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.
Marie-Sophie Mejan via Wikimedia Commons Harajuku in the old days
Late last night, I received an email from my friend of some 30 years' standing that he and his wife were able to make it to Japan for their vacation. Having to go through an elongated immigration process at Haneda due to some malfunctioning fingerprint scanners wasn't great but at least, they got through it and they're now enjoying themselves in Tokyo. His wife decided to torture me by sending a photo of a sumptuous tonkatsu dinner they had up in the restaurant floors of electronics emporium Yodobashi Akiba.😱
Not sure whether my friends will be visiting Harajuku during their time there. As late as my last few years living in Japan in the late 2000s, I still saw a few remnants of folks twisting the day away by Yoyogi Park. However, I think the heyday for the Takenozoku（竹の子族）dancers was back in the 1980s when they would take over the space lining the park on Sunday afternoons.
Music wasn't one to let go of any opportunities in other aspects of the pop culture zeitgeist. In fact, Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）released his 9th single"Harajuku Kiss" back in May 1982 to capture the feeling of the Takenozoku back then. The melody and arrangement by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）respectively are familiar to me since I used to hear those horns over and over on repeats of "The Best 10" and other music shows or retrospectives. Tomo Miyashita（宮下智）was responsible for the lyrics.
"Harajuku Kiss" was a huge hit for Toshi-chan as it stayed at No. 1 for three weeks straight, and it would become the 23rd-ranked single for 1982. Its first placement onto an album was later in September when it became a track on "Best of Tahara Toshihiko"（ベストオブ田原俊彦）. It was also a No. 1 hit.
The above poster was something that I saw splattered all over the place in Tokyo and Osaka when I was on that graduation trip in the summer of 1981, the summer when I got into Japanese popular music in earnest. It was for the movie "Blue Jeans Memory"（ブルージンズメモリー）starring the male teen aidoru in the form of Masahiko "Matchy" Kondo（近藤真彦）, Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）and Yoshio Nomura（野村義男）. At the time, it was going up against "Superman II" in the theatres, but I have a feeling that Matchy, Toshi-chan and Yotchan actually won over the Man of Steel (don't cry, Clark...I saw the movie five times!). In any case, I kinda thought those three looked a little young to be cops.
Of course, the theme song for "Blue Jeans Memory" as performed by Kondo was a huge hit and in terms of the our humble blog, it was the first song connected to the Tanokin Trio（たのきんトリオ）that I wrote about and back in March 2012, I did give a description of what was up with that group name which I'll repeat here:
This was the Tanokin Trio（たのきんトリオ）, the name being derived from the first characters of the boys' last names: Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）, Yoshio Nomura（野村義男） and Masahiko Kondo（近藤雅彦）...the first character in Kondo's name can also be read as "Kin". All three of them came from the huge talent agency Johnny & Associates（ジャニーズ事務所）, who represent the current (not-so-)boy bands SMAP and Arashi. The Trio was never the official name since they didn't so much perform together musically but first appeared together in the high school drama "San-nen B-Gumi Kinpachi Sensei"(３年B組金八先生....Mr. Kinpachi of 3B）and then just stuck together in a few more projects before "Blue Jeans" came along. According to J-Wiki, the boys' image was meant to evoke memories of the previous generation of Johnny's boy idols: Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）, Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹） and Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）who were known collectively as the Shin Gosanke (新御三家...The New Big Three).
From a September 2019 feature on the Japanese news site "News Post Seven"（NEWSポストセブン）via the J-Wiki article on the Tanokin Trio, I've also found out that it was indeed the founder of Johnny's himself, Johnny Kitagawa, who had come up with the name for the boys back in 1980 (apparently it was based on the abbreviated form of the name of the kayo group Tonosama Kings or Tonokin), although at the time, the teen girl fashion magazine, "Seventeen", noted that there already had been a fair number of nicknames for them such as Warugaki Trio（悪ガキトリオ...The Bad Boy Trio）, Shin Shin Gosanke（新々御三家...The New New Big Three） and Kinpachi Trio（金八トリオ）. Apparently, the name Tanokin Trio didn't initially go all that well with the fans since many of them called it lame, and even the reporters were exclaiming "This gotta be a joke, right? Who thought up this one?". Even the mighty Johnny wouldn't fess up as the originator by simply saying "Yeah, I wonder who came up with the name...". He probably whistled suspiciously, too.
