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.
Considering how much I (and much of the Japanese music lovers) got caught up in the wave of trf as part of the Komuro Steamroller in the 1990s, I think I've covered pretty much all of the big hits that the dance-pop group had to offer such as "Boy Meets Girl" and "EZ DO DANCE". I may have missed that first year of trf bloom by landing in Japan at the end of 1994, but there were still a few more years of the group hitting the big time.
So, it's the case where I'm looking for some of the songs by the group that I never got to hear. And speaking of "EZ DO DANCE", I did come across their coupling song here called "Do What You Want". It is quite different for a number of reasons: 1) YU-KI is not the main vocalist, leaving the vocals to the other two female members, Etsu and Chiharu (although they don't seem all that prominent behind the mike, 2) who I think the main vocalist is happens to be Suzi Kim who used to sing for the eclectic band 99.99, and 3) all those dance synths have mostly been left at home.
In fact, I think "Do What You Want', which was written and composed by Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）with Kim also working on the lyrics, sounds more like a New Age music think piece with the title being emanated like a mantra for free love. Most likely, listeners would be sitting in a yoga position rather than dancing it up at the clubs. As I said, it's quite the different song by trf.
The song and dance group trf was a unit that I had always associated with 1990s J-Pop starting with their mega-hit "Boy Meets Girl". For a period of several years as I was getting acclimated to the Tokyo life, YU-KI and her gang were seemingly everywhere on the airwaves and television with their dance-pop hits. But as we approached the end of the century, they seemed to do the slow fade from pop culture.
But recently, I discovered that trf had provided a snazzy opening theme song to a 2007 anime adaptation of the manga "Wangan Midnight"（湾岸ミッドナイト...Bayshore Midnight）...a whole decade after assuming that trf had been relegated to the potential nostalgia tour of pop culture history. "lights and any more" may sound like a rogue dependent clause but its release in July of that year as the group's first digital download single provided a good high-octane boost to the opening credits promising lots of furious racing along Tokyo's Bayshore Route. The song was also a part of trf's 10th album"Gravity" from February 2009 which scored a No. 42 ranking on Oricon.
I don't recall all that well about being driven on Bayshore since getting rides was quite rare during my time in Japan with all of those subways and trains to rely upon. Plus, taxis can really rack up the price. But I can imagine some of the flair and romance of going along the highways and byways of Tokyo from seeing some of the videos.
From writing about the recent B'z single "Illumination"（イルミネーション）, the theme song for the currently running NHK morning serial drama "Omusubi"（おむすび）, I was wondering a little about the gyaru（ギャル）culture that's been depicted on the show.
I was in Japan at the time when the gyaru culture was blossoming on the streets of Tokyo and elsewhere, notably Shibuya. Mind you, I don't recall having any gyaru as students although one kid was wearing her marshmallow-y loose socks below her uniform. Nope, my experience with such young people was purely observational as I saw the ladies decked in all sorts of dyed hairdos and bizarre makeup.
Anyways, as I was watching one scene of "Omusubi" which took place at a karaoke box, one gyaru took the microphone and sang an old Ayumi Hamasaki（浜崎あゆみ）hit. And that got me thinking about what were the favourite J-Pop tunes among the gyaru elite way back then. Well, it's a bit biased, but there is the Avex Portal which has put up its own five favourites for the 1990s.
I don't know whether there are any former or current gyaru reading this, but considering the source website, the choices are indeed slanted rather heavily toward Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）, so if there are any other non-TK songs that can be recommended as gyaru favourites, please let me know.
Welcome to the last few days of February. The temperature roller coaster has been continuing here in Toronto so we had a wind chill factor of -23 C on Saturday but by this coming Thursday, we may be up to +14 C. Whatever the meteorological case may be, our winter will likely end up as one of the warmest that we've had.
It's been a few years since I posted anything up for the song-and-dance group World Order starring former MMA athlete Genki Sudo（須藤元気）. I do remember when I first found out about them via their December 2014 song "Have A Nice Day" and more importantly, their performance as besuited automatons enjoying a disjointed stroll through areas such as Shibuya.
Now, I've gone even further back. In fact, I've dipped into their very first album "World Order" from July 2010 and realized that Sudo and the gang did a cover of trf's "Boy Meets Girl". I don't think that it eclipses the 1994 original by the techno song and dance group that Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）built but it's still nice to hear the cover version and watch the guys doing their distinctive choreography while picking up some women during an evening encounter. Plus, you get to see a bit of what salaried workers in Japan do after they punch out of work. "World Order" managed to reach No. 82 on Oricon.
Ahhh...happy to find my favourite remix of "Boy Meets Girl". Man, was this a popular song back in the day!
For the first time in a long time, I gave my 1994 trf album"Billionaire" a spin. Some of the songs by this major group under the aegis of songwriting/producing maestro Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）not only became some of the first entries in "Kayo Kyoku Plus", they also represented the pop music that greeted me when I began my second long stint in Japan from November 1994. "Boy Meets Girl" and "Survival Dance" were the hit tunes that I was catching everywhere when trf was one of the several cogs running the Komuro Steamroller from the mid-1990s.
With a trf hit, it's usually about the beats and the high-energy arrangements and dancing involving the band members such as YUKI and Sam. But while I was listening to "Billionaire" this afternoon, I also heard something a little softer by them called "TRUTH’94（UNPLUGGED STYLE MIX)". This was based on the original song that came from their February 1993 debut album, "trf 〜THIS IS THE TRUTH〜".
I realized that I've labeled it as a technopop tune but I think the pop balladry is more emphasized here than the synths actually. Written and composed by Komuro, "Truth" has a lot of that sweetness over the bleeps and bloops that makes it stand out. According to an April 1993 interview in the Sony magazine "Guitar Book" via the J-Wiki article for "trf 〜THIS IS THE TRUTH〜", the concept of the song deals with a young ambitious woman who is pushing ahead with her career all on her own while not trying to show any sort of weakness when she suddenly falls in love.
