Takeshi Kaga -- Morning Moon

 

Indeed, as one commenter noted for the above video of "Ryori no Tetsujin"（料理の鉄人...The Iron Chefs）, without the gloriously hammy Takeshi Kaga（鹿賀丈史）as the Chairman in the Kitchen Stadium, the show wouldn't have lasted as long as it did. His catchphrase of "If memory serves me correctly...", his handling of food as if they were all called Yorick, and the flair and flamboyance that he showed every week compensated for the seriousness and rush among the chefs trying to get a masterful dinner ready within one hour.

(Sigh...😔) Yes, I know. I start off every Takeshi Kaga article on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with a reference to his 1990s stint on "Ryori no Tetsujin" but I just can't help it. For better or worse, his status in pop culture on both sides of the Pacific Ocean has been sealed permanently as the Chairman...kinda like William Shatner and Captain James T. Kirk.

In any case, his musical status on YouTube seems to be sealed with that 1981 City Pop album "After Dark". I've already mentioned a couple of tracks from this Akira Inoue（井上鑑）-arranged release including "Act 1", and another one from it is "Morning Moon", which isn't to be mistaken for the Chage & Aska hit that wouldn't come out until the middle of the 1980s. Kaga's "Morning Moon" isn't even given the katakana treatment; it's just the romaji as the title.

As Inoue did for Akira Terao's（寺尾聰）"Reflections", he has also provided some buttery City Pop/AOR layers for the tracks on this album including "Morning Moon" which also possesses some of that tropical punch rhythm. Despite the title, the song seems to reflect various periods through the day and night especially in the middle when it seems as if Chairman Kaga is embracing his inner Tatsuhiko Yamamoto（山本達彦）crooning some sophisticated dinner music. Lyricist Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）even throws out some Campari soda which was part of the title for one of Terao's tracks on "Reflections". Kiyoshi Hattori（服部清）is behind the music here.

Takeshi Kaga -- Act 1

Yes, Chairman Kaga of "The Iron Chefs": The Emcee of Ever-Eating, The Fop of Flamboyance and The Noble of Noshing. One could not have asked for a better over-the-top host of what first struck me as the incredibly crazy concept of two chefs going at it against each other in a Kitchen Stadium.

And yet, over a decade previously, actor/singer Takeshi Kaga（鹿賀丈史）couldn't have been more shibui as he tackled City Pop in his 1981 album "After Dark". I already spoke on one track, "Harbor Light"（ハーバーライト）, last year, but here is another one from the album, "Act 1" which sounds like it takes place a few hours earlier from the setting of "Harbor Light". For that particular track, I fantasized that Kaga and fellow shibui City Pop singer Akira Terao（寺尾聰）were having a drink together at the Polestar as pictured on the cover of the album, but with "Act 1", Kaga had yet to meet up with his sunglasses-wearing buddy and was just exploring the streets of the city as the sun was starting to dip under the horizon via the peppier Latin-infused rhythms.

Arranger Akira Inoue（井上鑑）who took care of all of the tracks has kept that steady early 1980s City Pop beat intact although the songwriters for "Act 1" are completely for the ones behind "Harbor Light". This time, it's lyricist Keisuke Yamakawa（山川啓介）and composer Shinji Moriyama（森山進治）. A bit of an aside, but according to J-Wiki, there is a lyricist Shinji Moriyama with the same kanji but his career began in 1986, so it would be quite the coincidence for there to be two Shinji Moriyamas in the music industry, each taking care of words and music separately.

The last thing is that despite my scene-building of Kaga's night cruising downtown and then meeting up with Terao at the Polestar, "Act 1" is actually the penultimate track on Side B while "Harbor Light" starts that side off, according to the track list shown at Hip Tank Records. Then again, why does a story have to go along linear time?

Takeshi Kaga -- Harbor Light（ハーバーライト）

Looks like tonight's gonna be Takeshi Kaga（鹿賀丈史）night. I've already written on the theme song for his 1987 cop show "Jungle"（ジャングル）earlier, and now I've got something that he himself had recorded some years prior. The thing is that he's already got an entry on the blog and it happens to be a catchy synthpop march for the "Ponkikies" kid's show.

Ah, this one here from his 1981 album "After Dark" is a whole lot more adult and shibui. "Harbor Light" seems to be Kaga's emulation of the style of Akira Terao（寺尾聡）and his "Reflections" blockbuster which had also come out in the same year and ended up capturing the year as the No. 1 album. Incidentally, Terao was also acting in a hit cop show at the time.

