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.
Yesterday on "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）, the episode's theme was on flower-titled kayo kyoku. That did get me to thinking...as I recall, there have been quite a few such songs that I've remembered over the decades, so I've decided to provide my own short list. My list kinda breaks out a little more widely although the first entry here was also included on the program's own list. Anyways, without further ado:
It's interesting when I go down an especially deep and winding rabbit hole, figuratively speaking. This time, it's led me to a 1970 movie called "The Strawberry Statement" which was an American comedy-drama revolving around the 1968 Columbia University protests. It starred a couple of folks who I've usually associated with sci-fi: Bruce Davison who I've always seen in much later movies as these smarmy corporate/political types such as in the very first "X-Men" as Senator Kelly, and Kim Darby who had earlier guested in the first season episode "Miri" of the original "Star Trek". Never thought I would see a young Davison playing an idealistic good guy.
Well, what led me down to the burrow in the first place was this song titled "Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido" (The Strawberry Statement One More Time) that I heard performed on either "Uta Con"（うたコン） or "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）recently. It's a folk-rock song that was first recorded by the folk group BanBan（バンバン）as their 5th single in August 1975. And just to hold you off the pass for a minute, this isn't the other sibling folk duo Billy BanBan（ビリーバンバン）that I've spoken about in the past on the blog. Yep, same genre, similar name and same time period but BanBan and Billy BanBan are two different entities in the music industry.
Anyways, BanBan was actually a trio consisting of Hiroshi Takayama（高山弘）, Hiroshi Imai（今井ひろし） and Hirofumi Bamba（ばんばひろふみ）. Bamba has been on the blog ever since KKP's inaugural year due to his 1979 solo hit"Sachiko", but BanBan is getting its first due here. Incidentally, the name of the group came about from Bamba's own nickname. The group had been kicking around since 1971 and Bamba had been a popular late-night radio DJ but he was wondering about the state of his band since it wasn't making any hits. As a last resort before deciding to break the band up, he decided to see if up-and-coming singer-songwriter Yumi Arai（荒井由実）could create a song for them because he had been entranced by her works and he'd seen her as a one-of-a-kind. So, he pulled every string and met up with Arai's future husband and musician Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）who then had Bamba and Arai meet up.
The result was a song that, in Bamba's words, extended BanBan's lifespan by at least a few more years before they officially called it a day in 1977. It's a melancholy and bittersweet tune about a man seeing that his local movie house was showing the aforementioned "The Strawberry Statement" once more and then reminiscing about going there with a now ex-girlfriend during a pretty successful date. Personally, it's probably the most different Yuming（ユーミン）creation that I have ever heard although that may have been due to Ichizo Seo's（瀬尾一三）arrangement. There's quite a bit of rock in there that I wouldn't have expected a Yuming song to have. And the ironic thing is that Bamba was much more of a rock guy than a folk guy; in fact, according to the article on the song, he had found folk musicians to be no better than country hicks which led him to found BanBan just to supposedly show them how it's really done.
"Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido" occupied the top spot on Oricon for about six weeks near the end of 1975 which probably meant it was quite the slow burner considering its release back in the summer. It ended up as the No. 13 single for the year and then at the end of 1976, it was even ranked No. 31. It sold a little over 750,000 records. It was also the lead track on BanBan's 2nd and final album"Kisetsufuu"（季節風...Seasonal Winds） which came out in November 1975.
It's been almost a decade since I mentioned through my article on Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）album "Crimson" that Jaws, my tape recorder, made a meal out of my audiotape of the album. It died rather gruesomely, kinda like Ben Gardner in "Jaws". Well, around this time yesterday, I realized that my home printer Sam breathed its last. It was 14 years old and from what I've read of life expectancies of such devices, ol' Sam lived an unusually long life so I'm not mourning too badly and I've got a new one on the way.
However, I have to state that another beloved thing from my memories is now in its last months. That would be the very first branch of the iconic Japanese DIY and hobbyist store Tokyu Hands (now known as Hands) in Shibuya. The doors will close at the end of this November and unfortunately, I will not be there to say goodbye. As usual for the fate of such emporia, the cause is the whole online thing and declining of foot traffic which is hard for me to imagine because the last time I was there was many years ago when the store was packed with customers.