The version that I listened to today is right here. "TRUTH’94" is even more poignant with the piano being the main instrument. As for "trf 〜THIS IS THE TRUTH〜", it peaked at No. 14 on Oricon while "Billionaire",trf's 4th album hit No. 1 and ended up as the 6th-ranked album of 1994.
Did not know this one by song-and-dance group trf. For the longest time, when it came to Christmas and trf, I'd always thought "Samui Yoru dakara"（寒い夜だから）although I gather that perhaps it had always been more of a winter song in general.
It appears, though, that Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）already had jingle bells and holly racing about in his head when it came to his first big group in the big Komuro Boom of the mid-1990s since he came up with "Xmas dance wiz U", the coupling song to the group's 3rd single"Ai ga Mou Sukoshi Hoshii yo"（愛がもう少し欲しいよ...Wanna Little More Love） released in November 1993. Things must have been hopping for him and trf since on the same day as that release, their 4th single"Silver and Gold Dance" (have yet to cover that one) got out, and then the next month was "Samui Yoru dakara".
As for "Xmas dance wiz U", not only does it sound more Yuletide-y than "Samui Yoru dakara", it also comes across as the perfect mix of Xmas and Komuro who of course wrote and composed it. Lyrically, it strikes me as that "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" moment with a couple happily reunited and looking forward to sharing the Holidays together...perhaps at Wild Blue Yokohama because the song was used to advertise the indoor pool complex on TV. Nothing says Christmas more than taking a dip into a heated body of water, after all.
The original single made it up to No. 29 on Oricon while "Xmas dance wiz U" was included in trf's 6th album,"BRAND NEW TOMORROW" which hit the shelves in December 1995. That album peaked at No. 2, going Triple Platinum. Good days for the band back then.
Yup, don't those 90s CD singles look cute? If I were at one of my old music store haunts such as RECOfan right now, they would probably be going for something like 50 yen a disc. Would like to peruse the bins again someday.
Good evening, folks! And in commemoration of the 7th anniversary of "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I would like to put out my 90s playlist...those go-to songs from the decade of the Komuro Boom, guitar pop/rock bands and the return of aidoru via Hello Project. I think it was about time since it was at the end of 2013 that I put out the 80s playlist and the middle of 2014 when the 70s playlist got written up. So it's been about 4.5 years between the last time and this list. Also, another reason for finally putting up the 90s list is that I was inspired by Noelle herself putting up her 60s playlist.
As with those lists, I searched the old memories for my favourite Top 10 from the 1990s, and once again, it was another lip-biting and mind-grimacing process of whittling down the list to just ten entries. So, for example, I had to sadly let go entries by Dreams Come True, Pizzicato Five and Original Love. The interesting difference between this list and the other two lists is that for a lot of the songs here, I was actually in Japan when they first saw the light of day due to my time on the JET Programme and then my early years as an inhabitant in Ichikawa.
So, without further ado...
1. Kazumasa Oda -- Love Story wa Totsuzen ni (1991): Finding the Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）original is currently impossible (as it usually is) although there are plenty of covers, so let me go with Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）here. I realize that this hit was going up against Chage & Aska's"Say Yes", but in the end, I had to go with this magnum opus by the lead singer of Off-Course（オフコース）. What is it about "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni"（ラブ・ストーリーは突然にー）that still continues to thrill me right from the intro? It just seems to possess that feeling of excitement and drama of living in one of the world's biggest cities as these complicated love relationships play out on Fuji-TV.
2. Noriyuki Makihara -- Donna Toki mo (1991): From the drama of "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" in the early months, I encountered the happy joy of Makihara's（槇原敬之）"Donna Toki mo"（どんなときも）just when I finished my time on JET and did a final trip around southwestern Japan. I was so drawn by this song that whenever I got into a department store, I made sure that I coursed through every CD shop to track the single down. I finally got it after a few tries. Yeah, my first attempts only saw it sold out.
3. trf -- Boy Meets Girl (1994): I had heard of this technopop tune even before I made my return trip to Japan at the end of 1994. Never heard of trf, never knew about Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）creating his huge steamroller of acts and never realized that "Boy Meets Girl" was meant to sell cola. All I did know was that this song was percolating through my head for days. It ended up being one of the first CD singles that I bought during my Ichikawa life.
4. Sing Like Talking -- Mitsumeru Ai de (1994): And to think that I bought my first SLT album, "Discovery", as a pure mistake. Best mistake that I ever committed. Thus started my happy hunt to get more of their albums, and from "Discovery", I discovered the urban and urbane "Mitsumeru Ai de"（みつめる愛で）created by Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）and keyboardist Satoru Shionoya（塩谷哲）. To be honest, it was difficult to come up with a song by Sing Like Talking since the band has had so many scrumptious contributions but "Together" has already been put up on a couple of lists, and it was time to give some more love to this one.
5. Namie Amuro -- Chase The Chance (1995): Granted that a lot of Amuro（安室奈美恵）fans will probably go with other bigger hits by the just-retired Okinawan singer, but I've always gravitated to "Chase The Chance" for some reason. I guess that I will always be attracted to high-energy tunes that give off that sense of action although this song was used as the theme for a show about a crusading hero chef. Those were good times.
6. B'z -- Love Phantom (1995): For me, if it comes to a B'z ultimate favourite, I would have to go with either "Bad Communication" or "Love Phantom". Considering that this was a promotion song for TV Asahi's broadcast of "The X-Files" (which I did watch on my remote-less, dial-only TV every Wednesday night), this may go down as the quintessential cool J-Halloween song. I can no longer listen to this song without images of Mulder, Scully and Fluke Man forming in my head.
7. Toko Furuuchi -- Dare Yori Suki Nanoni (1996): Another beautiful ballad to remind me that some soul music still existed since the transition from kayo kyoku to J-Pop. Whenever I think of the 90s brand of popular Japanese music, "Dare Yori Suki Nanoni"（誰より好きなのに）never fails to pop up in the head. The arrangement of Furuuchi's（古内東子）representative song also has me thinking back to the 1980s. It's no surprise that it has been covered by other singers since its release.
