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.
Having turned 60 recently, this is supposedly a big thing in East Asian culture. In Japan, it's called kanreki（還暦）and when turning the big 6-0 was once seen as having made it to a ripe old age, the family celebrated and the birthday person had to wear some sort of red costume. Well, I do have that red vest that I bought back in the late 1980s. It's lasted through Canada, Japan and then Canada again.
Remember Pikotaro（ピコ太郎）, aka comedian Daimaou Kosaka（古坂大魔王）, who set the online world on fire about a decade ago due to his zany "PPAP: Pen-Apple-Pineapple-Pen"? Apparently, Canada's own Justin Bieber was the guy who lit the fuse because he had been laughing his internal organs out from watching this Japanese funny guy verbally juggling these three disparate nouns in a twee technopop tune.
Well, a few months ago, Pikotaro was back up and running for the first time in a while, although his alter ego Kosaka has continued to make the rounds on Japanese TV. He came out with another technopop take, but this time on the aforementioned kanreki and the video has him in full customary regalia and dance mode. Compared to "PPAP", "KANREKI 60" hasn't exactly lit cyberspace on fire but at least it's nice to know that Pikotaro hasn't forgotten the youngest of the silver generation.
Along with all of the Xmas/New Year's festivities and the announcement of the Kohaku Utagassen lineup, another pop cultural sign that the year is nigh is the presentation of "Shingo/Ryukogo Taisho"（新語・流行語大賞）or The New Words & Trendy Words Awards. Man, do the Japanese love their buzzwords and catchphrases! Among the words lauded in 2018 at the 35th edition were "So da ne~!"（そだねー...Yup!/Ya got that right!）by a women's curling team and "e-Sports".
Well, I kinda figured one thing. I know that there were quite a few songs associated with these various popular words of their year so I just considered scrolling through the official website for the awards and seeing what I could find. Of course, with the Heisei Era finishing up at the end of April, I decided to keep my focus from 1989 onwards for the most part so here are 9 songs attached with some of those Heisei trendy words and 1 that I decided to throw in for nostalgia's sake.
Considering that the Japanese have loved their trendy turns of phrase for years, I was a bit surprised that the awards only started up in 1984. I'm sure that the original producers must have knocked themselves upside the head and proclaimed "Why didn't we think of this sooner?" In any case, one of the first winners of the award (and this is the lone Showa Era nostalgic entry) was "Oshin-drome"（オシンドローム...Oshin Syndrome） to commemorate the massive international popularity of this NHK morning serial "Oshin"（おしん） (1983) about a woman who had grown up through unimaginably harsh circumstances to own her chain of successful stores.
Not being a serial drama fan, I was always in my room studying but I could hear my parents sniffling away as they watched another tear-drenched episode on their rental VHS tapes. And each episode would being with that wistful instrumental theme song by Koichi Sakata（坂田晃一）. I heard that "Oshin" became a huge hit even in Southeast Asia, and I even saw then-President Ronald Reagan give an address to Japan, making reference to the show although he pronounced the title as "ocean".
Yup, in the first (not-whole) year of Heisei, just as the first cracks were appearing in that Big Shiny Bubble, this commercial jingle for the Regain vitamin drink exhorted the masses to work their asses...off under the slogan "24-ji kan tatakae masu ka?"（24時間タタカエマスカ...Can you battle it out for 24 hours?）. It didn't stop the Bubble from bursting but "Yuuki no Shirushi"（勇気のしるし）was a huge success and probably got actor Saburo Tokito（時任三郎）his first hit as a singer. It even got attention from CNN.
"Chibi Maruko-chan"（ちびまる子ちゃん）the anime and manga by the late Momoko Sakura（さくらももこ） became a thing in this year, and even the famous ending theme (now the opening theme) by B.B. Queens ended up as the No. 1 single of the year on Oricon and in the karaoke rooms. Watching the show on Sunday nights, the anime has become as indispensable as "Sazae-chan"（サザエちゃん）on the Fuji-TV schedule.
Aye...who could remember that fateful scene of Tetsuya Takeda's（武田鉄矢）nebbishy character foolishly stepping in front of a truck and screaming at Atsuko Asano（浅野温子）, "Boku wa shinimashehhhhn!"（僕は死にましぇ～ん...I'M NOT GONNA DIIIIIE!）in 1991's "Hyaku-ikkai-me no Propose"（１０１回目のプロポーズ...The 101st Proposal） just to show how much he will not end up disappearing from her life? That proclamation got the prize that year although I rather wonder when Takeda showed up to get his prize whether he asked men not to jump in front of motor vehicles. Still, the opening theme "Say Yes" by Chage & Aska flew off the shelves to catapult it into Oricon history as the 7th-ranked single of all time.
5. EAST END×YURI -- DA.YO.NE (12th edition ~ 1995)
For the sake of truth-in-advertising, the full phrase that got EAST END X YURI their award in 1995 was "DA.YO.NE, MAICCA" after their two hit songs, but it's that first tune of "DA.YO.NE" that the hip-hop unit has become famous for. Simply couldn't get the song out of my head and ears, no matter how much I tried. It was that pervasive all over media and that didn't include all of the dialectal variants that also got released.
