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.
Not sure how this idea came about but last night, it got into my mind (through inception?) about how Japanese popular music shared one trope with Western pop material in that there have been plenty of songs with female names in the titles. Of course, we have Paul Anka's"Diana", Kool & The Gang's"Joanna" and TOTO's "Rosanna". Well, over the years of KKP, I've noticed that kayo kyoku and J-Pop has had its share already listed, so just to keep myself busy on this very snowy Sunday, here is a short list of such songs. I'll probably get a short list of male names up next week.
Well, all things come to an end, and such is the case with the go-touchi series of kayo which began all the way up in the north more than a month ago. Continuing from the Chugoku region and Shikoku last week, it will now come to an end in the south with the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan, Kyushu, and then Okinawa. Once again, the regional songs here are just the tip of a really large iceberg, and I hope that you can find some other famous go-touchi songs not just for these territories but for the others that have been covered over the past several weeks. The island of Kyushu consists of Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Oita, Saga, Kagoshima and Miyazaki Prefectures.
1. Fuyumi Sakamoto -- Abaredaiko (あばれ太鼓) for the Kokura district in Kita-Kyushu City (1987)
2. Nyc Nyusa -- Sachiko（サチコ）for Fukuoka City (1981)
4. Saburo Kitajima -- Satsuma no Hito（薩摩の女）for Kagoshima City (1968)
5. Yoshio Tabata -- Shima Sodachi (島育ち) for Amami-Oshima in Kagoshima Prefecture (1962)
6. Shoukichi Kina -- Haisai Ojisan（ハイサイおじさん）for Okinawa (1972)
Here's one final look at some of the delectable dishes from the area. This final time, we have toruko rice（トルコライス）from Nagasaki and then goya champuru（ゴーヤチャンプル）in Okinawa.
A few years ago, I wrote about the interestingly-named band Nyc Nyusa（ニック・ニューサ）which specialized in that blended genre known as New Adult Music consisting of enka/Mood kayo and rock elements.
Well, I found out that Nyc Nyusa brought those New Adult Music ways and applied them to a lost love kayo titled "Sakaba nite"(At The Bar) which had originally been sung by the late Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）back in 1974. Released as the band's 4th single in June 1983, this was written by Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）and composed by Kunihiko Suzuki（鈴木邦彦）, and in comparison with the original's somewhat more pop-leaning swinging Mood Kayo beat, Nyc Nyusa's take on "Sakaba nite" has replaced the pop with a more jangly rock feeling, thanks to a mournful electric guitar. In a way, this "Sakaba nite" shifts the setting from Eri's tropical seaside bar to a more imposing hole-in-a-wall in deepest darkest Kabukicho.
Looking at the J-Wiki article for "Sakaba nite", I noticed that there was a fairly long list of singers who have covered the kayo over the years. The list includes Ikuzo Yoshi（吉幾三）who is more than willing to go full-bore heart-on-a-sleeve, and he did his version of the song on his 2012 album"Ano Koro no Seishun wo Utau"（あの頃の青春を詩う...Singing of Those Salad Days）. This time, led along by a Latin guitar, Yoshi seems to emphasize the truly lonely aspects of "Sakaba nite" through his hangdog voice.
Back in the early 1980s when I was just getting started with my interest in Japanese popular music, there were a few Japanese magazines hanging about. There was one with Hiromi Go and Hitomi Ishikawa（郷ひろみ・石川ひとみ）on the cover that I remember quite well and it had the usual entertainment stuff along with news on singers and their songs. And in katakana, I saw one fellow's name on one of the pages. In fact, I think I even saw that same name in one of the issues of Akira Toriyama's classic "Dr. Slump"（ドクター・スランプ）manga (pre-Dragonball).
Now, considering that the name was in katakana（ニック・ニューサ）, I naturally thought that the guy was some singer from either Europe or America who was making it big in Japan since I had never heard of him before coming to the country. My assumption was that in romaji, his name was Nick Newser.
Let's blast forward by 3.5 decades. It's because of this blog that I picked up the chase again in terms of this "mysterious" Nick Newser. Only that this isn't the proper spelling for the name. Actually, it's Nyc Nyusa and it's not a person. It's actually a band from Western Japan. As for how this weird spelling came about, the members simply derived it from New York City, New York, USA.
The leader, vocalist and songwriter of Nyc Nyusa is Shuu Tanaka（田中収）from Fukuoka who first started his music career by being a member of the Group Sounds band, Shin Saegusa with Day & Nights（三枝伸とデイ＆ナイツ）back in 1967. With Nyc Nyusa, though, I found out that Tanaka and his band took things in an interesting direction. It was a fusion band except that it wasn't jazz and rock being involved but more like enka/Mood Kayo and rock and perhaps blues.
Their debut single was "Sachiko" which came out in June 1981. It's quite an atmospheric number that has that feeling of kayo rock. The guitars are in there but I can also envision a video involving lonely people hanging out in Ginza bars which is quite the Mood Kayo trope.
I also find Tanaka to have a voice similar to Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）of the Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）, and Kuwata is a singer that I think has an affinity for blues rock. The other fascinating thing about the J-Wikiarticle on Nyc Nyusa is that it was categorized as being "close" in genre to something called New Adult Music（ニューアダルトミュージック）.
Say what? Never heard of this one. I mean, as anyone who has read a number of articles on this blog and elsewhere about Japanese pop music, a particular song can be categorized over a few genres. But apparently this New Adult Music (it also has its own J-Wiki article) is a hybrid or perhaps blend of folk, New Music, rock and good ol' kayo. The article has a list of singers who belonged in this genre including Teresa Teng（テレサ・テン）and Marcia（マルシア）.
Perhaps then New Adult Music could be that European enka that I had once referred to when I was talking about Teng and some of her discography. I'd always thought that the late singer stood apart from other enka and Mood Kayo singers because her songs had that certain exotic class to them. I shouldn't be too surprised by the existence of this genre since at around the same time when Nyc Nyusa came on the scene, there was that Fashion Music genre which I've only associated Asami Kado（門あさ美）and Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）with. Speaking of the latter singer, some of her songs have also been quite bluesy with that wailing guitar solo and yet there was also that sense of old-fashioned kayo. Perhaps Kurahashi was also a part of the New Adult Music scene as well.
Anyways, Nyc Nyusa has continued to record music well into the 21st century with their last single coming out in 2015. Ah, incidentally, there was another "Sachiko" performed a couple of years before Nyusa's namesake song. That one is even mellower.