But obviously the name eventually stuck although Matchy, Toshi-chan and Yotchan for the most part didn't perform together and had their own music careers (with Yotchan helping form up the 80s band THE GOOD-BYE and coming up with his first solo single, "TOKYO", in 1993). However, there were their roles together in the aforementioned "San-nen B-Gumi Kinpachi Sensei", and then "Blue Jeans Memory" along with at least one big concert together as you can see above. There were also a handful of songs that the three recorded together.
Instead of putting up the usual videos of the three individual efforts that I've done for the previous Gosanke representatives, I will include one of those joint efforts by the Tanokin Trio. In fact, this is supposedly their first one together in the recording booth, the B-side to Tahara's 1980 debut single"Aishuu Date"（哀愁でいと）, "Kimi ni Okuru Kotoba ~ After School"(Words I Give to You).
Written by Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）and composed by Tomo Miyashita（宮下智）, it's the aidoru rock n' roll that I've often associated Matchy and Toshi-chan with since their early years, and it shares space with intervals of all of the guys spouting their cool phrases to wow the girls. To be honest, listening to it now, it sounds somewhat cringeworthy and I've got a feeling that if this were to be played at an retrospective interview with the now middle-aged Trio, they may beg it to be stopped. I also think that the title itself was a riff off of Kaientai's（海援隊）"Okuru Kotoba"（贈る言葉）, the theme song for "San-nen B-Gumi Kinpachi Sensei".
Wow! I guess that there must have been a thing among some aidoru back in the 1980s when it comes to that old-fashioned dance, the Charleston.
For those who may not have known about this century-old dance, you can take a look at the recreation of it above. I've seen it a number of times on cartoons, sitcoms and "The Lawrence Welk Hour" as a kid.
Not sure if there have been a lot of aidoru songs back then that gave their tribute to the Charleston, but I know at least two right now. There is Shojotai's（少女隊）"Motto Charleston"（もっとチャールストン）from 1986, and now I have found Toshihiko Tahara's（田原俊彦）"Charleston ni wa Mada Hayai" (Too Early for the Charleston) which was his February 1984 17th single.
As would be expected with any song containing the word "Charleston" within its title, the music by Tomo Miyashita（宮下智）and arrangement by Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）is jazzy, although I'm not sure whether the Big Band Swing nature had actually come into being when the Charleston was hot. But then again, the Wikipedia article for the dance points out that a slight variation based more on the Lindy Hop evolved to fit swing music.
Miyashita was also responsible for the lyrics where Toshi's protagonist is desperately courting a young lady for a date back in the day and would just love it for days for the opportunity to do the Charleston with her. Sorry to get a little picky with the performance above, but I'm not quite sure if Toshi is even attempting the Charleston and I don't think that the 50s-style teenyboppers behind him would fit the age of that particular dance. But then again, it's entertainment, isn't it?
In any case, "Charleston ni wa Mada Hayai" hit No. 2 on the Oricon singles chart and would later end up as the 31st-ranked single of the year. He even got to go onto the 1984 Kohaku Utagassen with this one for his 5th consecutive appearance. Apparently, the song was also used for a local commercial selling the Capri Sun drink, licensed under Glico.
For those who know their old-time jazz, you'll probably recognize that Miyashita adapted some of the melody from the Yiddish song "Bei Mir Bistu Shein" (1932) that was popularized into the jazz idiom and performed by acts such as The Andrew Sisters. I'd always thought that the title was "Goodbye, Mr. Shane!".
Interestingly enough, the last time I wrote about Toshi was way back in July 2016 and for that particular song, his debut single, it was also based on another song outside of Japan.
The following isn't a City Pop song by any means, but it sure does give that feeling of those champagne-and-caviar times of the Bubble Era.
Must give a caveat here before I go any further since the uploader piu mosso has slapped on an age-restricted label onto the video for some reason (no need to worry now since that video has been taken down), so most likely you may have to head to YouTube itself to view this. And that would be a pity since "Maittane Kon'ya" (Tonight's Tough, Ain't It?) is quite the stylish jazz piece for the Johnny's aidoru group Shonentai（少年隊）. Released as their 14th single in June 1989, it's got quite the "Guys n' Dolls" thing going for it as the protagonist of the piece, an urban and urbane swinger, may have met his match in a woman who leaves him internally gasping for air (externally, he's gotta maintain that urbanity).