In fact, City Pop listeners can be forgiven if they had first assumed that this was a Terao song. The laconic delivery is there as well as the wailing electric guitar and the downtown piano. Heck, even Hip Tank Records' description of the aptly titled "After Dark" described "Harbor Light" as being very Terao-esque. I couldn't find out who actually wrote and composed the tune although it was Akira Inoue（井上鑑）behind the arrangement, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was actually Terao helping out in the composition. The whole song has the hallmarks of Kaga and Terao sharing drinks at a local watering hole whether it be at Yokohama's Bar Polestar as shown on the album cover or some swanky joint on the top of a West Shinjuku hotel.

Given this tidbit from "After Dark", I'll have to see whether the album is available anywhere. Perhaps "Reflections" fans may also be interested in tracking this one down.

August 15 2020: The JASRAC database shed some light on the songwriters. The lyricist was Goro Matsui（松井五郎）and the composer was Akira Mitake（見岳章）.

Takeshi Kaga -- Ja-nay （じゃない）

I was well into that 3-year period in Toronto between the JET Programme and my really long stay in Japan. A couple of friends were kind enough to send me video tapes of Japanese TV during that time, and one of them actually sent me a tape filled with this new Fuji-TV variety show (debuted in 1993) which knocked the socks off me. It was this crazy program which took the concept of the cooking show and elevated it into gladiator spectacle. And it was hosted by this foppish force-of-nature who presided over the epic proceedings like a benevolent cuisine-obsessed king. Plus, I was stunned to hear most of the background music consisted of the larger-than-life soundtrack from "Backdraft", a score that I liked so much that I bought the CD (still wonder how much Fuji-TV had to pay for the rights to feature that music).

For the first little while, I was fairly obsessed with the original "Ryori no Tetsujin"（料理の鉄人...Iron Chef） which I continued to watch even into my time in Japan since it was on late night on Fridays. But then the inevitable familiarity-breeds-contempt curse of the formula set in and I gradually weaned myself from the show, even not watching the entirety of the final episode in 1999.

Takeshi Kaga（鹿賀丈史）played the grand chairman of the cooking academy and he had the perfect voice and the saturnine looks to pull the whole hammy thing off. He's been an actor since he was a kid (born in 1950) but he also took some time to record a few singles.

Now, it's time for a personal tangent. In my early years of my life in Chiba Prefecture, there was "Ryori no Tetsujin" on Fridays for me to enjoy, and if I'd had a regular job in the Japanese corporate world, I would also have been heralding the start of my weekend. However, I was a NOVA English teacher which meant that regular Saturday/Sunday weekends were as preciously coveted as water in a desert. In that time, my "weekends" consisted of Mondays and Tuesdays, and so my mornings off then and even during the mornings before my afternoon/evening shifts consisted of me leisurely having breakfast and watching another Fuji-TV show, the kiddy program "Ponkikies"（ポンキッキーズ）.

So, why watch a show like that instead of the morning wide programs featuring adult news on the other channels, you may ask? Well, part of it was that "Ponkikies" had some pretty darn catchy tunes (which is why I have the Ponkikies category in the Labels). And one of them was done by Chairman Kaga himself.

With kids' tunes, I think they have to be earworms by nature and although it took me a long while to find out that it was Kaga who sang this one, "Ja-nay", this song hooked me hook, line and sinker right from the get-go. Launching with a rapid-fire torrent of 「じゃない、じゃない、じゃない」like a clickety-clack train, Kaga loopily goes into some nutty lyrics that were probably chosen more for their onomatopoeic pleasure than for any particular story although my theory is that they revolve around some over-caffeinated kid and his will to live life large and not listen to the grown-ups. Plus, "Ja-nay" has this really simple but contagious melody that brings to mind a combination of something country-western and The Beatles' "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" with the same sense of whimsy.

Released in August 1996, I have to admit that "Ja-nay" was one of the tunes that I looked forward to on "Ponkikies", and someone on the production staff had the brain wave to even make it into a quick calisthenics regimen. It could get not only the kids but even some of the adults moving about (didn't quite get me to stand up and move...was too busy flexing my arm to eat my breakfast danish).

"Ja-nay" was written by veteran lyricist Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composed by Makoto Mitsui（三井誠）who had come up with an evergreen J-Xmas tune a couple of years earlier. The song peaked at No. 38.