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.
Continuing on from Akiko Matsumoto's（松本明子）cover version of "Tasogare My Love", I would like to also feature yet another loving tribute to the works of Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）. "Tasogare My Love" in its original form may have been more of a straight pop or kayo kyoku, but this next one is most definitely in the good-time City Pop mode.
In early 2023, music journalist Toshikazu Kanazawa（金澤寿和）launched the direction of an album compilation of City Pop covers called "City Pop Avenue ~ Paper Moon Project" featuring female singers who have taken the baton for the urban contemporary in recent decades. I'm pretty confident that the name of "Paper Moon" was taken from Ohashi's 1976 album of the same title and it's one of her covers that starts the album off.
"Simple Love" was Ohashi's 5th single from 1977 that seemed to highlight all that was cool and good about the night life in Tokyo. The disco times are back again (including the wacka-wacka guitar) for the cover version by Shiori Sasaki（佐々木詩織）, who has been on KKP before as a featured performer with the urban contemporary duo of Blue Peppers, and she sounds as smooth as butter. The arrangement isn't quite as brassy as that for the original but it does reflect how the urban sounds sound these days. Ohashi's husband, Ken Sato（佐藤健）, took care of the melody while Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）was behind the lyrics.
As well, back in 2022, I posted my own favourites by Ohashi so you can have a gander at those, too.
The above photo was something that Rocket Brown of Come Along Radio was very kind to send to me some weeks ago. If you look closely, you can see a very young Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）in the middle of Masamichi Sugi（杉真理）and Red Stripes. With all that heavy garb, they look positively Canadian! I hope that provides some happiness especially to the Mariya fans out there.
And that is the point of this Author's Pick article. Over five years ago in March 2015, I posted up an article in commemoration of the United Nations' International Happiness Day on March 20th (coincidentally Mariya's birthday!) titled "Happy Songs for Me" which listed some of the many songs that have made or kept my spirits happy and light. Just a few months after that, I then provided "Happy Songs for Me 2" just to show that the list was far from complete.
Well in July 2020, I've decided to go for a three-peat. And I think it's especially important now when the pandemic and its various ill effects have left millions upon millions of people feeling anything but happy. Not to say that this article is going to provide the ultimate cure to the population of Earth obviously. However, perhaps for those who do like Japanese popular music, some of my choices in "Happy Songs for Me 3" (along with its two cousins) can be your choices that make you feel happy.
For a fellow who got his education in all things Taeko（大貫妙子）first through her synthpop offerings at the turn of the decade into the 1980s, hearing the singer-songwriter going really high into the 1970s City Pop was quite the revelation. In the years since listening to "Summer Connection" repeatedly, this has become one of my summer must-hears and it's a grand aural sepia-toned photograph into the Tokyo hot season of that decade. Especially when the brass launches it and then she hits her highest notes in the song, I get to go to my happy place.
This wasn't the first Seiko-chan（松田聖子）song that I ever heard but it's been the one that has struck me as being one of the purest grin-giving aidoru numbers of the 1980s. When I first heard this on "Sounds of Japan" decades ago, I thought that this was the ultimate Seiko song. It's just a buoyant summer song of yesteryear powered by disco strings that takes flight over the beach and surf while the teen aidoru and a beau are frolicking the days away.
There's nothing like listening to an Anri（杏里）song from the 1980s with a Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生） engine to drive the blues away. Of course, that includes many tunes but one of my very favourite is "Shyness Boy" from her "Timely!!" album. As soon as I hear this one on the stereo with the sunny brass, I get transported to wherever Anri was having her photograph taken on the cover of the album; I'm assuming that it's either Hawaii or Los Angeles. Just imagine the rise on the happiness scale when listening to "Shyness Boy" while in a convertible driving along the California coastline.
SLT's "Together" is already included in one of the previous "Happy" lists and while that is just one joyous caper through the city, "Mitsumeru Ai de"（みつめる愛で）has me preparing for a fun night out on the town. It's pure fantasy but this song is the theme for throwing on a Hugo Boss suit (that would probably have to go beyond its usual parameters to fit me), getting into a limo with the lady of my dreams (no comment on that), and tripping the light fantastic for dinner and drinking and dancing. Pianist Satoru Shionoya（塩谷哲）absolutely helps in batting this one out of the park.
One of my friends on the JET Programme frankly had the same attitude toward KAN's magnum opus "Ai wa Katsu"（愛は勝つ）that I had (and still have) toward natto: GET IT AWAY FROM ME! She really wasn't much for whimsical pop. For me, "Ai wa Katsu" was one of the musical touchstones in my life since it became that big hit during my two years in Gunma Prefecture. Perhaps the message is as corny as a field in the Midwest but the song still manages to prop up some happy memories of pop culture and life back then.