8. Maki Ohguro -- Atsukunare (1996): As much as one of my favourite songs by Furuuchi always calms me down, Maki Ohguro's（大黒摩季）"Atsukunare"（熱くなれ）works very well in getting my blood flowing at beyond the official speed limit. In fact, I'm typing faster (and making more typos) since I'm listening to it as I get this paragraph down. NHK chose wisely in adopting this for the 1996 Games in Atlanta, and I can hope that the network can find a song that ups the ante in excitement for the 2020 Games next year.
9. Misia -- Tsutsumikomuyouni (1998): Man, did Misia make a splash. Along with Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）and bird, the three of them along with some other artists heralded a J-R&B boom, and Misia brought some good old-fashioned R&B of years past and present. "Tsutsumikomuyouni"（つつむ込むように）is still a title that has problems sticking in my head due to its length and pronunciation, but there is no doubt about the music there.
10. Morning Musume -- Love Machine (1999): At the beginning of the 1990s, I do remember aidoru acts such as Wink and CoCo, but then it seemed like the whole teenybopper thing that wound its way through the decades since the 1960s finally petered out. For a lot of my time in the final decade of the 20th century in Japan, female aidoru struck me as being extinct although Johnny's Entertainment had SMAP and other groups going on the male side of things. But then came the whole Tsunku-led Hello Project umbrella of aidoru groups and individual aidoru, and it all started with Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）. Things were moving slowly but steadily in the early years of the group but then it all exploded into super fame and popularity with "Love Machine"（LOVEマシーン）, and soon, the various members were showing up on their own myriad TV programs for a few years before more groups started forming. "Love Machine" became the funky choice to sing at the various karaoke boxes and year-end parties before the turn of the century, and Morning Musume took a new electrifying direction in their career.
Man, that was quite the decade, and there were so many other songs and singers that I would have loved to have included in the list, but I'm keeping it to ten. However, if any of the fellow collaborators would like to give their own 90s lists, they're more than welcome and commenters are also very welcome to provide their own contributions.
As I said back in the very first article for the song-and-dance group trf, "Boy Meets Girl", it was a couple of siblings who had introduced me to the group and the song. This was when Tetsuya Komuro's（小室哲哉）creation had already been well into ascent into the pop music troposphere. So when I did hit Japan in late 1994, I had to play some catch-up to find out more about what made trf tick.
Strangely enough, after putting up a lot of their discography onto the blog over the past 6 years, I had yet to write about their debut single. So here it is, "GOING 2 DANCE/OPEN YOUR MIND" from February 1993.
Listening to "GOING 2 DANCE", I felt that at the beginning, trf and Komuro really wanted to HIT the dance floor running, jumping and all of that other athletic stuff. Komuro and vocalist YU-KI wrote the lyrics while the former took care of the melody. As the lyrics state, trf did go to town with "GOING 2 DANCE" that was definitely the most dance clubbiest of the singles that I've heard by them. Was gonna make me sweat (although at my size this summer, picking up a paper clip from the grass can do that).
"OPEN MY MIND" did open my mind since that music video was probably the sexiest and strangest take that I had ever seen of trf. I wasn't quite sure whether YU-KI was going for a hybridized look of the Borg Queen and Betty Boop, though. But like its companion song, it definitely had more of the dance music and less of the pop that I would hear when the group really hit their stride. Komuro took care of both words and music here. Both songs would make it onto trf's debut album"trf 〜THIS IS THE TRUTH〜" which was released in the same month as the single. It would peak at No. 14.
Far back in 2014, contributor nikala was kind enough to contribute her playlist of techno kayo songs (aidoru edition) consisting of a number of different artists. When I looked through her list again, I realized that I had yet to put in my own choices when it came to technopop tunes from Japan, and that is rather ironic, since although I grew up with a lot of enka and Mood Kayo (though I didn't know of the genre names at the time), the first two genres that I got into when I fully embraced my love of Japanese pop music in 1981 were indeed aidoru (thanks to Seiko and Naoko) and technopop (thanks to Yellow Magic Orchestra). And yet, I hadn't even put up a list of my favourite digital ditties on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" in the past 6+ years, although there are hundreds of entries in the Techno category.
Well, that ends this weekend. As I was mulling over my choices over the past day and night though, I realized that this would be a challenging endeavour. Such was the difficulty and plethora of choices that I've decided to split my favourite technopop tunes into two parts. In both parts, I haven't bothered to order the songs in any particular way; just throwing them out there. And considering that all of my choices have gotten their own articles already, I won't give any long descriptions. I am merely providing the ones that have stuck in my brain all these years.
Marcos V. had introduced "Night Flight" to me through his own article on the technopop trio and this earworm. It has so thoroughly dug under my meninges that for all intents and purposes, "Night Flight" is the representative song for Perfume in my ears and eyes. There is so much of that spirit of YMO and perhaps even Kraftwerk imbued into Yasutaka Nakata's（中田ヤスタカ）work that I'm hoping that royalties didn't become an issue.
Before "Rhythm And Police" came out as the classic opening theme for Fuji-TV's"Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）, the typical theme song for a police drama in Japan probably would have taken on the form of some downtown funk, perhaps heavy with bass. Then, Akihiko Matsumoto came along and created an eccentric technopop piece based on a Mexican song "El Cascabel" of which one copy is now floating with a group of other sounds on a probe heading out of the solar system. Nowadays, whenever police cars pass by through Tokyo with sirens a-blazing, pedestrians will probably hear this song instead.
Had no idea about Koshi's past as a New Music/City Pop diva in the 1970s. "Hashire Usagi"（走れウサギ）was my first exposure to the weirdly wonderful world of Miharu Koshi in her techno mode. This particular entry was quite perfect to describe the urgent run of a rabbit through the forest, and this would be my most representative song by her during this period.