During my years in Tokyo, next to Tower Records a few blocks over, Tokyu Hands was my regular go-to place in Shibuya. It was always the case of walking on one particular street from Tower and then eventually coming down the hill to see good ol' Hands to my left. I used to visit this ivory tower filled with mezzanines to purchase calendars and other examples of stationery along with other sundry items that I can't remember. I do remember the incense area on one floor where I picked up a lost-lasting box of incense cones. I lit up a cone with a match and quickly waved out the flame after which the smoke basically coated my living room in very heavy herbal scents for several days at a time. Basically, if there was something I wanted to buy for the home or make in the home, Tokyu Hands was the place. Now, Hands will go on throughout its other branches but Branch No. 1 has been given its terminal diagnosis and I will miss it.
Now, I couldn't find any sort of music or singer that was attached to Tokyu Hands so I was at a quandary about how to pay tribute to the store. But then, I figured that I'll just provide a list of songs whose titles' first words begin with the letters in HANDS. So, here's my Author's Picks on the shop.
Although today has had a slightly changed schedule to accommodate my busier one tomorrow, I still haven't forgotten that Thursdays are devoted to regular Reminiscings of Youth songs. We did have the special holiday edition earlier this week, so here's the regular one.
So, it's nice to have the Queen of Quiet Storm herself, Anita Baker, back on the blog. I became a fan from the 1980s but she kept on going well into the 1990s and beyond. I have her first four albums but didn't continue the collection of her discography after heading to Japan. Well, some years during my odyssey there, I was either in Tower Records or HMV when I discovered her 2002 BEST compilation,"The Best of Anita Baker", and it took me all of a second to make the purchase.
Along with those hit songs from her early albums, there were some new ones that I hadn't heard by Ms. Baker, and one of them was "I Apologize" which was a October 1994 single. I may have been eight years late but better late than never. And it was another soulful smash for me and in my humble opinion, it was the standout new song for me. Created by Baker, Gordon Chambers and Barry J. Eastmond, it's a heartfelt tribute to the one action in a relationship that might be extremely difficult but absolutely necessary. I've spoken to enough married students to get that impression.
On Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, "I Apologize" hit No. 8. And perhaps I should apologize since I didn't realize that Baker just celebrated her birthday last month on the 26th. In any case, what was also being released in October 1994 in Japan?
I think I'm talking for a lot of Torontonians here, but I'm ready to call for an early spring as soon as possible, especially after getting one of the wintriest of winters in about a decade. However, I've been a Torontonian long enough to know that we probably have at least one more blizzard on the way before things finally start warming up.
Well, anyways, let us segue to "Blizzard". If that title sounds familiar to you, then you must be a Yuming（ユーミン）fan since the original version by her was part and parcel of her winning 1984 album "No Side". I already wrote about that song back in KKP's inaugural year of 2012, so here is a cover version by the good folks at Tokimeki Records with vocalist Hikari（ひかり）behind the mike.
This cover version was released in January 2022 and though it most likely won't replace the original in fans' minds, it's still a nice Neo-City Pop version of the Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）classic. Sorry for the pun, but it's quite the chill version, and there seem to be so many synthesizers helping out there that I will also place the technopop label onto it as well.
Wow! All this time knowing the song "Akai Sweet Pea"(Red Sweet Pea) by Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and the above 1910 painting is the first time I get to see a real red sweet pea. This is by Edward H. Mitchell (1867–1932) and it's in the public domain according to Wikimedia Commons.
One other thing that I found out on the first episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）in 2026 last night was that "Akai Sweet Pea" is celebrating its 44th anniversary today since its release in 1982. Well, of course, I wrote up an article on one of Seiko-chan's evergreen hits all the way back in 2012 so I can't really repeat myself. However, I did look up the many cover versions of "Akai Sweet Pea" via J-Wiki and found this one.
It is indeed a very sweet version via the December 2020 album "VOICE ~ Seiyuu-tachi ga Utau Matsuda Seiko Song ~ Female Edition"（VOICE〜声優たちが歌う松田聖子ソング〜 Female Edition...Voice Actresses Sing the Songs of Seiko Matsuda）. As the title says, a whole bunch of the big guns in the anime voice actress industry came together to provide their own versions of Matsuda's music. Their take on "Akai Sweet Pea" is the 12th and final track on the album and it is an appropriately stately but adorable cover sung by all of the seiyuu involved in the project to wrap things up: Aki Toyosaki（豊崎愛生）, Maaya Uchida（内田真礼）, Ayane Sakura（佐倉綾音）, Miku Ito（伊藤美来）and Momo Asakura（麻倉もも）. Probably not a dry eye in the house.
