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.
The first time I came across Anri（杏里） was on the 1983 Kohaku Utagassen where she performed "Cat's Eye". I just remember this very glammed-up singer just whizzing through the lyrics at warp speed, only catching the English phrases "passion fruit" and "wink at you". I mused about the philosophical depth of the expressions while I ate my New Year'sosechi food later that day.
Of course, I would find out later that "Cat's Eye" has become one of the more beloved of anime themes for the eponymous series featuring a sister trio of gorgeous and leggy cat burglars. And for Anri, the song would make for a huge boost in her career. Five years since she started singing, her 13th single, released in August 1983, was at the No. 1 spot on the Oricon weeklies for 5 weeks straight from the end of September to the end of October, and would become the 6th-ranking song of the year. It sold 1.3 million records. And no doubt, it was probably a hit in a lot of dance studios and aerobics gyms!
A lusher more disco-y version was made for Anri's 6th album, "TIMELY!!"which was released in December 1983. There's a brief but intense bass solo by Tomohito Aoki（青木智仁） which would make the musicians on "Seinfeld" weep for joy.
By the way, "Cat's Eye" was written and composed by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and Yuuichiro Oda（小田祐一郎）, the same duo that had created "Aoi Sangosho"（青い珊瑚礁）for Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）in 1980.
"Peter Rabbit to Watashi"(Peter Rabbit and Me) was another Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）-Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）collaboration that was indeed based on Beatrix Potter's famous fictional creation. It was released as a single on the same day (September 21 1982) that its mother album, "Cliche" was also released.
Compared to some of the other sweeping French songs that were also on the album such as "Kuro no Clair"（黒のクレール...Clair Noir） and "Tourbillon", "Peter Rabbit" was the whimsically poppy tune that usually inhabited an early 80s Ohnuki album amongst the more epic entries. However, this was a tune that has also become part of any Best-of-Ohnuki package. According to a Japanese interview on the site Music Shelf, when Ohnuki was complimented on how fresh "Peter Rabbit" was with this techno arrangement, she replied that making the song with Sakamoto was enjoyable since he was just so into playing with all these techno instruments as if they were toys. However, she did make one request in that the song be kept real and not too much into the Yellow Magic Orchestra's realm. She had made a similar request to YMO a couple of years earlier when making the album "Romantique".
Seeing that Easter is just around the corner, I thought I would throw in a Easter-themed kayo kyoku song. Now, Yumi Arai's（荒井由実） "Velvet Easter"doesn't really have anything to do with the Christian holiday or the Easter Bunny, except that Arai talks about a Sunday in the lyrics. The theme of the song seems to be loneliness as Yuming sings about staying home alone on a rainy Sunday. But you can judge from the following translated lyrics as you listen to the song:
Velvet Easter A showery morning The window is filled with glistening droplets Velvet Easter Please come and get me I'm sleepy but knock on my door The sky is so low As if the angels were going to descend It's my favourite season It's a different Sunday than usual Velvet Easter I decorated a white hat I bought yesterday With flowers Velvet Easter I'll wear the boots that Mama loved so long ago The sky is so low As if the angels were going to descend It's my favourite season It's a different Sunday than usual
"Velvet Easter", according to the J-Wiki writeup, was treated as Yuming's ticket into the big leagues of singing so it was promptly campaigned on TV, and I assume as well, on radio. The YouTube video here is from a 1976 TV broadcast from that time so it will sound a bit wobbly. Her back-up band here is Tin Pan Alley whose members included Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣） from YMO, and her husband, Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）.
The song was a track on Yuming's very first album released in 1973, "Hikoki Gumo"（ひこうき雲...Vapor Trails) which peaked at No. 9 on the Oricon weeklies. It was never released as a single at that time, but was the B-side song on Yuming's final single as Yumi Arai.
This song is aptly titled. It's just an aural version of orange juice...without the pits. Goes down really smooth. Veering a bit away from her Connie Francis approach to music, Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）went to LA to make her 4th album, "Miss M". The Side A songs (remember, these were the days of LPs) were recorded there while the Side B songs were done in Japan. "Morning Glory" was a Side A tune, and it reflected that sheen of American AOR-ness which Takeuchi can do so well.
And it was quite the international collaboration...amongst Japan, Canada and the United States. The Japan side was represented by Takeuchi, Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）who had written and composed "Morning Glory", and Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）, EPO and Shigeki Miyata（宮田茂樹）provided backup vocals. From Canada, the David Foster helped arrange the rhythm section and was on keyboards. And from America, a good chunk of the band TOTO (Jeff Porcaro, David Hungate, Steve Lukather) was the rhythm section. And lastly, producer and arranger Jay Graydon (Al Jarreau, The Manhattan Transfer, etc.) was on guitar.
"Morning Glory" was never released as a single, although the album "Miss M"peaked at No. 14 on the Oricon weeklies.