"Rokubanme no Yu-u-u-tsu"（６番目のユ・ウ・ウ・ツ）is probably the first techno rock/New Wave song that I heard from Japan, and it would take fashion chameleon and envelope-pusher Kenji Sawada to pull this off. After first seeing his performance on the Kohaku Utagassen, I heard it on "Sounds of Japan" and liked the original version even more. Maybe there were those in the audience in NHK Hall on December 31st 1982 who glared and squinted at the spectacle of New Wave Sawada, but those space-age synths did it for me.
Even before I boarded my Air Canada flight to head to Tokyo for my long second odyssey as an English teacher, trf's "Boy Meets Girl" was one of a large tapeful of songs that had garnered my attention. You might say that it served as my musical introduction to my 17 years as an Ichikawa resident. I hadn't known at the time that it was serving as the campaign song for Coca-Cola but "Boy Meets Girl" certainly had the high-octane caffeine energy to match. The Komuro Boom was on its way.
This is still one of my favourite Japanese technopop songs and it's created by YMO's Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）. I've told Marcos once before that I couldn't tell the difference between drum n' bass and electroclash, and so I wouldn't know what "Kinokhronika" would be categorized as (it apparently means "newsreel"). It's still cool as heck, though, and the song could probably tell some sort of suspense tale among its beats.
As I mentioned in the original article, this is the first Akina song that I ever heard, again thanks to "Sounds of Japan" and the 1983 Kohaku Utagassen. Furthermore, "Kinku" may be the first techno aidorutune that I have heard, now that the bloops and bleeps by Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）are now well buried in my brain. When I compare "Kinku" with the other aidoru hits of the time, I realize that this does really stand out since it is a nifty technopop take on Akina's early misunderstood teen persona singles.
You may be wondering why I haven't put in any Yellow Magic Orchestra in here. Well, that's for Part 2 and that will have a slightly different format due to my prior consternations about what to choose. Hopefully, that list will be on the blog as early as tomorrow afternoon.
The above is "Works - The Best of TRF" which was released back in 1998. Although trf at that point was doing a slow fade from the scene, I still grabbed this one since I had already gotten rather nostalgic about one of the prime actors during the Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）stranglehold on J-Pop during those mid-90s.
One of the tracks on the 2-CD set which was the very first BEST compilation by the unit happened to be their 13th single from March 1996, "Love & Peace Forever". And man, it looks like nostalgia may be the overarching theme for this article. This time, it wasn't just Komuro handling words and music but he also had Takahiro Maeda（前田たかひろ）helping out on lyrics and Cozy Kubo（久保こーじ）providing a hand on the melody.
And the collaboration between Komuro and Kubo does show a difference. Instead of the usual dance techno that populates many a trf hit, there is a very sunny throwback to disco in "Love & Peace Forever" although the music video has YU-KI, DJ KOO and the rest of the gang look like a bunch of hippies on Phuket Island, and in other parts of the video, it looks like they raided a secondhand United Colours of Benetton store. Well, I guess the song is well titled then.
YU-KI's delivery of the refrain also seemed rather sing-song as if she were channeling her inner elementary school student. It kinda sums up this feeling of the past being seen through rose-coloured glasses. The overall message is one of chilling out, calling out to old friends and sloughing off the bad stuff, and perhaps for people of a certain generation (which would probably include me), it's a tempting invitation to go back to those old disco days. Certainly after hearing this song for the first time in so many years, it's a sense of compounded nostalgia as I listen to this 1990s "Love & Peace Forever" in the 2010s as it brings that feeling of the 1970s.
The song went Platinum as it peaked at No. 2. Apparently, "Love & Peace Forever" was the last single to feature the name of the band in small letters. From the next single forward, Komuro's group would go full caps...TRF.
Wow! I look at the above video and I feel the aging process. It was the best of times and the Komuro of times...as in the Komuro Boom of the mid-1990s when the unassuming Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）and his singers managed to steamroller a lot of J-Pop into submission, if only for a few years.
Again, TRF was one of those Komuro units that got my attention early in my time in Ichikawa. A few of their songs had already got me hooked on them and then I ended up getting a couple of their albums, "Billionaire" and "dAnce to positive". With that latter album, the first full track was "See the Sky ~ 1999...Tsuki ga Chikyuu ni KISS wo suru" (The Moon Kisses the Earth...and I hope that was meant in the purely poetic sense; I would like us to be around a bit longer), an explosive start to the album.
It looks like TRF and Komuro wanted to hit the ground running with "See the Sky" with all guns a-blazing. In the footage above, which I remember seeing live on TV, everyone was just partying away like it was 1999 (all due respect to the late Prince) so I kinda wonder if this had been shown during the Holidays. For some reason, it just had that year-end decadence feeling. And when I was listening to the song on the CD, I just thought that this could have been an opening theme song for a particularly action-packed cop show. The way that the song rolls out could have been well-matched with a opening credits montage sequence just like in the old "Mission: Impossible" series. And those English lyrics by Komuro seem as if he played the word association game a bit better than most lyricists at the time.
I don't remember much of Yuki Uchida's（内田有紀）singing career although I was aware that she was a member of the Komuro gang. However, thanks to the footage, I will always remember her as being a part of the performance for "See the Sky" even though it remains solidly in the TRF discography. I had been wondering what she was doing lately but then she did pop up in the last couple of "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）movies as one of the later regular members.
There were a couple of other tracks on "dAnce to positive" that I have already written about: "Masquerade" and "Crazy Gonna Crazy".