The next few entries involve some of the wonderful new urban contemporary acts in the last decade that I've discovered in the years since the first two "Happy" lists have come out. Case in point: the cool AOR duo Blue Peppers with vocalist Shiori Sasaki（佐々木詩織）with their "Roku-gatsu no Yume"（6月の夢）, one very happy-go-lucky number that deserves its own light sitcom set in a Tokyo suburb. I get some of that lovely Steely Dan vibe here and I still eagerly await that next album.
Around the same time that I first heard about Blue Peppers, I came across the coolness of BLU-SWING which has been around for over a decade. I really am a late bloomer. At least, I was fortunate to discover "Flash", a great calling card for the band and perhaps the theme song for the nightlife in any major city in Japan. With a combination of sultriness in the vocals and the snap-and-bang in the arrangement, any listener can potentially be enticed to plan a vacation for the metropolises of the nation (although unfortunately not now).
It was quite the re-introduction to Kirinji since I had known them mostly for their soulful ballads back in the early 2000s. How was I to know that the band made a change into catchy/spacey pop tunes some years back? And then I get hit with "Jikan ga nai"（時間がない）with its video that has gone worldwide with that middle-aged manager and his disco moves. I didn't stand a chance. Even now, as I write this, my shoulders instinctively started shimmying to the groove. I won't ever hit a dance floor but I can imagine that I'm on one thanks to this one.
Of course, I'm going to end this list with the first singer that I mentioned off the top. There's something so adorably 80s AOR about "Morning Glory" and since I'm a big AOR fan, it's downright Pavlovian how I react whenever I hear this track from "Miss M". Thankfully, I tend to get happy instead of salivating all over the CD. Maybe Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）thought it was a little too AOR for his tastes, but I'm perfectly happy with his future wife's original (although Tats' version on "For You" is also fine).
Well, that is my third list of happy songs. I hope that at least some of them made you happy in these uncertain times. Already there are tunes that are stabbing me in the head demanding why I haven't included them so I'm pretty sure that there will be a fourth list sometime down the line without having to wait another five years. For commenters and collaborators, let me know what your happy song or songs are.
I had always been anticipating any new music from the duo Blue Peppers（ブルー・ペパーズ）, that smooth J-AOR duo bringing together the new and the old that I discovered about a couple of years ago. It didn't take much prodding for me to get their first full album "Retroactive".
Happily, I have also discovered that Naoki Fukuda（福田直樹）and Kaoru Inoue（井上薫）released a new single last December in digital download format and then later in January this year as a regular CD. "Believe In Love" keeps the sweet Blue Peppers sound with Fukuda singing away to an arrangement which had me thinking partially of Al Jarreau's"Breakin' Away". There's something so relaxing and optimistic about this one, and the cover of the two walking along the beach is perfect.
One YouTube commenter wondered whether Yutaka Yokokura（横倉豊）inspired this second song from the single, "Marine Snow no Toshi" (Marine Snow City) due to that koto in there, although since the instrument isn't listed on the page for the single on their website (just scroll down a bit), it's probably some keyboard magic by Inoue. Additional magic is provided by having Shiori Sasaki（佐々木詩織）return to share the vocals with Fukuda. It was Blue Peppers and Sasaki who introduced that first song to me back in 2018, "Roku-gatsu no Yume"（6月の夢）, and it's been love ever since. Nothing like these two numbers to bring in some mood of spring.
Apparently, the single is only in limited supply in stores, so I will probably wait a while until a full album comes out. Hopefully, that won't be long but I will keep my yen ready.
Once again, we're on the cusp of a weekend, so to finish off my articles for Friday, perhaps I can do so with something AOR or City Pop.
Happy that I can include another song by light and mellow Blue Peppers（ブルー・ペパーズ）from their 2017 album"Retroactive". This is "Futari no Mirai" (A Future for Us) with the lovely voice of Shiori Sasaki（佐々木詩織）gracing the notes once again.
Written and composed by Blue Pepper Kaoru Inoue（井上薫）, along with the 21st-century J-AOR feeling, I also think that there is a nice overlay of sunny Shibuya-kei, just judging from the arrangement. I get this impression that Inoue may have been going for some sort of tune which would have been ideal as a theme song for some breezy rom-com from the 1960s. Certainly Inoue's lyrics of one-half of a relationship reassuring the other that no matter the problem, they can overcome it together kinda hint at something along the lines of a Redford/Fonda flick. In any case, it's just the jazzy tonic to get us into the weekend...without the hangover.