Strangely enough, though, despite all the production that went into his (to be) wife's "Morning Glory", according to the write-up on YouTube for one of the videos (now presumably taken down), Yamashita was supposedly not all that satisfied with the result, saying it was just a bit too AOR for his liking. So, a couple of years later when he released the album "For You", he released his own version of "Morning Glory" with a Japanese production. To be honest, aside from a slightly more stripped-down feel, I can't really tell the difference between the two. They both sound like the City Pop/AOR I have always loved to listen to. You can judge for yourselves.
The above pictures are ones I took of the liner sheet from "Miss M". You can see Mariya, David Foster, the TOTO gang, Jay Graydon, and in the middle picture, between David and Jay is Bill Champlin, who also helped out on the album. Champlin was with the band Chicago and was lead vocal on the hit, "Hard Habit to Break" later in 1984.
One of the most recognizable songs in kayo kyoku by intro if not by title, "Yoake no Scat"(Scat in the Dark) was Saori Yuki's （由紀さおり）debut single and is probably her trademark song. Usually if she appears on any show, it's to sing this one. As were most songs way back then, it goes for 3 minutes, with the first third devoted to Yuki giving one of the most laid-back scats (Lu, lu, lu...) in music.
Released in March 1969, it reached the top spot on the Oricon weeklies and became the No. 1 song of the year. Oricon had actually started in 1968, so "Yoake no Scat"is the 2nd song to get this honour. It also has the record for being the song with the shortest lyrics to ever become the No. 1 song of the year. It also earned a Japan Record Award, and Yuki got her first opportunity to appear on the 1969 Kohaku Utagassen.
Last year, Yuki (whose real name is Akiko Yasuda...安田章子) collaborated with the Portland, Oregon-based orchestra, Pink Martini, to release an album, "1969", a collection of kayo kyoku covers of that year, which included "Yoake no Scat"and Ayumi Ishida's"Blue Light Yokohama"which is listed in the enka section of this blog. The album garnered critical praise on both sides of the Pacific. In fact, in Japan, the album peaked at No. 4 on the Oricon weeklies after it had been released in October 2011. Yuki also became the oldest female singer to have broken into the Top 10 at the age of 63, and became the female singer to have had the longest gap between Top 5 hits (album or single) at a little over 41 years...her last Top 5 hit was in 1970.
I'm starting the Kyon-Kyon file pretty far into her career, but this is the song that reminds me most of her. It was her 28th single, and the 25th to break into the Top 10, when "Gakuen Tengoku"(Academy Heaven) was released in November 1989. It went as high as No. 3 on the Oricon weeklies and was the 44th-ranked song for 1990, spending 21 weeks on the charts. With the intro guitar blast and the "Are you ready? Hey, hey, hey" call-and-back, this is a karaoke wake-up call guaranteed to get everyone up and singing. By the way, Yoshio Nomura（野村義男）, the guitarist here, was once part of the Ta-No-Kin Trio, the darlings of Johnny's and Associates（ジャニーズ事務所） in the early 80s. The song had originally been part of her 1988 album "Natsumero"(ナツメロ...Old Melodies), which had Kyon-Kyon doing cover versions of kayo kyoku, but with "Gakuen Tengoku"'s success, it was given its own release.
"Gakuen Tengoku" was also the theme song of a popular school-based comedy titled "Aishi Atterukai"(愛しあってるかい....Are You Getting Any?) which starred Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子） herself as an English teacher (gonna have to check THAT out someday).
Kyoko Koizumi owns "Gakuen Tengoku" to such an extent that some people may not be aware that it is a cover of the 1974 song written by the then-most commercially successful lyricist of Japan, Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composed by Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫...aka Daisuke Inoue）, for the singing group, Finger Five. Very much a product of its time, these were the Tamamoto Brothers from Okinawa in their long-haired and bell-bottomed glory...kinda like the Japanese version of the Osmond Brothers of Utah.
The original, the group's 5th single under the Philips label, did even a bit better than Koizumi's cover. It peaked at No. 2 on Oricon and sold around a million records while Koizumi's version sold around half a million discs.
After listening to this atmospheric 1976 song by Keiko Maruyama (丸山圭子）, you might think that "Douzo Kono Mama"(Please Keep It So) belongs in a 1960s Peter Sellers movie scored by Henry Mancini (The Pink Panther, The Party). It's led by a bossa nova-playing FenderRhodes piano and strings that just kinda makes one head for that cocktail bar on the top of the Waldorf-Astoria. But actually, the song was composed and written by Maruyama herself at the age of 22. It became her biggest hit and peaked at No. 5 on the Oricon weeklies (I had to get this info from the liner notes of a compilation album).
"Douzo Kono Mama"has gotten onto a number of kayo kyoku compilation albums, but it originally got onto Maruyama's 2nd album, "Tasogare Memory"（黄昏めもりい....Twilight Memory), also released in 1976.