Anyways, all hail "Akai Sweet Pea"! All hail Seiko-chan!
I'd like to interrupt this broadcast of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for a weather announcement. Toronto is currently being pummeled with a foot of snow with the temperature at around -14 degrees Celsius with a wind chill factor of -25. Autos are skidding off the roads and a lot of institutions are closing due to the weather (including schools; yay, Snow Day!😊). It'll probably be one of the rare days that I don't step out of the house, period.
But hey, it's January in my hometown and this sort of stuff is expected. And I've decided to put up an emergency Author's Picks based on storms.
The Pacific Hotel Chigasaki（パシフィックホテル茅ヶ崎）had its time between 1965 and 1988 in Kanagawa Prefecture and seems to have been quite the resort back in the day. Certainly, its appearance stood out among the landscape although I'm not sure whether it attracted the celebrities. With the bankruptcy of its managing corporation in the late 1980s, the hotel closed down and for another decade, it apparently stood there crumbling away before it was finally demolished with a resort condominium arising from its ashes.
Again, I'm uncertain about celebrities staying there, but one future celebrity who had actually worked at the Pacific part-time was Satsuya Iwasawa（岩沢幸矢）, one-half of the brother folk/City Pop duoBread & Butter（ブレッド&バター）when he'd been thinking of a career in hotels. In 1981, the duo released the album "Pacific" from which one track was "Hotel Pacific".
"Hotel Pacific" is a fairly melancholy song about thinking of that lost love while at the famous hotel. Fuyumi Iwasawa（岩沢二弓）provided the laconic bossa-tinged melody while Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）wrote the lyrics under her pen name of Karuho Kureta（呉田軽歩）. All in all, it sounds like something that Michael Franks would sing, and I believe that it can now be used to think wistfully of the Pacific itself. Maybe even famous painter Hiroshi Nagai（永井博）could have been inspired by the old place. At least, one other band was inspired.
A few weeks ago, one commenter asked about this one since the song is approaching its 50th anniversary in December. Yup, I am talking about Paul Simon's"50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" which was released all the way back at the end of the year 1975.
My personal encounter with "50 Ways" happened back in band class in the early 1980s and it wasn't particularly an auspicious one. Our class was given the sheet music for it and we had to practice it. The first impression by us was how we could make a sardonic joke about nicknaming it "50 Ways to Love Your Lever". Aside from that, we didn't do a great job on it, not that many of us were all that interested in it or knew about it or Simon at that time. I knew about the famed New Jersey singer-songwriter mostly through his partnership with Art Garfunkel and for his many hosting appearances on "Saturday Night Live".
I finally got to hear "50 Ways" once I finally decided to drop my clarinet (figuratively speaking) for the last time and put a very happy sealed door on my music-playing career. That's when I said "Ah, so that's how it's supposed to sound!". Not too bad a song either with the key change between verse and chorus, the hip rhyming chorus itself, and the legendary Steve Gadd with his classic drum riff.
In Canada, "50 Ways" reached No. 7 on RPM while in the United States, it hit No. 1. As for what was pretty hot in Japan at the time, I'll go with the final Oricon ranking for 1975...December 29th.
A few weeks ago, I devoted my Reminiscings of Youth article to the 50th anniversary of "Jaws"which came out on June 20th 1975. Coincidentally enough, director Steven Spielberg, who had made us terrified of getting into the water back then, was the same man, now as producer, who thrilled us with a DeLorean, a mad scientist and a hard-luck teenager. Yup, today is the 40th anniversary of the release of "Back to the Future".
When it comes to missing out on first-run releases, I have two regrets. I missed out on watching the first "Superman" with Christopher Reeve in 1978 and then "Back to the Future" in 1985. I wasn't one to go racing to the theatre unless a movie was truly remarkable like "Star Wars" (and I finally only saw that one two years after its release), and to be honest, I never saw "Family Ties" which was Michael J. Fox's breakthrough sitcom so the invested interest hadn't been there. Plus, though I liked Christopher Lloyd's Reverend Jim on "Taxi" several years earlier, it wasn't quite enough for me to plunk down my money for this crazy flick about time travel.