Getting recruited early in 1994 by that behemoth of English language schools, I got on that plane in November of that year to launch Phase II of my life in Japan. This time, I wasn't settled into the mountains but smack dab into a bedroom town of one of the largest cities on Earth. However, just like with that plane flight on the JET Programme, getting into the country once more was quite taxing with the NOVA higher-up dragging me from Narita Airport via the spaghetti-like railway system of Tokyo late at night until he finally got me to my temporary apartment in Shibamata, Katsushika Ward. I was happy that my two roommates who were an Australian couple were very welcoming as I settled in to see "HEY HEY HEY Music Champ"on Fuji-TV with the big comedic duo at the time, Downtown. Then, I caught one of my first commercials with Namie Amuro & Super Monkeys (later to become MAX) promoting "Try Me" which gave me my first glimpse at what teenage Japan was slowly metamorphosing into.
As I mentioned in Part III of my series on "Memories of My Standout Singers", there was a noticeable transition in Japanese popular music under way as the 1980s passed by. Well, in the three short years between gigs in Japan, there were also some changes. The music was indeed diversifying at the end of that decade but as I entered the country in the mid-1990s, a popified version of club and dance music was hitting the charts thanks to the Komuro Boom which occupied J-Pop for the first years of my time in Ichikawa City. Then when that trend started to peter out, a new aidoru wave poured onto the shores near the turn of the century but with the boys and girls appearing to amass under two banners, Johnny's Entertainment for the former and the Hello Project for the latter. At the same time, though, the genre of J-R&B started to form with singers performing hip-hop and soul which had me thinking of the disco component within City Pop back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Here is Part IV, the finale of the series.
1. Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）
She was merely a teen at the time but I can't recall any singer at her age who managed to not only set the music charts aflame but also spearhead fashion trends in Shibuya, the Mecca of teen culture. Amuro chased her chance and caught it like a Kevin Pillar (a particularly acrobatic Toronto Blue Jay) pop fly, as she became one of the prime accelerants for the Komuro Boom. This may be the only time in history that will actually have Pillar and Amuro in the same paragraph.
2. TRF
Another group of folks in the Komuro Boom years, TRF had already gotten some measure of fame before I arrived but it seems as if this modern song-&-dance unit really started pulling things off from late 1994 into 1995. This was the alphabet group that was on top of the charts years before another bunch of alphabet groups consisting of girls would take over J-Pop. "Boy Meets Girl" was just the start.
3. Sing Like Talking
As I've mentioned, this is the group that I accidentally but fortuitously stumbled upon. Sing Like Talking is one of the few mistakes that I've actually been happy to make in my choices. Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）and his band may have debuted even before my first post-university voyage to Japan, but, hey, better late than never. These are the guys who covered my dear genres of AOR and urban contemporary.
4. SMAP
Actually with these fellows, the music was just part and parcel of the fact that they were everywhere on TV, whether it be commercials, variety shows and dramas. SMAP was the unit that finally introduced me to the huge conglomeration of boy bands that is Johnny's Entertainment which is currently topped by Arashi（嵐）.
5. Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）
Well, if SMAP were there, then I guess the Balance of the Force was provided by Morning Musume. At one point, I had thought that the concept of aidoru was truly dead and buried but with the rise of these girls at the end of the final decade of the 20th century, I was proven wrong. Although AKB48 and their sister groups are now dominant, almost 20 years ago, it was these ladies, and like SMAP, at one point, they and their other sisters under the Hello Project umbrella were everywhere.
6. Misia
Aidorus were back in a new dynamic guise and then I saw singers who were hip-hopping and rapping and funking out the place. A decade earlier, it was all about rocking out with the guitars but coming to 2000, it was R&B. For me, I preferred the more old-school soul and that was provided by songbird Misia among other singers like bird and Monday Michiru. Listening to "Tsutsumikomuyouni"（つつむ込むように）, I got those old chills again from her voice.
7. Ego-Wrappin'
My interest in Shibuya-kei was all belated so I was catching up with Pizzicato Five discs. There was also a brief dalliance in North America with Louis Prima and all sorts of boppy jazz in the 90s which didn't transfer over here to Japan. However, going into the new century, I was literally shaken out of my sofa (and that's not easy to do) when I first heard the Osaka band Ego-Wrappin' perform "Psychoanalysis". Yoshie Nakano and Masaki Mori（中納良恵・森雅樹）may hail from the Kansai area but for some reason I've always thought of them being right at home in the live houses and clubs of Shibuya, Tokyo with their mix of old-time swing jazz and rock attitude.
35 years of evolving Japanese popular music. I can't even imagine what the next 35 will bring. Enka funk? Aidoru jazz? Who knows?
Let me start off with the official Wikipedia intro for the fellow:
"Tetsuya Komuro (小室哲哉 Komuro Tetsuya?), born November 27, 1958 in Fuchu, Tokyo, Japan, also known as TK, is a Japanese musician, singer-songwriter, composer and record producer. He is recognized as the most successful producer in Japanese music history and introduced dance music to the Japanese mainstream. He was also a former owner of the disco Velfarre located in Roppongi, Tokyo. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in pop throughout the 1990s."
Pretty good result for a guy who, as a kid, sold off his violin, guitar and electone without his family's permission to get a Roland SH1000 synthesizer for over 160,000 yen (according to the J-Wiki article). He knew where he wanted to go in music. Not sure I wanted to be in his house when his family did find out, though.
I did not know about his ownership of Velfarre, but with the help of a well-connected student, she was able to get a small bunch of us teachers and students into the happening nightclub years ago on a Saturday night. It wasn't quite as glitzy as I had imagined it would be, and considering how young some of those folks writhing on the dance floor appeared, I felt more like the parental chaperon ("Hey, dude, where are you putting those hands on my student?!"). As you can imagine, I didn't get anywhere near the floor.
Anyways, I figured with the "Creator" category, Tetsuya Komuro was due for his article. As with the other creators that I've written about, I can't give much in the way of a deep analysis of his musicality, but to paraphrase an old friend who heard the first several bars of Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）"Aibu"（愛撫）on her 1993 "Unbalance+Balance" album, "Ahh, that's Tetsuya Komuro...that's HIS sound, it's just gotta be him". And of course, he was right. And that was a year before I left for Japan on my long journey and splashed right into the Komuro Boom years where he brought in a mainstream dance sound for J-Pop.
