Kyoko Koizumi -- Micro Wave（マイクロWAVE）

 

Come to think of it, that picture of Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）above does remind me of 90s dance-pop singer Cathy Dennis.

And speaking of Dennis, I remember that Kyon-Kyon had once released a May 1989 album titled "KOIZUMI IN THE HOUSE" which involved her delving into House and Acid House music. In fact, the last article that I did regarding the former 80s aidoru singer was for her "Fade Out" which is also included in the album. Well, this time, it's all about its track mate on the album "Micro Wave" which brings out the dance beats alongside the story of getting a bento nuked at the convenience store. I'd gotten that done so many times at my local 7-11, Lawson's and am/pm for my karaage bento and hanbaagu bento that the cashiers didn't even bother asking me anymore after a while. 

Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）handled lyrics, melody and arrangement for "Micro Wave", quite the trippy little song. I didn't think that I would ever hear something from a dance DJ booth about a microwave oven warming something up for dinner but as both commenter Brian Mitchell and I agree upon, songwriters could and did write about anything and everything.

Hikari Ishida -- Emerald no Suna（エメラルドの砂）

 

Hikari Ishida（石田ひかり）isn't someone that I would immediately associate with this music blog. During the 1990s, I usually saw her as an actress on TV dramas and commercials such as the one above. 

The one drama that I remember Ishida from is Fuji-TV's "Asunaro Hakusho"（あすなろ白書...Asunaro White Paper） from 1993 which was one of the network's most popular shows and was also a hit among some of our club members at the Japanese-Canadian Students' Association when we had our JTV programme of showing such dramas for members who wanted to pick up some Japanese.

But apparently, she did have her time as a late 1980s aidoru. Her first single was "Emerald no Suna" (Emerald Sand) from May 1987 which portrays a group of friends at a beachside cottage among whom one young lady is pining for one of her buddies. Does she make a move or not? Sounds ideal as a plot line for one of those Fuji-TV dramas.

Written by Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）, composed by Yuuho Iwasato（岩里祐穂）and arranged by Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）, "Emerald no Suna" does have that aidoru vibe but I gather that Sagisu's magic also painted on a layer of some sophisticated groove. Ishida's cute and chirpy vocals were OK but I can hear why she focused more on her acting career after 1990.

Miho Nakayama -- Mellow

 

It was a bit odd seeing the latest "Uta Con"（うたコン）on a Sunday morning but the regularly scheduled broadcast on Tuesday had been abruptly cancelled due to a news bulletin. Still, it was good to see the expanded version as the hosts and guests celebrated NHK's century of existence. Plus, there was some poignancy in that enka singer Kiyoshi Hikawa（氷川きよし）was back on the program for the first time in a few years after taking a hiatus and fellow enka singer Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）also returned after several months away to battle ovarian cancer.

And another big thing was that there was finally a tribute to the late Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）that we had been hoping for but didn't get during last year's Kohaku Utagassen. There was plenty of old footage of Miporin singing on previous NHK music programs which culminated in Hikawa and guest Hiroko Moriguchi（森口博子）performing a couple of her songs on stage.

My contribution to the Nakayama file this time around deals with an album of hers that I saw on sale via the "Eye-Ai" mail order service back in the early 1990s. It featured the singer-songwriter smiling mischievously somewhere in the desert while most of her back is turned toward the camera. Then there was the elegant script of "Mellow", and so the combination was enough for me to part with a money order to get the album.

"Mellow" wasn't only Miporin's 14th album from June 1992, but the title track had also been released as her 24th single earlier in April. To be honest, when compared to the rest of her vast discography, "Mellow" won't be one of my very favourite songs by her but it does stand out as interesting at least for that hard rock guitar and bashing percussion intro before the measured stomp of a rhythm comes in with Nakayama's delicate vocals. Although Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）was responsible for the melody and arrangement, I think I've heard that same guitar riff in the intro from some other rock song outside of Japan. Nakayama took care of the lyrics under her pen name of Issaku（一咲）. Both the single and the album peaked at No. 3 on Oricon.