But then a few years later, I finally caught "Back to the Future" on VHS when for some reason, the Japanese-Canadian Students' Association decided to show it at its old home base in the International Student Centre. Even on a far tinier screen, it was quite the thrill to see Marty and Doc in the 1950s fixing time and getting the former back to his 1980s including the crazy climax when everything that could go wrong did go wrong until it didn't.
Now back in 2022, I provided a ROY article on Huey Lewis and The News' "The Power of Love" for the movie's 37th anniversary and even there, I had to include the orchestral theme by Alan Silvestri because it was just that epic.
Well, this time around, Silvestri's theme is now the topic of this ROY because it is just that epic. I remember reading somewhere that when legendary composer Hiroshi Miyagawa（宮川泰）asked about how to approach this proposed theme song for the anime adaptation of "Uchuu Senkan Yamato"(宇宙戦艦ヤマト）back in the early 1970s, he was simply told that it had to be heroic. And Miyagawa probably looked upward to the heavens and went "How the heck?!". Silvestri was apparently told the same thing when it came to "Back to the Future"; something orchestral and something that can be recognized within the first few notes.
Silvestri was coming into this particular project some years after he'd come up with an upbeat theme for a show about California motorcycle cops and many years before he would come up with the ultimate theme for assembling superheroes, and luckily for him (and Miyagawa), he did whip up one mighty overture that would help immortalize the first movie and the franchise (though I've enjoyed the former more than the latter). I can't remember scenes from the movie without having that theme play out in my head.
I have to finish off this ROY by including Silvestri's rousing dedicated theme to the final movie in the trilogy "Back to the Future III". It has parts of the original theme but it also contains elements of the composer's obvious love for the themes from Westerns such as "The Magnificent Seven" and "Bonanza".
The above is a very old piece of correspondence to Miss Mellie Ryan that is apparently at the Riley Birthplace and Museum in the state of Indiana, United States. The museum is where 19th-century poet James Whitcomb Riley was born and raised.
I was also born and raised in a time when pen pals were a thing. When I was on the JET Programme between 1989 and 1991, my friends back in Toronto and I exchanged letters on our situations in Japan and Canada. Since it took a week for a letter to get from Japan to Canada, the fastest that I could get a reply to my letter was most likely around three weeks, taking into consideration the time for my friends to write out their end of the correspondence. Things are obviously much more lickety-split now for most people and areas.
Back in 2023, I wrote about relative wunderkind singer-songwriter imase and his "NIGHT DANCER" with its groovy urban contemporary feeling. I liked it so much that I even went out on a limb and predicted that he would end up on the Kohaku Utagassen before too long. Well, I'm still waiting for that Nostradamus wish to come true but until then, I discovered that he and Japanese pop legend Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）collaborated on a song together which came out in the last couple of weeks at the end of May.
"Buntsuu"(Correspondence) is a song about a couple of people getting to know each other through some form of the title and hoping that they can do a face-to-face in the near future. With both Yuming（ユーミン）and imase also working on words and music together, it's a lovely duet that has had some commenters noting that it's a mix of the old kayo kyoku (or perhaps New Music of Yumi Arai's time) and current J-Pop. I can also hear some of that bossa nova, a genre that Yuming has known for quite a long time since "Ano Hi ni Kaeritai"（あの日にかえりたい）. Plus the laidback groove was rolled out by Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）in the arrangement and he's quite the expert at that. I remember Yuming and Tomita Lab collaborating on something themselves a couple of decades earlier.
Head arrangement was said to be the preferred method of recording for Yumi Arai and the band Caramel Mama（キャラメル・ママ）, and it involved deciding on an arrangement as recording went along on a case-by-case basis while swapping opinions without any detailed meetings beforehand (producer Kunihiko Murai（村井邦彦）, who had been the initiator of the technique in Japan, had witnessed this at a Carole King recording session at A&M Studios).
Incidentally, the musical background of Caramel Mama, which was a hybrid of the bands Happy End（はっぴいえんど）and Four Joe Half, followed the American rock of groups such as The Band and The Section (which backed up James Taylor). In contrast, Arai had a deep interest in British progressive rock bands such as Procul Harum along with European music and bossa nova.
This led to the evergreen masterpieces of "Hikoki Gumo"（ひこうき雲）, "Misslim" and "Cobalt Hour" which were born from these different combinations of music, and when speaking of the history of Japanese City Pop, these are extremely important elements.
