Just for Fun...The J-C AI Gallery -- TOKIO, SHOW-YA & Anzen Chitai

 

TOKIO -- Ambitious Japan!

SHOW-YA -- Mizu no Naka no Toubousha（水の中の逃亡者）

Anzen Chitai -- Wine-Red no Kokoro （ワインレッドの心）

SHOW-YA -- Mizu no Naka no Toubousha（水の中の逃亡者）/Fermata（フェルマータ）

 

Although I think JTM is the expert on Japanese police dramas from the 1970s and 1980s, my impression about them has been that their opening credits for each of those shows liked to have the majority of the detectives running at full speed around the city while the older and more seasoned veterans could afford to just look serious and do something more peaceful such as talk into the walkie-talkie.

This was no different from the TV Asahi cop show "Dai Tokai Ni-Juu-Go-ji"（大都会25時...Big City 25:00）; the cast of characters was running about as if Hannibal Lecter had been set loose onto Tokyo. However, one major difference was that it had a very short run of only 5 months between April and September 1987. Another point that set it apart was that "Dai Tokai Ni-Juu-Go-ji" focused on two squads within one division: one was a by-the-book and competent group while the other team consisted of a bunch of misfits (probably a mix of comical and rebellious types). Not sure what the format was; did each episode focus on one squad per week or was there some sort of gritted-teeth cooperation between the two squads? It was a new way of treating the typical cop show.

From the cop shows that I've seen, this is the first time that I've ever heard of one band taking care of both the opening and ending themes, and for "Dai Tokai Ni-Juu-Go-ji", the producers picked the rock band SHOW-YA. "Mizu no Naka no Toubousha" (Fugitive in the Water) was the band's 5th single from May 1987 and it's a pretty cool and melodic rock theme with those wailing electric guitars and sparkling synths that had me thinking about Santana and Bonnie Tyler. I think it does make for that energy pickup for the cops running all over the place in the opening credits. After all, there is never a boring moment in Japan's largest city.

Then, the B-side is the ending theme "Fermata" which is more of a cool-down City Pop tune and it's played against the backdrop of a typical Tokyo intersection through a day, perhaps signifying while the two squads are fighting the good fight, the rest of the populace can go about their business in safety. Maybe the cops can actually stroll to a fashionable bar near the station while listening to this one. For both songs, the big guns were called in: lyricist Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）, composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and arranger Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）. "Mizu no Naka no Toubousha" was also included in SHOW-YA's 5th album from November 1987, "Immigration" which hit No. 12 on Oricon.

SHOW-YA -- Shidokenaku Emotion（しどけなくエモーション）

Coming in on the JET Programme at the turn of the decade between the 1980s and the 1990s, I was witness to a number of changes in Japanese popular music, including the appearance of hard rock bands, or at least pop bands with a bit more of a guitar edge to them. It was also the time that female pop/rock bands like Princess Princess and Pink Sapphire hit the scene.

Another all-female band that I had heard about was SHOW-YA. And this band has been around since about 1981 so it's also one of the pioneers. However, they didn't put out their debut single until 1985, which turned out to be a new jingle for Coca-Cola.

Their second single, "Shidokenaku Emotion", came out in February 1986, and listening to it, I got that pop/rock feeling of Styx to a certain extent which was a bit surprising since they've been classified as a hard rock/glam metal/heavy metal (!) band. Apparently, according to their history in J-Wiki, when they were about to break out, the powers-that-be and SHOW-YA were playing some tug-of-war in terms of their image. The latter really wanted to rock out but the former preferred to market them as an aidoru group...a pretty wide chasm. Perhaps that may have filtered down to how their early singles were arranged, although I'm surely no SHOW-YA expert (so, once again, I ask for some help here). Still, watching their performances in the videos above and below, it looks like the band struck a more positive compromise in terms of their looks. They definitely did not look anything like an Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）clone, although remembering at least one of their later music videos, they were yet to appear as ferocious.

The members of SHOW-YA are vocalist Keiko Terada（寺田恵子）, keyboardist/leader Miki Nakamura（中村美紀）, guitarist Miki Igarashi（五十嵐美貴）, drummer Miki Tsunoda（角田美喜）and bassist Satomi Senba（仙波さとみ）. With the plethora of Mikis in the band, nicknames were given so that Nakamura was known as the Captain, Igarashi was Sun-Go, and Tsunoda was mittan. The Captain was the composer of "Shidokenaku Emotion" with Reiko Yukawa（湯川れい子）being the lyricist. I was kinda wondering how to translate the title into English since I could only find the one definition on Jisho.org as being "slovenly" which didn't quite fit my image. Perhaps "Ragged Emotions" might be a better interpretation?

One question about the band was on how they had come up with the name. Well, half the answer was how I figured that it would turn out and the other was a complete revelation. When Nakamura and Terada were working together on the preceding version of the band, known as Medusa（メデューサ）back then, the band hadn't been doing too well in the various contests, and they both agreed that "Medusa" was a bit of a pox on them.

Well, the ladies decided to change the name to SHOW-YA, based on the izakaya chain they used to drink at all the time, Syoya (庄や...I think my friends and I have visited a few branches, too). As for the altered romaji spelling, they realized that the words were also an expression of defiance as in "I'LL SHOW YA!".

Between 1985 and 1992, SHOW-YA released 12 singles and 8 albums with two changes in vocalists after Terada had left the band in early 1991. Steffanie Borges took over as the 2nd vocalist between 1991 and 1997, and then Yoshino took over as the 3rd vocalist for the final year until SHOW-YA called it a day in 1998. However in 2005, about 20 years after releasing that first single, Terada returned to get the band together and release at least one more single and a few more albums since then, on top of going back on the road.