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.
Waking up early on a Tuesday as we always do now to watch "Uta Con"（うたコン）, we got to see singer-songwriter and actor Kazufumi Miyazawa（宮沢和史）of THE BOOM show up to do a collaboration with Princess Princess singer and guitarist Kaori Kishitani（岸谷香）. They performed THE BOOM's 2nd single"Hoshi no Love Letter" (Love Letter of the Stars) which was released all the way back in September 1989.
Written and composed by Miyazawa, "Hoshi no Love Letter" has this relaxing beat which either makes the song sound like either a peppy reggae song or a mellower ska tune, but for now I'm gonna categorize it as a pop/rock number. The story behind the song is of a man who presumably wrote a love letter for that lady of his dreams who got away from him. Not wanting to let this opportunity go, he vows to find her and properly let her know his feelings.
Come to think of it, "Hoshi no Love Letter" does remind me of The Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" from 1968 and that has been categorized as pop and ska, so I guess I'll throw in the ska label after all. Anyways, just so that despite THE BOOM's sunny music and ways, we're reminded that Miyazawa and crew aren't from Okinawa, and that is shown in the lyrics in "Hoshi no Love Letter" which also include Asahi Douri（朝日通り...Asahi Avenue）, a street located in the vocalist's hometown of Kofu City in landlocked Yamanashi Prefecture, not too far away from Tokyo.
The original single peaked at No. 56 on Oricon. A 25th anniversary edition of "Hoshi no Love Letter" was released in May 2014. That one scored a No. 48 ranking and it turned out to be THE BOOM's 35th and final single. THE BOOM was one of the earlier acts that we brought onto KKP last decade but this particular single even prefaces the more famous "Kaze ni Naritai"（風になりたい）by several years.
In terms of commuting within the Greater Tokyo Area, I got to know Japan Railways as much as I did the Tokyo subways. Often, I took the looping green Yamanote Line and since I had to regularly hightail it out all the way to Chiba City at one point in my teaching career, I got to take (and sleep on) the yellow Sobu Line. However, due to priorities in commuting, I never took the orange Chuo Line all that much although it had a truly long range between Tokyo Station and the wilds of Mt. Takao which is officially within the Tokyo city limits.
Man, it has been a long time since I wrote about the band THE BOOM. I did write about their most famous hit "Kaze ni Naritai"（風になりたい）back in late 2012, so it's been around 5.5 years.
But this song here is another whose melody is quite familiar to me. "Chuo Sen" was THE BOOM's 19th single from June 1996 although it had actually been the coupling song to the band's 5th single, "Sakadachi sureba Kotae ga Wakaru"（逆立ちすれば答えがわかる...You'll Know The Answer Once You Stand On Your Head）which came out in July 1990. Written and composed by vocalist Kazufumi Miyazawa（宮沢和史）, it strikes me as being a pretty cool and languid ballad about someone reminiscing of a past love while waxing romantic about the titular JR line. Mind you, considering how crowded the Chuo Line could get, Miyazawa must have had some imagination. The single peaked at No. 84 on Oricon. "Chuo Sen" was also a track on THE BOOM's 3rd album"JAPANESKA" from September 1990 which broke the Top 10 by landing at No. 4.
Also, one would be forgiven if he/she thought that "Chuo Sen" would be a shoo-in as a campaign song for the actual line. But then again, why would JR need to create a commercial for a commuter line that is guaranteed tons of passengers every day? In any case, the song was used instead for the contracting firm, Shimizu Corporation, and the Matsumoto Yamaga Football Club in the J-League as a cheer song by its fans.
A decade later in 2006, Akiko Yano & Kazumasa Oda（矢野顕子・小田和正）provided a wonderful duet for their cover of "Chuo Sen" in Yano's 26th album"Hajimete no Yano Akiko"（はじめてのやのあきこ...The First Akiko Yano）. This version really brings relaxation, and it doesn't so much evoke images of train riding than it does bring images of sitting beside a placid pond. The album reached as high as No. 42.
Now I've found out that Yano had made an earlier cover of the ballad in her 13th album"Super Folk Song" from June 1992 which peaked at No. 10. The arrangement seems to be the same for both Yano takes.
To finish off, Miyazawa and Yano also performed a duet that nikala can tell you about.
The Boom is one of those bands that I came to know during the early stages of my Japanese music adventures, but it took me a while to explore them in depth. With "Shima Uta", I initially perceived them as an Okinawan folk band. Then "Kaze ni Naritai" (profiled here) revealed that they could also give a convincing performance of Brazillian samba. Through the years, The Boom became less of a mystery to me as I familiarized myself with their diverse repertoire. Huge thanks to folks at Far Side Music for providing writeups on the band and leader Kazufumi Miyazawa's (宮沢和史)solo work. They are a great resource on all things related to Japanese music to English-speaking fans.