The first time I heard of TM Network was through a performance the band did on one of the music shows on a video tape that one of my very first students had brought back for me from Japan. At the time, I didn't know who the three guys with the super hair manning the instruments were at the time, but I noticed that the keyboardist had hair as tall as that pile of whipped cream that's being put on pancakes that are all the rage in Japan now. I know that the performance wasn't of "Get Wild", one of TM Network's greatest hits but I would later find out that the keyboardist was indeed Komuro.
TM Network had been around since the early 80s so Komuro was already creating tunes for other singers (for the purposes of this article, I'm really going with his work as a composer more than as a lyricist), and one of his earliest creations was for the bashful teen above. The 1985 song was "Kimi ni Aete"（きみに会えて...Being Able To Meet You）with Norie Kanzawa（神沢礼江）as the lyricist.
Of course, that bashful teen was soon identified to the masses as big-eyed and boom-voiced Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）who had her breakthrough hit of "My Revolution" thanks to TK and Masumi Kawamura（川村真澄）a year later.
"My Revolution" is one of my favourite Komuro creations, and this is where I made one observation of his style. As much as those five years in the 90s were all about the Komuro dance-pop sound, my impression was that when he was not doing his techno-pop-rock thing with TM Network, he was making these spunky inspirational and uptempo songs for female singers such as Watanabe. "Sweet Planet" for Yukiko Okada（岡田有希子）from her 1985 album"Juu-gatsu no Ningyo"（十月の人魚...October Doll）was another example. Listening to it, I got that same feeling that I did for "My Revolution"; it sounded like TK was distilling Judy Garland or Reese Witherspoon in ever-optimistic Student Council President mode into every song back then. Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）took care of the lyrics here.
Example No. 3: Yoko Oginome's（荻野目洋子）"Non-Stop Dancer" from her top-selling 1986 "Non-Stopper" album. I heard this in the background of one of her videos from way back and just found it so chirpy and cheerful. Couldn't believe this was a Komuro tune at the time. Masumi Kawamura, TK's collaborator on "My Revolution", also worked on the lyrics here.
Yep, I just had to include "Aibu" by Akina Nakamori, the song that my friend immediately pegged as a TK invention just on sound. The above video doesn't have the greatest version but even then I could finally understand what my friend was on about. You might say that it's the prelude to the Komuro Boom.
And landing right at the beginning of that boom, we were all off to the races with TRF's "Boy Meets Girl"from 1994. The song just took me on its wing and soared off. I'm not the techno/dance music expert here but I think Komuro really enjoyed his House. TM Network (or as it was then called TMN) had disbanded that year but it looks like the songwriter had plenty on his plate to keep him busy and happy for a few years. And I think that TMN sound slid over with some more glitz added to be adopted by some of his family.
The first Komuro Family-connected CD I bought shortly after arriving in Japan was "Chase The Chance" by Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）. With its zippy melody and epic refrain, I thought it was the theme song for a detective or spy series. Instead, the show was about a mystery hero chef. Go figure. Still, it was the first song by Amuro that really caught my attention.
I remember one New Year's Eve that I stayed in Japan and was watching the telly after gobbling down my annual bowl of toshikoshi soba. There was one special rivaling NHK's Kohaku Utagassen which featured a good majority, if not the totality, of the Komuro Family. It was basically a Who's Who on the stage: TRF, Tomomi Kahala（華原朋美）, Namie Amuro, Yuki Uchida（内田有紀）, dos, globe, etc. And I just thought that Komuro was really on top of the Japanese entertainment world at that time. During much of the 1990s, there would be at least a few members of the family that would be showing up on a weekly music show or promoting a new release via commercial.
Of course, all good things must come to an end, and by the time the century drew to an end, it looked like a new era of R&B and a new breed of aidoru represented by Johnny's & Associates and Hello Project was coming to the fore. But between 1994 and 1999,Komuro had a fine run of it.
As I mentioned in my very first article featuring the song & dance unit, trf, my first encounter with the big Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）project was through a couple of Japanese siblings that I was tutoring here in Toronto in the early 90s (I wonder whatever happened to them). The brother was kind enough to lend me his CD single of "Boy Meets Girl", and I even received a tape of that song plus "EZ Do Dance" from another source...all before I hit Japan again for another round of work in late 1994.
So I already had a taste of trf even before leaving my native Canada. And when I did arrive in Tokyo, the group was still on the rise. Basically then, the very first new single by trf that I heard in Japan was "Crazy Gonna Crazy" which was released on New Year's Day 1995. Of course, Komuro took care of the words and music, and it was another dance-poppy hit....despite the failure in English syntax in the title. Unlike "Boy Meets Girl", this particular song wasn't soaring like a rocket but just kept things nice and happy on the dance floor, melodically speaking.
Instead of being a campaign song on a commercial, though, "Crazy Gonna Crazy" became the theme song for a Fuji-TV comedy-drama "Gaman Dekinai!"（我慢できない！...I Can't Take It!） I barely remember the opening credits for the show which had the cast running around as if they were in a Benny Hill sketch and acting appropriately crazy. Still, the song was far more memorable for me.
"Crazy Gonna Crazy" ended up being trf's biggest hit to date, selling close to 1.6 million copies. Hitting No. 1 on Oricon was pretty much obvious and by the end of the year, it was the 11th-ranked song for the annual charts. It also got onto the group's 5th album, "dAnce to positive" which also hit No. 1 and was the 2nd-most successful album for 1995. It even broke the 2-million barrier. At the time, being in the sway of the Komuro magic, I did get the album.
Almost a couple of decades later, the Avex Entertainment girl group Prizmmy☆ covered "Crazy Gonna Crazy" as their 9th single in October 2013. In fact, they also covered the other two trf songs I mentioned above earlier in the year. Their cover of this song, though, peaked at No. 71. The members at that time were Mia Kusakabe（日下部美愛）, Reina Kubo（久保玲奈）, Karin Takahashi（高橋果鈴）and Aya Sema（瀬間彩海）, none of whom were even close to being born when the original had come out. I guess I will be downing that bottle of Geritol later on tonight.