AKB48 -- Namida Surprise!（涙サプライズ! ）

Good Free Photos

 

I've got a relative and a friend having birthdays coming up in the next several days, and it just so happens that a few weeks ago on "Uta Con"（うたコン）that AKB48 used this song to celebrate enka singer Yoshimi Tendo's（天童よしみ）birthday.

Yup, AKB48 has sung on many themes and it looks like birthdays are no exception. "Namida Surprise!" (Tearful Surprise!) was the group's June 24th 2009 maxi-single as written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）. Akimoto was really straight with the lyrics as they completely describe a young girl's classmates giving her one heck of a surprise by holding a birthday party for her in the school gym.

According to the J-Wiki article on the song, "Namida Surprise!" first went on sale on the same day that Rie Kitahara（北原里英）, who had been part of the group at the time, was celebrating her 18th birthday. Incidentally, June 24th is also a birthday for the Lionel Messi and Japanese singer LiSA. It ended up hitting No. 2 on Oricon and finished the year as the 39th-ranked single, going Gold. "Namida Surprise!" was also included on AKB48's second BEST compilation, "Kamikyoku-tachi"（神曲たち...Masterpieces）, which was released in April 2010 to a No. 1 ranking on the weeklies and then a No. 12 yearly ranking. The song was also performed on the 2009 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen.

Reiko Kato -- Get Real

Sometimes we forget, but the beautiful Reiko Kato (かとうれいこ), one of Japan’s prime pin-ups during the early 90s, also had a singing career. Unfortunately for the girl, according to J-Wiki, even though she really wanted to be acknowledged by the public as a singer, her music didn’t sell as well as her swimsuit photo books.

At first, between 1990 and 1991, when she was marketed as a pin-up singer, some of her songs even had very alluring titles, like “Virgin Heart” (this one is almost a tradition in the aidoru world, to be honest), “Pool side no Sniper” (プールサイドのSniper), “LOVE MOTION” or “Shuumatsu no Adam & Eve” (週末のアダム&イヴ). All of them great pop/eurobeat songs, by the way. However, after a while, Kato was probably very dissatisfied with the fact that her CD covers were basically extensions of her gravure work, since many of them featured her wearing swimsuits, bikinis or sexy dresses that emphasized specific body parts.

As I’ve already commented with J-Canuck in past articles, Kato’s voice was pleasant enough, since she didn’t have that excruciating high pitch many Japanese aidoru singers had (and have) to employ. Even so, her success as a singer was lackluster.

Around 1992, though, she may have convinced the powers that be to change her image from a pin-up aidoru who sang harmless eurobeat songs into an artist or more mature aidoru. After a while, she changed labels and started becoming more involved in her music, even writing lyrics and composing songs. Honestly, I prefer her early output, but she was trying to have more control of her career, which is always remarkable in a way.

Anyway, even though I don’t find this period of her career as interesting as the first two years, it’s still possible to find a couple of nice songs here and there, with “Get Real” being a good example. Included in Kato’s overall 9th album “Tsuki no Uragawa” (月の裏側), which was released in December 1996, I think “Get Real” represents how she was able to embrace her seductive pin-up persona and combine it with the music. The result is this great funky tune with a more mature sound and alluring delivery by Kato.

Lyrics for “Get Real” were written by Reiko Kato herself, while music was composed by Yoshimasa Inoue (井上ヨシマサ). Also, just to put some emphasis on the right info, for some reason, the uploader on YouTube introduced the song as part of Kato’s album “SPECIAL!” (released in 1991), but, as I’ve pointed out before, it was released five years later as part of “Tsuki no Uragawa”.

Miho Nakayama -- True Romance

It’s not a mystery to anyone that I generally listen to Miho Nakayama’s (中山美穂) 80s aidoru songs way more than to her 90s output. There are many nice songs, mostly ballads or mid-tempo pop songs, like “Tooi Machi no Dokoka de…” (遠い街のどこかで…), “Mellow”, “Shiawase ni Naru Tame ni” (幸せになるために), “Anata ni Nara…” (あなたになら…), “Tada Nakitaku Naru no”, “HERO” and “Thinking about you ~Anata no Yoru wo Tsutsumitai~” (Thinking about you〜あなたの夜を包みたい〜),  that I learned to like through the years, but I still only rarely listen to them. The exception, though, is today’s featured song, which is called “True Romance”, a single released in June 1996.

