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.
I'm glad I could finally find this one by mellow pop singer, Chiyono Yoshino（吉野千代乃）."Tsukiyo no Monologue"(Moonlit Monologue) starts off with some percussion that sounds slightly African before it takes off to become this pleasant J-AOR tune that feels like a nice nighttime flight over the city. I first heard this one on "Sounds of Japan", and it took me some years but I was able to track the song down through her album, "Montage" from April 1988. It wasn't the easiest hunt since I was still wrapping my mind around the kanji and Yoshino wasn't exactly the most well-known singer out there. Fortunately, I did live in a town called Tsukiyono. In any case, the lyrics were written by the singer and the music was by Tsukasa Fujita（藤田司）.
As for Yoshino, she hails from Chiba Prefecture and debuted in March 1986 with the single "Kanashimi no Tapestry"（悲しみのタペストリー....Tapestry of Sorrow） and the album, "Rain Ballade". Her singing career lasted into the early 90s, and since then, she has been a vocal trainer for some of the groups under the Hello Project umbrella such as Morning Musume, Melon Kinenbi and Country Musume.
Another song that I haven't heard in years, and I didn't know that the vocals belonged to veteran songbird Rumiko Koyanagi（小柳ルミ子）. My images of her involve the innocent young woman of the early 70s singing gentle ballads like "Kimi no Furusato"（君の故郷） and the extroverted playgirl from the 80s onwards performing "Ohisashiburi ne"（お久しぶりね）.
I heard her 35th single, "Midare Gami" (Dishevelled Hair) as an entry whose title I missed on one of the "Sounds of Japan" radio shows. It was released in May 1982, perhaps a year before her big hit of "Ohisashiburi ne" was released. The title and the lyrics by Makoto Kitajo（喜多条忠） may be paying tribute to the series of short poems, tanka, by Akiko Yosano in 1901, describing a woman whose passions for love wouldn't be restrained by the social conventions of the day and would almost destroy her. The words by Kitajo tell about her during this darker later time as she pines for real love. I've seen this image portrayed a number of times in the various historical dramas via female characters with hair and fashion that weren't perfectly set with the leery, sidelong stares....pretty much a red flag that symbolized "Approach with extreme caution".
Koyanagi's"Midare Gami" isn't the same song as Hibari Misora's（美空ひばり） song of the same title. The melody for the Koyanagi single was made by Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）, and slowly slips through with the help of a sultry saxophone which seems to represent the now-despairing woman as she walks on the streets in a disillusioned daze. It's definitely a different take by Koyanagi when I think about those two other images of her that I mentioned at the top.
The song itself didn't do all that well on the charts, peaking at No. 100 on Oricon. However, I think it still has quite a bit of atmosphere to it.
I had a really good time listening to Kaela Kimura's（木村カエラ）"Jasper" and even better time watching the official crazy-cool black-light video that I ended up getting the single.
Released in February 2008 as her 11th single, it was Kimura's first foray into the technopop realm, thanks to Takkyu Ishino（石野卓球）of Denki Groove providing the earworm melody while the singer provided the lyrics and the earworm delivery. I had known about the British-Japanese singer before this single but I hadn't really gotten into her brand of pop-rock. For some reason, I've always seen her as being the Japanese version of Canada's Avril Lavigne. In any case, the video for "Jasper" is eye-catchy and feels like going through a mix of TRON and Alice's Wonderland. The single itself went as high as No. 9 on the Oricon weeklies.
As for Kimura's biography, you can take a look at the Wikipediaarticle.
For years, I used to hear this instrumental jingle for a car commercial that sounded as if it came from a Benny Hill episode. I mean, the saxophone in it just sounded so goofy and footloose and fancy-free. Little did I know that it was once the theme song for a popular 1974 detective show, "Kizu Darake no Tenshi"(Battered Angels) on NTV. And I was surprised that it was by the same guys, the Takayuki Inoue Band（井上堯之バンド）, who came up with the iconic theme for the cop show, "Taiyo ni Hoero"（太陽にほえろ）, but then again, there was that sax in that theme, too. Perhaps I should have known. And to cap it all off, I actually had the song amongst the short stack of novelty mini-CDs that I got from my former student as a going-away present.
(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)
Since its use as the theme for "Kizu Darake no Tenshi", it's been recycled over the decades as a jingle for a number of ads, including the one for that aforementioned car. Another ad is for the above, a drink that mixes espresso coffee and soda water....blecch!