When I first heard trf's 15th single, "Brave Story", my impression was "Well, this is rather different." The TK Rave Factory was a singing and dancing unit that I had always associated with fast, uptempo and cheerful stuff. The guys who put some oomph into a Coke commercial in the early 90s and all that jazz.
"Brave Story", on the other hand, sounded like trf and Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）wanted to contribute a song to a James Bond movie right down to the title. Released in July 1996, it starts off with main vocalist YU-KI and her backup singers performing a bit of gospel before the music just blasts off with a melody of a suspense-thriller. Those first several notes have always had me imagining unmarked copters taking off on a black ops mission. I could hear the lead chopper pilot intoning something like "THIS IS GRUMPY TO PRINCE CHARMING...GETTING READY TO WAKE UP SNOW WHITE...PREPARING POISON APPLE..."
Komuro, as always, took care of the suddenly dramatic music and lyrics. And even the latter (co-written by Takahiro Maeda/前田たかひろ) read like something out of a melodramatic spy novel...about some fellow going off on a mission of sorts although the words aren't all that direct. The entire song made for a pretty fun listening experience but in a new way when it came to trf. And sure enough, I made a purchase. The song managed to peak at No. 4. It was also available on the group's first BEST compilation, "WORKS - The Best of TRF" which came out on New Year's Day 1998.
Cue ahead several years later. Speaking of compilations, it looks like there was a couple of tribute albums to trf this decade, including the 2-disc "TRF Tribute Album Best" which came out in March 2013. And on there, another 90s music unit, Every Little Thing, gave their own version of "Brave Story". However, instead of the full-on down-and-dirty theme for a Jason Bourne adventure that the original was, ELT's cover is a jaunty Latin-flavoured romp in the sun that has Kaoru Mochida's （持田香織）familiar and lispy vocals along with an arrangement that has echoes of 80s band PSY-S. It's also appealing in yet another way. For me, cover versions don't always work but I'm happy to write that this is the exception here.
Wherever you are, it's either January 31st 2015 or will be pretty soon. And that means we have hit the 3rd anniversary of "Kayo Kyoku Plus"and are currently nearing the half-million view mark. Good heavens! And I remember getting excited when we just hit one-thousand...
So, how do we commemorate it? Well, I've done my playlists for the 70s and 80s, so why not go with the 90s? And an interesting thing about 1990-1999 personally is that at the beginning of the final decade of the 20th century, I was halfway through my JET days in the mountains of Gunma while at the end, I was living in the bedroom city of Ichikawa-shi, Chiba Prefecture. Music obviously evolved during that time as well. During my days of teaching at the countryside junior high schools, J-Pop had just started with all of these bands diverging into different styles such as Princess Princess, Jitterin' Jinn and Dreams Come True, and at the same time, there was also a softer side via these female singers and songwriters like Miki Imai, Midori Karashima and Reimy. But then, coming into my far longer stint close to Tokyo at the end of 1994, the Tetsuya Komuro era was gaining steam and the end of the decade started featuring new forms of aidoru and R&B. Of course, what I've stated isn't even a full summary of what was going on...it is just throwing out a few tidbits.
And once again, as was the case with the other two lists, I had to think quite a bit about what to include. And of course, I'll probably later slap myself upside the head for the ones that I've excluded but just remembered.
In any case, it's time to proceed...
1. Misato Watanabe -- Summertime Blues (1990): Of course, Misato's "My Revolution" will arguably be the trademark song for the Kyoto-born singer with the voice as huge as her eyes. But for me, "Summertime Blues" has acted more and more like the welcoming tune to my 2 years teaching in Gunma. The intro with the picky guitar before the strings go into crescendo mode felt like a curtain rising on my first decade residing in a foreign country. It's simply one of the happiest and most hopeful songs that I have ever come across.
2. Kazumasa Oda -- Love Story wa Totsuzen ni (1991): There was no way that I could leave this one off the list. For the baseball game that was "Tokyo Love Story", Oda's magnum opus was that 10th player; I would be exaggerating if I said it was the secret character in the show featuring urban love in the one of the world's largest metropolises, but simply speaking, I cannot imagine any of the episodes or the cast without thinking of the theme song. It's a killer to sing at karaoke (believe me, I know), so since that one disastrous time I tried to sing it, I've become old and wise enough to leave "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" to the professional.
3. Noriyuki Makihara -- Donna Toki mo (1991): As much as "Summertime Blues" was the song to usher in my time as a resident/rookie teacher in Japan, Makihara's "Donna Toki mo" was the just-as-optimistic tune to see me off home to Canada. While I was sweltering through my vacation in Kyushu and Kobe during that final summer, I just had to hunt down the CD single for that happy song. I could get it at last and couldn't wait to put it into the player back in Toronto. Of course, there was the matter of actually buying the CD player...
4. Masayuki Suzuki -- Mou Namida wa Iranai (1992): One of the coolest urban contemporary songs that I have ever heard on either side of the Pacific Ocean, the default image I process through my mind whenever I hear "Mou Namida wa Iranai" is being in a car racing on an expressway with the well-lit nightscape of skyscrapers in the background. The saxophone that comes on halfway through is the cherry on top here. I'm not surprised that it was Martin's most successful contribution to his discography.
5. Dreams Come True -- Kessen wa Kin'youbi (1992): Since I was back in Canada for 3 years between tours of Japan, I missed out a lot on Dreams Come True's roll through the national pop culture, including their foray into late Friday night TV programming. But I was able to catch "Kessen wa Kin'youbi" through a brief snippet of "Ureshi Tanoshi Daisuki" that was tacked onto the end of a VHS tape that one of my friends had sent me. The disco tune had me pulling out the money order to get the album that it was placed on, "The Swinging Star". Naturally there have been other DCT songs before and after that were bigger hits, but personally for the 90s, this was the song for me.