The thing is, “True Romance” is not so different if compared to what Nakayama was releasing at the time, but I find the arrangement very gentle, in special with the sentimental-sounding piano, horns and light strings. Of course, Nakayama’s womanly delivery is a big part of the show, and if there’s one thing I really like in these later songs in her career is how her vocals matured in a beautiful way.

Days before the single release, “True Romance” appeared in Nakayama’s 18^th album “Deep Lip French”. I don’t really know what type of strategy they were thinking of, since the single simply didn’t sell well after first appearing in an album just days before its release. That’s probably why this song is so underappreciated, even being hard to find on YouTube. The video above was the only performance I could find of it.

Anyway, the single reached #37 on the Oricon charts, selling around 38,000 copies (source: generasia). Lyrics were written by Masato Odake (小竹正人), while music was composed by Yoshimasa Inoue (井上ヨシマサ). As for the arrangement, Hajime Mizoguchi (溝口肇) was the responsible.

For an unknown reason, “True Romance” wasn’t included in my “Perfect Best” compilation of Miho Nakayama’s singles. Because of that, I had to chase my own copy of the single, which I was lucky to find here in Brazil last month.

AKB48 -- Halloween Night（ハロウィン・ナイト）

Man, oh man...I've always thought that whenever Japan (or Tokyo) adopts a foreign holiday, the place goes all out. That's been the case with Christmas all these decades and now it's the case with Halloween. When I arrived in Tokyo in 1994, the spooky holiday was only celebrated by a smattering of drunken English teachers when they hijacked one car on the Yamanote Line for an entire loop; it wasn't too long before there were extra cops at the ready to prevent that from happening.

However over the years, I and probably thousands of English teachers have brought more and more students into the mix of the former All Hallows' Eve with costume parties and Jack O'Lantern carvings. Resultingly, you get the above video...one humongous Halloween party in Shibuya. The video was from 2013. NHK News was reporting earlier this morning that it will be all hands on deck for the Tokyo police for the next couple of nights with Halloween parties all over the place. Halloween has finally arrived. And y'know...I think even more than Christmas, Halloween seems to have the perfect fit for the Japanese since the people there are also all into costumes and spooky stories, although we did have to help them with the pumpkins.

I was talking with good ol' contributor JTM the other night about J-Pop when he told me that AKB48 had come up with their own Halloween song. There are tons of Japanese Yuletide songs in the massive kayo kyoku/J-Pop discography of history, but I haven't come across too many Halloween tunes in the Land of the Rising Sun, but when my friend told me about this one, I was rather intrigued. Sure enough, I found the short version for AKB48's 41st single "Halloween Night" on YouTube today. It was released just a couple of months ago in August 2015 and not surprisingly it went all the way up to No. 1.

The Wikipedia article compared it to the happy disco of "Koi Suru Fortune Cookie"（恋するフォーチュンクッキー）as being "...done in a dark disco style...", although I think it's still cheerfully poppy and jumpy as if the songwriters were reminiscing over the oeuvre of Boney M. And the music video above has gotten the atmosphere of a Tokyo Halloween right...J-Xmas has that mood of high style and dining but J-Halloween is all about the massive cosplay partying.

"Halloween Night" was written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）who had also created the spicy "Rosa" for Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）and the theme song for the anime "Nadia - The Secret of Blue Water", "Blue Water" for Miho Morikawa（森川美穂）a couple of decades back. It's nice to see Inoue bring back the disco nights of yore.

Now that Halloween has been internalized into the Japanese cultural events calendar, I can only figure that it might be a matter of time before Easter is the next target...with all those cute rabbits and chocolate.

Yup, nothing says Halloween more than
squid-ink burgers at McDonalds!

Ah, just before I forget....this is the other song that I know off the top of my head which has that connection to Halloween.

Miho Nakayama -- Rosa

I think one of the very last CD singles I picked up before I officially finished my Gunma stint of 1989-1991 was for this song by Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）titled "Rosa". It was released in July 1991, and I think I left for home at the very end of that month, so I may have very well picked it up somewhere during my travels in southern Japan.