I'm sure that a lot of Namie Amuro's（安室奈美恵）fans really wanted to cry when she announced her retirement from show business a couple of years ago. Yup "Amurer"（アムラー）was another prize-winning word from 1996 when young ladies wanted to emulate the Okinawan superstar's looks right down to those platform boots. I'm not sure if I had seen too many Amurers walking into my branch of NOVA in Asakusa way back when, but I do remember seeing a lot of those boots. Not that I had a boot fetish or anything like that, ahem.
7. Pirates -- INCANTATION (15th Edition ~ 1998)
One of the reasons that I decided to come up with this list was this comical duo of busty tarento known as Pirates（パイレーツ）who gained their 15 minutes of fame for this one catchphrase, "Dachuuno!"（だっちゅーの...What I'm Saying Is）as they bent over in their low-cut wardrobe. Again as any of the trendy words for that year proved, it was one of those phrases that was everywhere in the media zeitgeist, and therefore, Yoshimi Asada and Haruka Nishimoto（浅田好未、西本はるか）were everywhere as well.
Plus, I vaguely remember that their fame meant going into the recording booth to spit out some singles. Their first one of four singles was "INCANTATION" released in March 1998. Written by Sho Saegusa（三枝翔...not sure about the pronunciation of the last name） and composed by Kazuhisa Yamaguchi（山口一久）, it had that slightly sultry feel, but that's all I can really say about it.
To think, a trio of dumplings became famous for getting the top single of 1999. "Dango San Kyodai"（だんご３兄弟）by Dango Gasshodan is a catchy tune, to be sure, though, and if I could re-title the song, I would put it as the Dango Tango. And yup, "Dango San Kyodai" was one of the 1999 winners, too. Japanese confectioners were probably placing their down payments on some nice real estate after getting all sorts of business after customers had seen the video.
At a time when corporate workers were getting mightily worried about getting laid off, perhaps the cover of Kyu Sakamoto's（坂本九）"Ashita ga aru sa"（明日があるさ）by Re:Japan's motley crew of Yoshimoto Kogyo comedians may have helped provide some solace. Plus, the friendly nature of the song must have made for a fine trigger for a massive singalong that year at the karaoke boxes.
Well, considering that "PPAP" went well beyond Japan's borders and tickled the humour of one Canadian superstar and dragged one other Canadian superstar into a parody, I think that it was a done deal for the song to get a prize a couple of years ago. Reading the description at the website for the trendy words, even those guys aren't sure what triggered the song's popularity.😁
From May, it will be a new reign era. I'm sure that there will be some buzzwords, catchphrases and trendy words formed and bandied about like candy from May to December, though.
The pineapple: grand for upside-down cakes and Canadian pizza and sundaes. And it can be the go-to organic container for Chinese dishes such as the sweet-and-sour pork above and even fried rice in Japan. Not too sure about pens and apples, though.
After my niece's birthday dinner on Sunday, we all went back to my brother's place for some of that birthday cake. There, the bonnie lass gleefully showed me a video of this lantern-jawed fellow by the name of Pikotaro（ピコ太郎）who looked like he was dressed by some woman from Sugamo, Tokyo performing a (mercifully) short-but-sweet number called "PPAP: Pen-Apple-Pineapple-Pen". It's just some minimalist technopop paired with an English vocabulary lesson for the kiddies that was released as a digital download single only a few days ago although the video seems to have already gotten around like a virus. Canadian singer-troublemaker Justin Bieber has given it his star of approval, and apparently it has made the rounds on the news channels such as BBC and CNN. I guess even they need a break from talking about Donald and Hillary once in a while. In other words, it has become a thing.
The video above has so far had over 83 million views. I guess I should say that it has become a meme although I don't think it's gonna quite reach the heights of PSY's "Gangnam Town".
Pikotaro is supposedly a 53-year-old singer-songwriter from Chiba Prefecture although he has just popped up in the pop culture world. Actually, he is the creation of 43-year-old comedian Daimaou Kosaka（古坂大魔王）from Aomori Prefecture (real name: Kazuhito Kosaka/古坂和仁) who started out as one-third of a comedic trio called Sokonuke AIR-LINE（底ぬけAIR-LINE）in 1991 before taking a break in 2003 to form a techno unit which was called New Bushidou Ravers. The Ravers helped produce club events and even assisted in remixes for singers such as Ami Suzuki（鈴木亜美）. Kosaka revived his comedic career in 2008.
One of his other characters was Mendokusai Otoko（メンドクサイ男...The Troublesome Man） who you can see in action above with a backing techno track.
Speaking of celebrity Canadian admirers, even Drake from Toronto has gotten into the act, something that my niece also showed me while we were eating our cheesecake.
Not sure how far this "PPAP" phenomenon will go but if it makes it to the end of the year, I think it's guaranteed that Pikotaro will show up on the Kohaku Utagassen in some form or other. Pens, apples, pineapples and all.
