Yudai Suzuki -- Tokyo Mono（東京者）

 

Recently through videos, news footage and talks with friends, I've noticed that since the last time I was in Tokyo in 2017, the megalopolis has been undergoing changes in certain neighbourhoods. Shibuya has gained at least a couple of more skyscrapers so that I'm worried that it may have cost the area some sky. Toranomon seems to be getting a massive commercial complex and the same may indeed be true for the area surrounding Tokyo Station which has already gotten its fair share of buildings going up like bamboo trees. If and when I get back to the Japanese capital, I may need a new map to find my way around.😕

Still, for the better part of two decades, I considered myself someone of the Tokyo area if not from the city proper since I was actually living in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture. Over the past decade and change being back here in Toronto teaching, translating, and yes, blogging, thanks to YouTube and TV Japan, I've still been seeing my old stomping grounds. Indeed, I still miss walking through the many different parts of Tokyo.

Listening to Yudai Suzuki's（鈴木雄大）"Tokyo Mono" (Someone of Tokyo) which is the final track and the title track for his February 1990 album, I've realized that this could be an ideal theme for my feelings of wistfulness regarding one of the largest cities in the world. Arranged by Kazuo Otani（椎名和夫）, written by Taizo Jinnouchi（ 陣内大蔵）and composed by Suzuki, it's a slow and introspective modern urban waltz. Though I couldn't find the lyrics for "Tokyo Mono", what I could glean is that Suzuki is possibly singing that no matter how much a beloved partner wants change, the protagonist can only change so much and that they can only be who they are. Maybe it's part of the title, but I have to admit that I'm straddling the line on whether "Tokyo Mono" is either a pop ballad or a City Pop ballad but that's why I can throw two genres into its Labels.

I know that Suzuki didn't come up with the song thinking about what lay in store for Tokyo in the following thirty years. However, I think that despite all the changes that have come and will come, Tokyo will remain Tokyo at least for the next little while. For me, I hope that means Tower Records and my favourite neighbourhood tonkatsu restaurant under my old subway station will still be there when I visit.

Taizo Jinnouchi -- Dadaism

Up to this point, the only song by singer-songwriter Taizo Jinnouchi（陣内大蔵）that I'd ever known was a reggae-inflected Xmas number, although I also recollect seeing "Eye-Ai" feature him prominently in one of its issues. The photo above is from that article.

However, if any of his other songs are as catchy as his "Dadaism" then I am all in. Coming from his debut album "Moratorium" from April 1988, I really like the keyboard work, the percussion and how the song just struts its way from beginning to end. Moreover, Jinnouchi has that unique voice with a certain breathless soft rasp.

Jinnouchi was born in Yamaguchi Prefecture, and as a child, he took part in the church choir and studied the violin and piano. He's also been a good friend with Sing Like Talking's Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）.

Mariko Nagai -- YOU AND I

Ah...yes. "Yawara!" That fashionable judo girl. The anime series lasted longer than the time I was in Gunma Prefecture on the JET Programme so I missed out on the final season. Not that I could be a regular viewer of the show on Monday nights anyways since I was regularly asked to dinner to have some English conversation with an elderly couple then.

Well, watching that loopy-and-flashy opening credits sequence that regularly launched a "Yawara!" episode, it looks like the final season finally saw the show's raison d'etre, namely young Yawara Inokuma achieving her mission to make it to the 1992 Barcelona Games for a medal in judo, come to fruition. I never saw that final season but I hope that she did get that Gold.

Also, I didn't know that perky Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）had one more go-round with the opening theme song. My very first Nagai article was "Miracle Girl" which served as the opening theme for Season 1, and so Nagai performed the theme for Season 3, "YOU AND I"...not to be confused with Keizo Nakanishi's（中西圭三）soul tune with the same title that came out a year later.

(karaoke version)

Nope, Nagai's "YOU AND I" was written and composed by singer-songwriter Taizo Jinnouchi（陣内大蔵）as her 16th single in April 1992. It is a song that I had heard before although I didn't know about its connection with "Yawara!" and it plays to her usual strengths of happy and inspiring. The song broke into the Oricon Top 10 getting as high as No. 7. I wouldn't have asked for a better song to finish the series on.