It's not everyday that I hear some good ol' swing as applied to an aidoru group so "Maittane Kon'ya" is nice to hear, so I have to offer my compliments to lyricist/composer Tomo Miyashita（宮下智）. I've also noticed that there's a bit of "Mack the Knife" in the song, too. It hit No. 1 on Oricon (their 11th No. 1) and managed to become the 42nd-ranked single of 1989. Not only that, but Shonentai was able to appear on that year's Kohaku Utagassen to perform the song, their 4th of 8 straight appearances on the NHK New Year's Eve special. "Maittane Kon'ya" first appeared on an album via "Shonentai 35th Anniversary BEST" released in December 2020 which got as high as No. 4 on the Oricon weeklies.
Ahhhh....the 1980s...when aidoru songs can sound like tunes from the 1920s. Well, at least, this particular one. For the longest time, I thought "Hatto Shite! Good" had been sung by Masahiko Kondo（近藤真彦）but it was actually the other member of the Tanokin Trio collective, Toshihiko Tahara (田原俊彦...to be honest, I often couldn't tell the two apart, and I usually forgot who that third member was, Yoshio Nomura/野村義男).
Released in September 1980, this was Toshi-chan's 2nd single. I was kinda wondering what the first part of the title meant but after going through the lyrics about a young fellow suddenly running into the girl of his dreams, I realized that the "Hatto Shite" was somewhat onomatopoeic with Tahara going "BOING!" on seeing her. I thought it was cute and clever how that turn of phrase went in the lyrics: "Hatto shite, gutto kite, patto mezameru, koi dakara"（ハッとして、グッときて、パッと目覚める、恋だから...I go BOING, then I go GULP, and my eyes go SNAP, cause it's love）. That phrase could pretty much describe that moment that every boy that had ever lived on the planet Earth experienced when l'amour struck for the first time.
Written and composed by a classical pianist by the name of Yumiko Morioka（盛岡夕美子）under her pen name of Tomo Miyashita（宮下智）, it was also interesting how she made the song into a bit of an old jazz ditty without the usual electric guitars and the disco strings of the time. There was an old issue of Myojo that I have somewhere in my apartment which had a photo of Toshi-chan prancing about in a 1920s outfit complete with porkpie hat just outside of the Akasaka Detached Palace in Tokyo that had me thinking that the kid could have lived a previous life as a dandy from that decade. And his theme song was of course "Hatto Shite! Good".
The song hit the top spot for 2 weeks, Tahara's very first No. 1, and became the No. 22 song for 1980. Its success would continue on into 1981 as it ended up the 93rd-ranked song for that year. It became a million-seller and won him a Best Newcomer Prize at the Japan Record Awards in 1980. So, of course, the Kohaku Utagassen came knocking as well.
Another interesting side benefit was that Japanese television viewers got a partial re-enactment of the first few lines of "Hatto Shite! Good" via a Glico chocolate commercial starring Tahara and up-and-coming aidoru Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）. As the lyrics described, Toshi-chan is riding his bike up to some highland telephone booth when his eyes perk up at the cute and lovely young lady on the phone. With today's technology, I couldn't see that happening now, so it's even more quaint seeing the ad, and especially since Seiko-chan has that famed Seiko-chan cut.
I have literally not heard this one in nearly 32 years! I was scouring my memories of 1981 to see what else I could dredge up in terms of old Japanese pop music to put onto the blog when the last several bars of "Kimi ni Kettei!" (You Are The One) by Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）suddenly popped into my head.
Tahara was one-third of The Tanokin Trio, the media and/or fan-created name for the three popular male aidoru consisting of him, Masahiko Kondo（近藤真彦） (Matchy) and Yoshio Nomura（野村義男） (Yocchan). Tahara's pet name was Toshi-chan. "Kimi ni Kettei!" was his 5th single, released on July 1 1981, just a few days before my fateful arrival in Japan. During my month there, the Trio's popularity was at a fever pitch as their movie "Blue Jeans Memory" and the titular theme song by Matchy was blazing up the charts. But Toshi-chan was not to be outdone; I remember catching him on the music shows there hoofing it on the stage while singing this particular song, and later on back in Canada when I was watching video tapes of those same programs.
Not knowing how Japanese teens acted at the time, watching Toshi-chan and his comrades dancing and prancing in those eye-searingly bright colours, and then seeing their female fans grabbing their faces and screaming in near-orgasmic delight, I just kinda wondered if young Japanese were only just emulating the 50s only in Harajuku.
"Kimi ni Kettei!" was written and composed by a woman named Tomo Miyashita （宮下智). It peaked at No. 2 and was the 39th-ranked single of 1981.