By the mid-90's, The Boom have already traveled far and wide for musical inspiration. They started off as a rock and ska band, then moved on to Okinawan music, explored a bit of dance music and Indonesian folk on the side, and eventually ended up in the South American realm with samba, bossa nova, and reggae. Tropicalism -0° is their most ambitious project to date which essentially culminates their South American adventures while glancing back at their rock and Okinawan music past. By that point, The Boom was no longer a four-member group, but expanded to over 20 regular musicians -- and it's the supporting members who did most of the work. Miyazawa became concerned that the album resembled a solo effort too much and that the other three members of The Boom just became a back-up band for the supporting musicians. As a result, he launched his solo career where he could freely experiment with all these Latin genres, while The Boom would take a back-to-basics approach in their subsequent releases.
After the languid "Justin", the album launches in the tropical madness that is "Tropicalism" (first song of this post). Three distinct national genres interact with each other here: Okinawan music, Jamaican reggae and Brazillian samba, engaging in a common discussion about Third World's concerns over the disasters caused by industrial nations all over the world. Miyazawa sings the Okinawan parts in Uchinaguchi language, while DJ Catapyla provides English lines for the reggae bits. It's a stirring number which prepares the listeners for what's to come.
"Timbal Yele" is another multilingual track on the album, except this time it's Portuguese mixed with Japanese. It's got lovely percussion textures mixed with bright strings. The song is fun and danceable, but still carries over some urgency from "Tropicalism".
The reggae track "Call my name" continues with the tropical liveliness of the previous track, but this time transports you to Jamaican streets where you can hang out and sing together with the locals. The lyrics invite listeners to build bonds across national borders, similar to what the whole album strives to achieve on the musical level with its cross-cultural mishmash of genres.
With "Machi wa Itsumo Manseki" (街はいつも満席) and "Suna no Misaki -Ponta de Areia-" (砂の岬 Ponta de Areia), we are given an opportunity to relax under those palm trees and enjoy the calming breeze. The former is a cooling bossa nova number with a simple yet stylish melody, whereas "Ponta de Areia" is an Okinawan-style cover of Milton Nascimento's original from 1980. Both renditions are very soothing yet special in their own unique ways. I just love the part in The Boom's version where the saxophone sneaks in and disorients me for a moment. It's as if I woke up from a dream about Okinawa at a lounge bar. But then Yoriko Ganeko (我如古より子) starts singing, and my dream resumes.
The album mix of "Tegami" (手紙) differs from the single version above in arrangement, since it sounds more "tropical", for the lack of a better word, but that PV (sorry, taken down) is too bizarre to resist. It's more of a poetry reading set to a regular rhythm than an actual song, held together by the clamorous refrains in between. It's not my favorite track on the album, but somehow I find it hypnotically addicting. The PV must have something to do with it.
The songs on the second half of the album are, to some extent, stylistic variations of material from the first half. I'm just going to wrap things up with the tango number "Kuusou no Senjou" (空想の戦場). It's notable for being one of the few tracks not composed by Miyazawa. The band's guitarist Takashi Kobayashi (小林孝至) took care of the melody here while Miyazawa provided the lyrics. Gotta love those circular percussion rhythms, as well as Ryota Komatsu's (小松亮太)bandoneon performance. Makes me want to travel to Argentina.
In terms of sales, the album peaked at No. 6 on weekly Oricon charts. The Boom was not the first artist to inject Latin and Okinawan flavors into Japanese popular music, but they definitely helped the mass audience appreciate those genres in their purer form. As for blending music from different parts of the world: - no problem! Definitely one of the more interesting Japanese albums I've come across.
For many years, I'd thought that THE BOOM had originated in Okinawa, but actually the four founding members are actually from the landlocked prefecture of Yamanashi on the main island of Honshu. But they were inspired by the music of Okinawa, and they created their band in 1986 to perform initially as buskers on hokoten...the pedestrian paradises....streets that were closed off from vehicular traffic during the weekends so that people could enjoy a nice stroll.
However, THE BOOM also explored Brazilian music in the middle of the 1990s, and my favourite song by them is "Kaze ni Naritai"(I Want to Become the Wind). It's just a glorious percussion-happy Japanese samba that leader and vocal Kazufumi Miyazawa（宮沢和史） had always wanted to write. Originally on the band's 6th album, "Kyokuto Samba"（極東サンバ...Far East Samba) (1994), it was released as a single in March 1995. It took four months, but the song finally broke into the Oricon rankings and peaked at No. 19.
The music video for "Kaze ni Naritai" was filmed on the Ginza.....the biggest hokoten in Tokyo which, weather permitting, is open on Sundays. It looks like the weather was permitted to be just as happy as the band.
Good ol' Ginza
Yamano Music is just on the right across the street.