6. trf -- Boy Meets Girl (1994): This may have been a jingle for a Coke commercial, but it was not only the song that represented my new beginnings as a teacher in more urban surroundings in Japan. It also served as a signpost of sorts for my entry onto the Magical Carpet Ride that Tetsuya Komuro had been supervising. Now, trf had already been pumping out the hits before I arrived at Narita Airport, but I couldn't get a better song to introduce me to the danciverse that Komuro created for us and acts like globe, Namie Amuro and Tomomi Kahala. "Boy Meets Girl" had me soaring through the headphones.
7. Kome Kome Club -- Abracadabra (1994): Again, there are a lot of other great songs by one of the great entertainment acts during the decade, but "Abracadabra" basically sums up why K2C was so popular live. Carl Smokey Ishii and his band regularly provided song and spectacle on the order of a Cirque de Soleil performance mixed in with good ol' Tito Puente. This particular song just brought together a fun combo of rock and R&B with some of that K2C magic that's hinted at in the title.
8. Maki Ohguro -- Atsukunare (1996): Like the average J-drama and its theme song, tie-ups between J-Pop and the Olympics are nothing new. However, one of the few examples of this that actually got me doing the dash toward the nearest CD store was Maki Ohguro's"Atsukunare". I don't remember much from the Atlanta Games outside of the tragic bombing there and an exhausted Yuko Arimori getting the Bronze in the Women's Marathon, but there was NHK's coverage of the Games, and I actually looked forward to the end of each broadcast just to see the sports montage with "Atsukunare" playing. Atsukunatta!
9. Hikaru Utada -- Automatic (1998): I first heard this as the theme song for a Sunday night variety program featuring comedy duo Utchan-Nanchan, and just thought that this was a little too cool for a zany show like that. Not too long after, I saw the famous video starring Utada shimmying around in the apartment with the lowest ceiling...man, the real estate market was really tight in New York City. But all kidding aside, I don't think "Automatic" by Utada revolutionized J-R&B (I may have been somewhat florid in the original article), but she and it certainly made things quite pleasant for the ears and added a bit more depth to the Japanese interpretation of the American genre.
10. Morning Musume -- Love Machine (1999): What can I say about the ragtag group of runners-up that turned into winners? "Love Machine" added that extra oomph to year-end parties and karaoke boxes at the end of the century, and sent Morning Musume into the pop culture ionosphere. And for a guy like me who gets all nostalgic for disco/funk, seeing this group hit the big time through this old 70s musical fad rather warms the heart. And for a few years at least into the new century, the girls had almost as much exposure as a certain group of guys from another aidoru conglomerate. Speaking of which, considering that at the beginning of the decade, aidoru were considered to be an endangered species, Morning Musume made it cool to be super cute again at the end of it.
Once again, I would like to thank everybody who has been reading in at some point during the past 3 years, and especially I would like to show my gratitude to the collaborators, JTM, Marcos. V, nikala, jari, Noelle and Larry for all of their insights and articles, and the commenters for their replies. Admittedly, our blog is a very niche one but I've been heartened by the fact that there are a lot of people out there who enjoy the myriad genres that are covered here and look forward to keep on going for the next little while at least.
By the time I got into Japan in late 1994, TK Rave Factory, aka trf, had already become a known commodity within J-Pop and had been in business since 1992. Still considering that I entered the country during their heyday and seemingly got barraged every few months with another chart-topper by the dance-&-music unit, I couldn't help but feel that the title of their 10th single, "Overnight Sensation - Toki wa Anata ni Yudaneru"(The Times Are Devoted to You) was somewhat reflective of their success. It just felt like in my eyes and ears that these guys popped up within a short period of time to take over the industry and spearhead the Komuro Boom (Namie, Tomomi and globe were also on their way).
"Overnight Sensation", yet another Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）creation, came out in March 1995 (just a month after their last hit single "Masquerade"), and unlike the first trf hit I'd heard, "Boy Meets Girl". this one was channeling good ol' disco. And the lyrics described the decadence and trials of painting the town red in one's 20s....as one of my friends terrifyingly put it, the teenage years with a fully-fledged credit card, apartment and job.Yup, I can completely relate to those days when I hear the lyrics "Any way you want, any time you need. Everybody shakes, everybody dance"...and for a good part of my 20s, I only had one of those three things.
trf had their dance moves for their hits but for some reason, I always remembered the choreography behind "Overnight Sensation" best, perhaps because it just seemed so reminiscent of the old disco dance floor that I saw on TV. Mind you, I wouldn't have dared try them out at home. Still, the group still made it all too inviting to grab a handful of friends and head over downtown.....better yet, grab trf and head over downtown.
However, in that official music video, I just found it a bit odd to see them dance in what looked like Clark Kent's farm in Smallville. I half-expected the transplanted Kryptonian to sweep YU-KI, KOO and the rest back off to Japan with a friendly warning about trespassing.
"Overnight Sensation" added to trf's legacy with another million-seller. It was also their 4th of 5 No. 1 hits that got them to the Kohaku Utagassen, along with it becoming the 27th-ranked single of the year. The unit's 5th studio album, "dAnce to positive" also included the song as one of its tracks. The album came out in the same month as the single and also hit No. 1, becoming the 2nd-most successful release of the year, hitting the 2 million mark in sales. It even won Best Album honours at the Japan Record Awards. Yup, I ended up getting my own copy as well.
17 years later, aidoru groups banded together to form a tribute album to trf titled "TRF Respect Aidoru Tribute!!" "Overnight Sensation" got its due via Tokyo Girls' Style as shown above. Below is also the recorded version. The album peaked at No. 119.
Getting back to the original group, the song was also the campaign tune for a Honda product. I'm not sure about the overnight part, but trf was definitely a sensation.