The Queen of Winters came up with another chipper winner of the season with "Mafuyu no Kaeri Michi" (Mid-Winter Road Home) right from New Year's Day 1997. Although thousands of people in the Northern Hemisphere in 2014 have been going through Hell getting home this winter, I think Kohmi Hirose（広瀬香美） had something far more cheerful in mind when she created this song as the woman in it goes through entire flights of fantasy about the ideal date as she's heading home via the subway. Perhaps the lyrics don't have that image of skiing but that didn't stop the Alpen company from once again using one of her tunes as a commercial jingle. For me, the refrain is the standout part of the song.
The above is just an excerpt of the official music video for "Mafuyu". The song peaked at No. 10 on Oricon. Considering all of the meteorological calamities that have piling up here, the US and Japan, a little happy winter song is in order.
And here is an early 90s Alpen commercial with a Hirose song.
I used to know the aidoru group, Shojotai（少女隊）, mostly through the pages of the teen aidoru magazines such as "Heibon" and "Myojo" back in the 1980s. However, there was one song of theirs that got onto one of those compilation tapes that I had bought in Chinatown.
First, a bit of background on Shojotai through the auspices of J-Wiki. Through auditions held in 1983, three girls were selected by the names of Miho, Reiko and Chiiko（ミホ・レイコ・チーコ）, with their debut single, "Forever - Gingham Check Story" coming out in August 1984. Apparently for that song and their first album, "Shojotaiphoon", the powers-that-be for the girls went sky-high on the money and All-American for the production values. Shunichi Tokura（都倉俊一）, one of the masterminds behind the songs for Pink Ladyand Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵） back in the previous decade, was the first producer, some of America's top-flight studio musicians were brought into the mix with the recordings done in Los Angeles, and a video and photobook were also produced for the occasion. But as they say about the best-laid plans, Shojotai didn't take off. And over the next several months, a planned commercial for a candy company starring the girls was heavily delayed due to a mysterious poisoning case involving the confectionary industry, Chiiko decided to leave the group, Reiko was injured and a number of their TV appearances were cancelled.
It was a rather sad state of affairs until Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康） came into the picture in early 1985, and a member to replace Chiiko was selected by the name of Tomo（トモ）. Suddenly, their 3rd and 5th singles started making inroads onto the charts (at least, those on the music shows "The Best 10" and "The Top 10") and their popularity started rising to the point that by 1986, concerts were taking place not only domestically but in Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia. This story would've made for a fine comeback drama series.
The song that got onto my compilation tape was "Motto Charleston" (More Charleston) which was their 7th single from March 1986. It was written by Akimoto and composed by Yasushi Maeda (前田保...I hope I've gotten the first name right). I don't think Benny Goodman or Glenn Miller need to fear any encroachment on their territory (although they might roll over a bit in their graves), but the song is a cute aidoru approach to some early jazz through synths. And perhaps Akimoto's current charges in AKB48 may give (or might already have given) this a shot on the concert circuit. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out how successful in terms of the rankings "Motto Charleston" got.
Shojotai released 14 singles before their initial breakup in 1989 and then a 15th came out 10 years later when Reiko, Chiiko and Tomo got back together as 1999 Shojotai. Miho was also in there at the beginning of the reunion but had to pull out due to a baby on the way. As of now, it seems that Reiko has had the most recent action in showbiz as an actress and voice actress under her real name of Reiko Yasuhara（安原麗子）.
"Wakakihi Bourou" (Watchtower of Youth) is a Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子） creation that was included in her 4th album, "Romantique" from 1980. As I mentioned for the article on that album, it was a special release in that this was the LP that showed a new Ohnuki approach. She started creating her own technopop (thanks to her YMO buddies) and more languid European melodies, away from her former New Music stylings.
This particular song from the album is more on the French side of things as Ohnuki sings about the protagonist looking back at the old days of youth that will never return. According to J-Wiki, Ohnuki didn't write the song as a rose or sepia tinted trip to nostalgia; in the lyrics, she also mentions about the hard times when money was not in great supply, although I think the overall tone of the song is rather bittersweet instead of contented/satisfied. The image seems to be one of looking at that faded photo album in the retirement home.
Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一） arranged "Wakakihi Bourou", and I thought the instrumentation bookending the song was pretty interesting. The intro has that introspective classical piano and the end has that "lonesome cowboy" twangy guitar which hinted to me that The Professor wasn't completely obsessed with computer music at the time.
But the first time I ever heard of this song was actually through her self-cover in which Ohnuki sings it totally in French under the title, "Amour Levant". The song was included in that double-CD BEST album that I got of hers, but it was originally part of her 8th album, "Kaie"（カイエ） which came out in 1984. The arrangement though here is more dream-like and orchestral.
