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 don't think Toshinobu Kubota's （久保田利伸）"Oh! What A Night!" ever came out as a single despite what his discography states on the English Wikipedia since neither his website nor J-Wiki lists it as such. However, it seems to have first popped up on his first BEST album, "The Baddest" which came out in October 1989. I picked up the album since on first listening to some of his music, I thought he was the only truly funky Japanese singing dude at the time.
"Oh! What A Night!" is one of my most-remembered songs by him from his early period. Perhaps it's not as developed as some of his later hits with the one synthesizer seeming to be the main instrument here, but it certainly has Kubota showing what he is capable of with his vocal strutting. At the time, since I hadn't known anything about City Pop, Kubota's stuff including this song was probably the closest thing I could associate with American R&B or anything in the urban contemporary vein. Of course, things have changed greatly for me since then. Still, this song is definitely one fine musical trip downtown.
Kubota and lyricist Masumi Kawamura （川村真澄）were behind the creation of "Oh! What A Night", the same pair who also came up with the just-as-funky "Time Shower ni Utarete"（TIMEシャワーに射たれて）.
Singer-songwriter Mayo Okamoto （岡本真夜）from Kochi Prefecture was a regular musical presence during the last half of the 90s and into the next century. She came up with a number of popular songs such as her debut, "Tomorrow" in 1995, but for me, my personal favourite by her was a single that never cracked the Top 10.
"Takaramono" (My Treasure) was the theme song for a mystery-comedy series on TBS, "Mama Chari Keiji"（ママチャリ刑事...Mommy Bike Detectives）starring veterans Yuko Asano and Misako Tanaka. But it was that theme song with the radio-friendly light R&B touch that had me going to the CD store. Released in February 1999, I never figured Okamoto to bring in a bit of that soul music into her material, but listening to the good feelings of "Takaramono", I began reminiscing about folks like Al Jarreau and DeBarge from the early 80s. As I mentioned, the song only got as high as No. 13 on the weeklies, and eventually ranked No. 219 on the annual charts.
Still, I know what I like and "Takaramono" is still my treasure.
The famous declaration by Michael Rennie's Klaatu from the original version of "The Day The Earth Stood Still" is what I think of whenever I hear the robotic opening from globe's 3rd single, "Sweet Pain". Released in November 1995, and created by Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲也）, I used to like it somewhat more than I do now, but it still brings a few of the nostalgic pangs from that time in the 1990s when Komuro was on top of the J-Pop pyramid.
Listening to it again after so long, I enjoy Keiko's vocals and the early 80s-ish synths but I can only tolerate Marc Panther's rap and Komuro really doesn't have much business being a backup vocal. It's kinda like having that off-tune friend at karaoke who never fails to sing along while the actually good singer is behind the mike. But then again, he was the boss.
"Sweet Pain" went Triple Platinum and went as high as No. 2 on Oricon. It was also on the unit's debut album, "globe" from March 1996.
This was quite the popular song at karaoke in Japan during my Gunma and Ichikawa days. I can distinctly remember the various karaokettes (yep, my own word) singing "Try to love, try to be loved."
Since this was a Miho Nakayama（中山美穂）song at the turn of the decade, "Aishiterutte Iwanai!"(Don't Tell Me You Love Me!) has more of that contemporary uptempo dance-pop beat to it. And considering the title, I could imagine Miporin skipping down a Tokyo street trying to get away from some of her insistent admirers as in a trendy drama. In fact, it was the theme song for one of her star vehicles on Fuji-TV, "Suteki na Kataomoi"（すてきな片思い...A Wonderful One-Sided Love）from October 1990. I never caught the show but I vaguely remember seeing the opening credits with Miho and cast goofing about on screen as they usually do in such a program.
"Aishiterutte Iwanai!" was released as Nakayama's 20th single just a week after the drama premiered. The lyrics were by Yoshihiko Ando （安藤芳彦）and the music was by Hitoshi Haba（羽場仁志）. It peaked at No. 3 on Oricon and ended the year at No. 69 on the annual charts, and even lasted a year later as the No. 85 song of 1991. No wonder my karaoke memories have that song well-embedded.
I'm finishing up the trilogy of articles here I've done for the songs from the 1980 entry of the original "Uchuusenkan Yamato"（宇宙戦艦ヤマト...Space Cruiser Yamato）series, "Yamato yo Towa ni"（ヤマトよ永遠に...Be Forever Yamato）. After "Hoshi no Pendant"（星のペンダント）and "Ai no Inochi"（愛の生命）, which were both grand and emotional in their own way, there was the showstopper and the official theme at the end of the movie, "Ai yo Sono Hi Made" (Love, Until That Day) sung originally by Akira Fuse（布施明）.
The above video has the final scenes from "Be Forever Yamato", and "Ai yo Sono Hi Made" leads it off. Every time I've seen the end of the film when Fuse is singing the song, I kinda get that cornball and throat-lumping impression at the same time. I mean, I couldn't quite believe that the animators actually went for that cliché lovers-running-joyfully-toward-each-other-in-a-field shtick, but that was more of a dream sequence representing how Kodai-kun and Yuki were feeling than what was actually happening, of course. Still, considering all of the battles and sacrifices that the crew of the Yamato went through in that particular chapter of the franchise (and the horrifying massacre of humans by the alien invaders), I think perhaps some sappiness was deserved for the characters.
Fuse composed the song while Yu Aku （阿久悠）wrote the words for release as one of Fuse's last singles in July 1980. The ballad has that old sunset cowboy feel that perhaps a number of anime ending themes had back then, and there is also that hint in there that perhaps the singer was channeling a bit of Frank Sinatra's"My Way". Moreover, it fit quite nicely with Kodai and the rest of the crew heading back to Earth after another of their long arduous missions.