There's no doubt that almost all of the albums introduced here in this book more or less can be thought to contain these elements of different combinations. Rock and pop, to be sure, but also soul, jazz, bossa nova and so on. City Pop was born from this masterful fusion of different genres of music, and especially the refined pop created from the collaboration between Yuming（ユーミン）and Caramel Mama should be considered to be the very first appearance of this. Certainly, this would be the brilliant and shining monument to the dawn of Japanese City Pop.
Afterwards, when Yuming became the First Lady of Japanese Pop once she turned into Yumi Matsutoya, what would become the core of her music can be said to have been nurtured during her days as Yumi Arai.
The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).
It is indeed another Hump Day here so why not perk things up a tad? We often celebrate anniversaries such as birthdays here and we're gonna do so once again with Kayo Grace Kyoku and Mr. Calico.
The news was coming that the 20th anniversary of YouTube was near but I hadn't realized that it was actually today. However indeed, on April 23rd 2005, the first YouTube video was uploaded onto the new site with one of the co-founders Jawed Karim putting up a 19-second presentation of his very calm observation of elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Of course, from such humble beginnings, a video empire evolved including tons of music from over the past century, recipe videos from home, soothing ASMR stuff and vicarious drives all over the world among other imaginative ideas.
Also because "Kayo Kyoku Plus" could only work with the representation of Japanese songs from now and yesteryear existing on YouTube, I have to extend my gratitude to all those uploaders over the years (although perhaps certain companies and artists may not be thrilled). It was always my feeling that a Japanese music blog wouldn't work with just some prose about the songs that I knew and loved; the actual songs just had to be there for listening.
I had actually considered only putting up the Top 10 list of singles for April 23rd 2005 but seeing that most of the top 10 were unknown to me, I quickly ditched that idea. Instead, what I will do is provide songs by certain artists that were released in the 20th year of their time in show business (checked J-Wiki), whether or not they were put out as official 20th-anniversary songs.
The other day in the Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）forum on Discord, I read that the original drummer for the famed AOR band, Keiichi Hiroishi（廣石恵一）, had passed away on March 16th at the age of 64 due to a cerebral hemorrhage. Giving my condolences to Hiroishi's family, friends and fans, I wanted to start my contributions to KKP today with an Omega Tribe song.
Usually when it comes to the smooth and groovy stylings of Omega Tribe with Carlos Toshiki, I think of composer Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）and lyricist Chinfa Kan（康珍化）. But for the band's 6th single under their incarnation at that time, "Toki wa Kagerou"(Love is an Illusion), it was none other than Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）who provided words and music with Hiroshi Shinkawa（新川博） handling the arrangement. Released in June 1990, it's an ethereal musing on love as an amourous couple enjoy each other's company on the sands of some desert (those synth-wood pipes help with the effect). I can imagine that the concept of time must dissipate like a heat haze in such an environment. Reaching No. 38 on Oricon, "Toki wa Kagerou" was also the first track on Omega Tribe's album"natsuko" which came out later in July; the album was a No. 13 hit.
Interestingly enough, the first time that I had even heard of the song was through Yuming's（ユーミン）self-cover of "Toki wa Kagerou" from her November 1990 album"Tengoku no Door"（天国のドア）. It isn't quite as ethereal as the version that Shinkawa had arranged but the drama is still in there under Masataka Matsutoya's（松任谷正隆）handling of it. I'm not sure when I ended up buying Omega Tribe's album, but it wasn't too long after getting "Tengoku no Door" since when I listened to that first track on "natsuko", I was left wondering where I had heard that song before.
The first day of spring supposedly arrived at 5:01 am this morning. It's not exactly warmer out there and in fact, it's looking downright gray but I'll take everyone's word for it. As my friend tells me annually, here in Toronto, we will never be sure of spring's arrival until May.
Anyways, I didn't realize it until yesterday but I had yet to put up an Author's Pick on spring-titled songs so here are some of them although I'm sure that there are plenty of those out there in the kayo kyoku/J-Pop zeitgeist.
First off, I heard about the major quake in southern Japan so I'm hoping that folks there are doing OK.
January 13th 2025 has been set aside as the annual Seijin-no-Hi（成人の日）or Coming-of-Age Day in Japan. It's the time when all young people turning 20 this year get the big ceremonial welcome into adulthood (although there has been some recent movement in taking things a couple of years younger). The guys get all decked out in suits while the ladies are dressed meticulously into their kimono. After the speech at the local town or city hall, the freshly-minted adults can finally take that "first official" sip of booze with family and friends...and perhaps experience the exquisite pain of a hangover.
