） series.
The Professor produced Hiromi Go's（郷ひろみ）album"Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai" and he composed the unique breezy and futuristic-feeling title track with Miyuki Nakajima's（中島みゆき）lyrics. Go's resigned voiceovers and Sakamoto's fleet-footed synthpop might bring images of "Blade Runner" but I can't help but think that the actual setting for the song is much more of a crystalline utopia.
If Sakamoto can provide a catchy technopop tune for a former aidoru of the 1970s, then he can do the same thing for a singer who played a fictional aidoru of the future from a beloved anime franchise. Indeed, I'm talking about Mari Iijima（飯島真理）and her creation of "Blueberry Jam" from the 1983 "Rosé" album. The song is supremely bouncy like an aidoru tune but it's got that Sakamoto sheen and I can even imagine Lynn Minmay singing that one on the SDF-1.
As much as I wanted to put up a cover of this song by Miki Imai（今井美樹）, I think only the original version as partially provided at iTunes displays the Sakamoto-ness of this mix of synthpop and bossa nova. I mean, up to the time that I got her 1994 album"A Place in the Sun", I had never thought a melding of these two genres was possible but I was happily proven wrong. "Martinique no Kaze" is easily my favourite track on the album because of this fusion, Imai's vocals and Sakamoto's piano solo.
My final entry for earworm Sakamoto goodness is Miki Nakatani's（中谷美紀）"Kinokhronika" from her "cure" album. At this point, it was verging on the 20th anniversary of the formation of YMO, but Sakamoto could still come up with the techno dance beats. Just imagine him holding court in the clubs. If I need an energy boost, I sometimes listen to this one.
As mentioned all the way up at the top, these examples are just a fraction of what Sakamoto has done, and it certainly looks like I've only scratched the surface of what I know of his works. However, these eight songs by the Professor are among my favourites, but I've caught a glimpse of some of these other Sakamoto works that have been unknown to me and I'll feature them in a second tribute in the near future.
I realize that I've been getting a bit heavy on the technopop over the past few days, but after coming across this adorable piece of techno kayo, I just had to get it onto the blog.
"Computer Obaachan" (Computer Grandmother) is this song written and composed by Ryoichi Ito（伊藤良一...I hope I've pronounced that correctly） and arranged by Yellow Magic Orchestra'sRyuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）that was placed onto the NHK children's segment, "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた...Songs For Everybody） back in late 1981. I think at the time, a lot of pop music was going a bit YMO-happy so why not a kid's song? In any case, the NHK Jido Gassho Dan（NHK東京児童合唱団...NHK Tokyo Children's Choir） as led by moppet Shuuko Sakai（酒井司優子）took care of this catchy technopop ode to a grandmother so cool and smart that she is just like a living computer to her adoring grandkid. The song proved so popular that it kept coming back onto the segment off and on over and over again from 1981 to 2009. The music behind the choir was two-thirds of YMO with Sakamoto and Yukihiro Takahashi（高橋幸宏）on the drums.
However, it was originally performed in the same year by a short-lived technopop band, Cosmic Invention (1979-1982). The original arrangement was by Hiroyoshi Oda（小田啓義）which sounded a little sluggish to me when it was performed by this group that was nicknamed YMO Junior. The reason for that lay in the fact that the members were all either elementary or junior high school students.
Over a quarter of a century later, technorock band Polysics provided their own fun cover of "Computer Obaachan" via a 2007 compilation album titled "Rock For Baby".
Then in 2011, Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）gave a groovier version via the album "Miku Hatsune Sings New Wave". I have to say that in each of the versions, it's the "Yay, yay, yay" and "Whoa, whoa, whoa" that keep it fun for me.
Roppongi Hills
February 5th 2019: I found out a bit of history concerning this classic.
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