I'm pretty sure that "Ai yo Sono Hi Made" is somewhere in the anison section of a catalogue in a karaoke box, but I think the challenger for this song better have some supremely leather lungs and vocal cords.
Speaking of anison, the master himself, Isao Sasaki （ささきいさお）did his own cover version of the song. Of course, his version is also beautifully delivered which makes it rather difficult for me to choose between his and Fuse's takes. However, I'm gonna have to go with the original guy ultimately due to the arrangement by Hiroshi Miyagawa（宮川泰）.
Well, try listening to this as you look at the sunset. Yeah, schmaltzy I am.
P.S. I'm a bit surprised that I hadn't mentioned it earlier in the other articles, but I first saw "Be Forever Yamato" through video rental. It was actually a taping of the television broadcast of the movie, and as it turned out, the television station, due to reasons of time (and boy, Japanese networks are extremely anal when it comes to going long on programming....even baseball games going into extra innings), cut out the "Star Wars"-like battle scene in the middle of the film. I didn't even realize that there was such a scene until I finally got the DVD years later!
My first memories of the 80s/90s bandTM NETWORK originated from a "Music Station" episode that a former student had been kind enough to tape for me when she returned to her home country for a visit. Naoto Kine, Takashi Utsunomiya and Tetsuya Komuro （木根尚登・宇都宮隆・小室哲哉）had quite the hair (their styling must have been placed down under "Set Construction" in the band's financial statements) and the song they performed (I have long forgotten the title) reminded me of supergroup ASIA's "Heat of the Moment" with that mix of techno and rock.
Then some years later as I was wrapping up my first stint in Japan, I was watching one of those Camellia Diamond commercials which have always had the knack to use some pretty darn cool music, and one of the 1991 ads had TM NETWORK's"Love Train" as the supermodel Linda Evangelista (from St. Catherines, Ontario, may I add) looked happily at buffalo....for some reason that only the Japanese knew. My first impressions of the song were that: 1) it was completely different from The O'Jays "Love Train" of 1973, and 2) it sounded a bit like B'z-ish rock. In any case, it was time to part with my yen.
Written and composed by future 90s J-Pop Svengali Komuro, when I bought the CD single and heard the entire piece, I also thought that there was also a bit of Europe's "The Final Countdown" thrown in as well. I'm not sure if Komuro had been channeling some of that 80s Western pop-rock when he created TM NETWORK's 25th single (May 1991), but apparently it was the first time he made it with karaoke in mind. And as for the title, his thought processes followed a word association game starting from the title "Day Tripper" which gave rise to "trip" which in turn moved to some sort of moving vehicle and finally to "train". No word from J-Wiki whether Komuro had heard of The O'Jays.
The single hit the top spot on Oricon and eventually sold nearly 540,000 copies, and ended the year at 17th place on the annual charts. The song would also find its way onto TM NETWORK's 8th album, "EXPO" which was released in September 1993. It also hit No. 1 and sold about 890,000 copies.
Personally, though, I think "Get Wild" is still my favourite TM NETWORK song.
Last night as I was watching the news on CTV, I could feel the aging process speeding up. The reason wasn't because of some news story but on the admission by one of the two co-anchors that she had never heard of Bananarama before! Mind you, Michelle Dube was probably born at the same time that the British trio had hit it really big with "Venus", but still.....OUCH! Anyways, Bananarama's cover of the Shocking Blue single from 1969 was truly a heavy-rotation song and video on Canada's Muchmusic and a popular tune on the dance floors at some of our favourite haunts in Toronto such as The Copa or Sparkles.
Now, the danceable appeal of "Venus" was also not lost on the Japanese pop music scene. According to the article on the song on J-Wiki, Kiyohiko Ozaki（尾崎紀世彦）and Momoe Yamaguchi （山口百恵）in the 1970s had covered it on their respective albums (couldn't find Ozaki's cover anywhere and Yamaguchi's supposed concert cover just turned out to be some sort of stage performance involving a motorcycle while the music only was playing in the background: you can give it a listen here -- http://music.163.com/#/song?id=671701).
If I were to put up an article on a Yoko Nagayama （長山洋子）song from the last couple of decades, the genre tag I would place on the right there would most certainly be enka since she has been an enka singer since 1993. However, for almost a decade previously, Nagayama was one of the many cute aidoru of the 80s from the various talent agencies. She debuted in 1984 with "Haru wa Sa-ra Sa-ra"（春はSA-RA SA-RA...Spring is Refreshing） but her big hit from those days was her cover of "Venus", and probably for most fans who had known her before she sported the kimono and shamisen, this would be the song that she's most identified with. I vaguely remember seeing her on the music shows performing it and nowadays, such video footage is probably shown whenever Nagayama shows up as a guest on some program doing a retrospective on her life. But watching the video above, she cut quite a dynamic figure especially with that Yoko Oginome-esque outfit. Her cover was released as her 8th single in October 1986 and went as high as No. 10, selling 400,000 copies. Shocking Blue guitarist Robbie van Leeuwan wrote and composed the original "Venus" but for the Japanese version, Hitoshi Shinohara （篠原仁志）provided the lyrics.
Speaking of the other Yoko, Oginome （荻野目洋子）also gave her version of "Venus" (excerpt only) several weeks following the release of the Nagayama single via her 6th album, "Non-Stopper" which came out in December 1986. If there were anyone who would be picked as the go-to singer for this one, Oginome probably would've been one of the top 3 folks to be selected. Her cover along with the 4 official singles that came out of the album helped push "Non-Stopper" to become the No. 1 album of 1987 on Oricon.