Well, the allure of free points for a limited time on CD Japan was too much to reject. I ended up getting another 4 albums to add to the collection, and one of them was a recent discovery. About a month ago, I discovered a duo called Blue Peppers（ブルー・ペパーズ）which has been creating this groovy sound of AOR and fusion for a few years. The song that I fell for was "Roku-gatsu no Yume"（6月の夢）with Shiori Sasaki（佐々木詩織）as the guest vocalist, and it was this cool happy-go-lucky number that could have described a sunny Sunday afternoon outing.
I heard a few more of their songs on YouTube and checked out their website. From that point, I decided that I would invest in their latest release which is their first full album"Retroactive" from November 2017.
Not certain whether Naoki Fukuda（福田直木）and Kaoru Inoue（井上薫）had thought about it this way, but I think the title is pretty darn clever because when I read it, I think of "retro" and "active". Having listened to the album once and hearing the individual tracks on YouTube again, there is that modern groove to be sure but there is also that love letter to the sounds of yesterday, notably the music that Fukuda and Inoue have loved listening to, ranging from the discography of Steely Dan to Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）. Retro is indeed active.
One of the tracks is "Zutto"（ずっと...Always）that actually came out earlier in 2017, and once again, the lovely vocals of Shiori Sasaki come to the fore. The music harkens back to the 1990s when the aforementioned Furuuchi first made her presence known. It is some of that J-Soul that was percolating through the late 90s into the early 2000s that "Zutto" reminds me of. Inoue wrote and composed this track.
"Akikaze no Regret"（秋風のリグレット...Autumn Wind Regret）, which was the coupling song for "Zutto", takes my mind back even further since it reminds me of an old late 70s/early 80s AOR number from one of my compilations from the genre, perhaps Jackson Browne. Fukuda composed and sang this piece of nostalgia while Masato Inami（伊波真人）wrote the lyrics about a fellow who has lost a love but would like another chance.
Former AKB48 member Michiru Hoshino（星野みちる）who has been carving out her own solo career for the past few years comes in as a guest vocalist for "Cobalt Blue"（コバルトブルー）which seems to be a new song. Written and composed by Blue Peppers, it has that similar happy-go-lucky vibe as "Roku-gatsu no Yume".
And for the final track, here is a shortened version of "Ase wa Amai Kuchizuke"（汗は甘い口づけ...Sweat is a Sweet Kiss）which nearly demands to be heard with a glass of sangria. Some very sunny bossa nova infused into this track, and I think Blue Peppers even gave a tiny shoutout to Antonio Carlos Jobim's"Brazil".
I will leave it at that for now since you can also listen to the samples of all of the tracks from "Retroactive" below and form your own opinions. As for me, another happy acquisition from the current crop of urban contemporary music from Japan.
I think for a lot of folks here, it's already past the point where they've had enough of the winter. It's bad enough that two out of the three groundhogs on the 2nd said that there would be 6 more weeks of this season, but Toronto has gotten another few centimetres of snow during the morning rush which caused a lot of traffic accidents on the roads. And in Japan's Fukui Prefecture, there are reportedly 1000 vehicles just plain stuck on one long stretch of road due to the heavy snow. Spring is probably desperately desired at this point.
Well, I can't really help out in the weather department. However, perhaps for those who come to the blog like barflies to the neighbourhood pub, I can perhaps serve up a bit of lovely sunshine tonight. I found out about these guys named Blue Peppers（ブルー・ペパーズ）last night on YouTube. The two members, Naoki Fukuda（福田直木）and Kaoru Inoue（井上薫）from Keio University in Tokyo have created this music which spans AOR, Latin, jazz and fusion...genres that I do love. Plus when I read on their website that Fukuda digs folks like Steely Dan, Jay Graydon, Gino Vannelli (yeah, Canada!), Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）and Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）while Inoue likes Kirinji（キリンジ）, Maaya Sakamoto（坂本真綾）, and Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）, among others, Blue Peppers instantly had my attention and affinity.
The song that I discovered came from their first release in October 2015, "Blue Peppers EP". It turned out to be their first track "Roku-gatsu no Yume" (Dreams of June) with vocalist Shiori Sasaki（佐々木詩織）piping in here as well as providing the lyrics to Blue Peppers' melody. As I said, the song is breezy and summery, and it would be just the number to back up a picnic in a park or some brunch with friends. It's just the tonic for these wintry climes.
"Roku-gatsu no Yume" has also made it onto their first full album, "Retroactive"which was released in November 2017.