Miporin was a singer that I became more interested in during my teaching gig in the mountains of the Japanese Alps when she started graduating from being an aidoru into a full-fledged pop singer. I was struck by her Anri-esque "Virgin Eyes" and then her sophisti-pop ballad, "Taxi". Then came this spicy Latin dance number, "Rosa". Around those years, there was a big fad concerning the Latin beat, spiked by the whole Lambada dance craze around 1990, so I wonder if the singer and the composer, Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）, wanted to get a slice of that pie.

One of the last memories I had of the music ranking shows before they started disappearing into the ether was the performance of "Rosa" by Nakayama. I'm not sure if it had been on "The Best 10" or "The Top 10", but it was the first time I'd seen her shaking her booty with a choreographed entourage. As for the song itself, I'm not quite sure if Eurobeat is quite the right label despite my categorizing it as such; it seems to have a bit of Italo-disco in there. In any case, it was pretty darn infectious.

The original title was supposed to have been "Chotto Doushita no"（ちょっとどうしたの....Hey, What's The Problem?）, which is the line that appears most often in the song, but I think "Rosa" was the right choice. Perhaps the change was made by the lyricist, Saki Ninomae（一咲）, who probably didn't get much in the way of disagreement since it was just the pen name for Miho Nakayama herself.

"Rosa" peaked at No. 3 and became the 41st-ranked song of 1991. The song also got her another invitation onto the Kohaku Utagassen.

Miho Nakayama - Rosa

Yoko Oginome -- Stardust Dream （スターダスト・ドリーム）

Yoko Oginome -- CD-Rider

I think that's one mighty fine cover for Ms. Oginome's "CD-Rider" (rather dated title, though). This was the singer's 8th album released in August 1988, and on it is a single that I had forgotten about that should earn me a slap on the head.

"Stardust Dream" was Yoko Oginome's（荻野目洋子）15th single which came out in April 1988. Written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）under the pseudonym Reiji Aso（麻生麗二） and composed by Yoshimasa Inoue（井上ヨシマサ）, who would later create and arrange several songs for AKB 48, the song is perfect for Oginome's brand of dynamidoru (hey, if Japanese show business can come up with terms like mamadoru and baradoru for subsets of aidoru, I can come up with something for Yoko-chan). The electric guitars, synths and drums work overtime for this F-1 race car of an Oginome song, and it's one of the standouts of the album.

"Stardust Dream" hit the top spot on Oricon and would become the 64th-ranked song for 1988. As for "CD-Rider", it would also hit No. 1.

Miho Morikawa -- Blue Water/Yes! I Will

During the latter half of my time in Gunma Prefecture, NHK had actually placed an anime right after the 7 O'Clock News on Friday nights. Called "Fushigi no Umi no Nadia"（不思議の海のナディア...Nadia, The Secret of Blue Water), it was inspired by Jules Vernes' classic tale "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" and struck me as being a mix of Hayao Miyazaki and Haruhiko Mikimoto (who illustrated the original "Macross"). I didn't get to see much of it since, some weeks after its premiere, I was basically recruited into teaching community centre classes. However, from what I do remember of it was the "Indiana Jones"-type adventurous tone of the show and the opening/ending themes. Both of them were sung by pop singer Miho Morikawa（森川美穂）.

"Blue Water" is a power pop piece, in line with what was going on in part of Japanese popular music at that time with female groups such as Princess Princess and Pink Sapphire and singers like Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）and Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）at the fore. I loved the bursts of energy that Morikawa brought to the song (lyricist: Etsuko Kisugi [来生えつこ]; composer: Yoshimasa Inoue[井上ヨシマサ]) along with the synths and the electric guitar solo.

The videos above show both the opening and ending themes as they were played in the actual program itself. "Blue Water" was a great musical introduction to the adventure that was to play out in each episode. It went as high as No. 17 on the Oricon weeklies.

This is the full version for the ending theme, "Yes! I Will", a mid-tempo song written and composed by Morikawa. Not quite as catchy as the opening theme but still pleasant to listen to. Both songs are available on the album, "The Secret of Blue Water -- Vocal Collection" released in 1991 by Toshiba EMI.