But give the new generation a decade or fifteen years and they may receive those pangs of nostalgia and longing for their salad days in high school...known as seishun（青春）in Japanese. Nostalgia has been a vital ingredient in kayo kyoku so it's not all that of a shock to know that there are also plenty of songs that have seishun in the titles and/or seishun in the feelings. So allow me to give you a few examples.
On Christmas Eve Eve (and that's not a spelling error...just being cute), I wrote about jazz chanteuse Mami Horie's（堀江マミ）take on "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and was reminded that a few decades previously, she had also tackled City Pop.
In fact, my first ever article on Horie was her 1979 debut single"Loving You", a City Pop tune that begins with some smoking jazz balladry before the rhythm jumps into a jaunty metropolitan beat. Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）was the fellow behind the melody there. Well, this time around, there is another famous singer-songwriter who took care of the B-side, "Camouflage", and it's none other than Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）under her pen name of Karuho Kureta（呉田軽穂）with Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）on lyrics.
Whereas "Loving You" feels like a morning brunch-happy City Pop tune, "Camouflage" sounds like something to sip an evening cocktail to in the style of Junko Yagami（八神純子）. The piano takes us rolling downtown with a bit of Latin feeling while the electric guitar and saxophone arrive to transport us up to the hotel rooftop bar. I can even imagine Horie herself in the bar playing this song itself.
I remember this time last year when ski resorts in both Canada and Japan were major ugly crying the blues because they simply didn't have two snowflakes to rub against each other. There had been a serious lack of snow which caused the resorts to wonder about their livelihood for the 2024 season. But cue ahead nearly a year later and fate decided to give everyone a huge break and then some. The white stuff has been pretty much non-stop for the past few months and business is booming once more. Maybe it's booming a little too much since all those blizzards could also be making transportation to the slopes a tad difficult.
Considering I'm from the Great White North, my interaction with skiing has been minimal at best (generally, sports and I are not good friends). I did some cross-country skiing during one elementary school trip and then when I was in Gunma Prefecture on the JET Programme, I joined teachers and students on the annual one-day field trip to the slopes (northern Gunma is famous for skiing) and after a few minutes of trying to glide down the bunny slopes, I quickly retreated back to the warmth of the hut and drank down a few gallons of cocoa for most of the day. Additionally, I remember on Wednesday mornings on the local train as I was heading to the weekly visit to the smaller school when it was packed with skiers and had to be careful not to be poked in the eye with a ski.🎿
However, this won't deter me from the pleasure of presenting some of the kayo kyoku/J-Pop ski-themed tunes I've heard over the years. After all, back in the late 1980s with the Bubble Era, skiing became a huge hobby of the Japanese as they hit the slopes of Naeba or Gala Yuzawa. Moreover, although skiing isn't quite the trendy thing to do now, I'm sure that there are still many dedicated skiers taking advantage of the powder snow all over the nation. And as such, allow me to show just five of the many songs that have reminded me of skiing. Consider this the kissing cousin to "Snow Songs".
Last year, among all of the Author's Picks articles, I did go a little crazy on certain "theme title" songs such as "Twilight" and "Casablanca". But indeed, I have noticed that songwriters did love putting those words into their works for some reason. And now, I realize that "Cinderella" can also be included in this august company.
In a way, the whole concept of Cinderella is perfect for Japanese society. At least in the way that it has been depicted by Disney, a poor young woman under the constant fatty thumb of some cruel family finally makes the best of her opportunities (which greatly involve a fairy godmother) and gets out of her indentured servitude at last and has that life of happy-ever-after. I have seen so many documentaries and variety shows in Japan which have depicted callow young people going through absolute hell under stern or just plain sadistic teachers to finally reach their desired goals that it's a surprise that those folks haven't been called Cinderellas or Cinderfellas.
Anyways, I have found a few Cinderella kayo kyokuin KKP (and a lot more on this site which has more recent songs), so please enjoy!
It was the AI Gallery featuring "Christmas Edition 1" that officially began the Xmas season on KKP this year, and although "Christmas Edition 2" won't finish it (still have one more seasonal tune to supply tomorrow), it will make for a nice addition. Anyways, let's get at it!
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