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.
Being just a wee lad at the time, whenever I did see some old footage of Kiyoko "Chiita" Suizenji（水前寺清子）singing her heart out on stage, I did wonder whether I was witnessing a woman or a man. Despite the cute face, Suizenji's short haircut and that forceful gravelly delivery of hers had me somewhat confused for a good long while. Of course, at the time, I also had little knowledge of Japanese nomenclature.
I listened to all four songs from the maxi-single at the top and the one that caught my ear the most was "O-shoubu" (Do-or-Die) which was Chiita's 36th single from November 1970. Starting off with a fanfare of traditional instruments and low horns that seem to portend a monumental storm or a major battle in feudal Japan, the singer proudly throws out with much brio a story of how men could win back in those days.
Listening to "O-shoubu", it is indeed a truly shibui enka ballad composed by Sanechika Ando（安藤実親）that I remember hearing as a kid, especially with the way those strings just bend and wail before Suizenji starts singing. Shinichi Sekizawa's（関沢新一）lyrics have her giving the rules for being a winner: 1) Men must win 2) Men must not fall in love and 3) Men must not cry. I can hear those katana or lightsabers being unsheathed right now.
Considering how much George Lucas dipped into Japanese historical culture for "Star Wars", I'm now kinda wondering whether he had discovered this Suizenji song and used the verse to concoct those Jedi rules. I also scrolled down the list of her singles and found out that she had been releasing six to seven singles a year at one point, including 1970, with "O-shoubu" being her 6th single for that year. She must have already achieved the level of Jedi Master with that sort of energy and stamina.
Welcome to October! It's a brisk one out there and there's quite a cooling breeze flowing through home right now. Hopefully folks in Tokyo and the rest of Japan have been recovering from the latest typhoon to whoosh across the archipelago.
The samurai dramas of my childhood were "Mito Komon"（水戸黄門）and "Kozure Ohkami"（子連れ狼）, so my brother and I were often enthralled when the good guys flashed their swords and made mincemeat out of the enemy, although gore and blood were thankfully absent in the shows.
I never caught "Zenigata Heiji" in any of its incarnations over the decades, though. Apparently, the title character was an Edo Era policeman in Edo itself whose claim to fame was nabbing criminals by flinging coins with incredible accuracy. Perhaps he was the equivalent of Batman and his batarangs.
Last Tuesday on "Uta Kon"（うたコン）one of the guest singers provided the theme song from the 1966 show on Fuji-TV. The original singer was Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）, who I've always known as the earnest fellow behind the kayo classic "Koukou Sannen-sei"（高校三年生）and some other young student-based tunes from the 1960s. But he also started tackling the more shibui musical material of the historical dramas.
While Shinichi Sekizawa's（関沢新一）lyrics gave a straight-ahead account of the heroism of Heiji (at first glance, I thought Zenigata Heiji was the full name of the hero, but actually it's a nickname of sorts with the first word referring to those weaponized coins), Sanechika Ando's（安藤実親）melody has got quite the jazzy swing to it although I still recognized it as an enka number. I wonder if Ando had been watching some of the detective shows in America from the same decade and had gotten some inspiration to infuse the usual historical drama theme song with some of that Henry Mancini stuff.
"Zenigata Heiji" was first sold in the record stores as part of Funaki's 38th single"Atsumori Aika"（敦盛哀歌...Atsumori Elegy）, released in May 1966.
Actor-singer Masaharu Fukuyama（福山雅治）covered "Zenigata Heiji", and he gives his unplugged performance of the song above. The song was included in "Tama Riku"（魂リク）, his April 2015 album of cover songs. The album hit No. 1 on Oricon and became the 20th-ranked album of the year, going Platinum and winning Album of the Year honours at the Japan Gold Disc Awards.
I was wondering about what "Tama Riku" meant, but it's actually a shortened form of "Tama's Requests" which was a segment of Fukuyama's radio show "Masaharu Fukuyama's All-Night Nippon Saturday Special: Tama Radio"（福山雅治のオールナイトニッポンサタデースペシャル・魂のラジオ）with those last two words referring to "Soul Radio". The show had a long run of 15 years from 2000-2015 on Saturday nights from 11:30 to 1:00. I'm pretty sure that fans flocked to the speakers or headphones to listen to Fukuyama's dulcet tones.
