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.
Yoshiko Sai's（佐井好子）"Taiji no Yume" (Infant's Dream) is quite the ride. The title track for the singer/poet's 3rd album in September 1977, it starts off as a lonely pianist's dreamy jazz riffing with Sai softly scatting away. Then a little over a minute into the song, it starts accelerating with a Latin guitar as an engine before the strings launch it into the heavens. From there, "Taiji no Yume" retains that Latin feeling but it also takes on the atmosphere of something grander and more operatic, perhaps fit for a movie soundtrack, thanks to the arrangement and Sai's vocals. I'm not quite sure if it would be too frivolous to designate this as a mere pop song which is why I categorized it as a New Music tune.
As we get into the latter half of this 9-minute-and-change epic, the rocket carrying "Taiji no Yume" seems to come straight down like a screaming missile and then even make a crash landing with both piano and then Latin guitar competing with each other on which can create the most sonic ruckus for close to a minute and a half. Finally, in the last several seconds, things go completely slow and spacey...I was expecting the Starchild from "2001: A Space Odyssey" to appear. As I said at the top, "Taiji no Yume" is quite the ride by Sai who wrote and composed it according to her website.
Initially, I'd thought that the song was a track from Sai's debut album"Mangekyo"（萬花鏡...Kaleidoscope） back in 1975, and "Taiji no Yume" could have fit that dramatic cover with the singer standing in the middle of those grassy hills. However, it had its own album which you can see here. It's got that weird and mystical design, and I think that the child in the glass vase minded by the cat (feel free to psychoanalyze) may actually be Sai herself.
One of the commenters for the YouTube video with "Taiji no Yume" noted that the title may refer to a concept from a mystery novel titled "Dogra Magra"（ドグラ・マグラ）written by Kyusaku Yumeno（夢野久作）, an author who had a flair for the surreal and avant-garde. The trailer for the 1988movie adaptation is above and the plot involves a young man who wakes up in an asylum with his memory gone and the revelation that he killed his wife on their wedding day. There might be something akin to some of David Cronenberg's early movies there.
Decided to go for a twofer here, especially since it's been a short while since I've inserted an Anri（杏里）article. I'm going to cover both the A and B sides for her 18th single, "Morning Squall" released in June 1986. Yup, it's been over 33 years since this one came out, and considering how it's like right now weather-wise (steady precipitation), I'd say that this was a most appropriate choice.
First off, let's start with "Morning Squall". Launching with some distinct keyboards, I thought that there was a fair bit of foreshadowing in terms of what Anri's music was going to sound like later that decade. Yumi Yoshimoto（吉元由美）, Anri's songwriting partner during that later dynamic R&B phase, actually took care of the lyrics for "Morning Squall" while Ichiro Hada（羽田一郎）brought about some of that light funk. I think there is still some of that Toshiki Kadomatsu（角松敏生）feeling in the overall arrangement (Kadomatsu having contributed to a lot of her music some years prior) although that role here was fulfilled by Jun Irie（入江純）.
The B-side, "Evening Rain" reminds me slightly of some of her early 80s AOR/City Pop style, and taking into account the rain outside my window as I type this, this was the reason that I decided to go with "Evening Rain" before I then settled on including the A-side as well. Lyricist Kazunori Sonobe（園部和範）provided the story of what sounds like the perfect ride in a convertible with all of the trimmings before the rain starts coming in, but even then, the couple stays quite happy. The late Yuuichiro Oda（小田裕一郎）certainly shares the same sentiments in his music; for a rain song, this is one very upbeat tune.
"Morning Squall/Evening Rain" peaked at No. 51 on Oricon. The former ended up on Anri's 9th original album"Mystique" which also came out at the same time as the single with it reaching No. 6 on the charts. The latter song hadn't been placed on any album for the longest time until a remastered version of "Mystique" was released in 2011 with it included as a bonus track.
Ah, Vie de France...along with kaiten sushi, tonkatsu and a can of Max Coffee, any time I visit my old stomping grounds of Tokyo, I just gotta have some sort of meal at this patisserie chain. Whether it's that fancy hot dog with the ketchup or the really buttery danish, I know that I will be gaining many calories there.
For those fans of Shibuya-kei chanteuses, Kahimi Karie（カヒミ・カリィ）and Takako Minekawa（嶺川貴子）, this may make your night. It sure surprised me since I hadn't known that the two of them were actually singing together, however brief the time was.
Back in 1990, at the very beginning of their careers, Karie and Minekawa (under her stage name of Mamene Kirerie) were together as a duo known as Fancy Face Groovy Name. They recorded just one song together titled "Love Is Yé-Yé (Looking For My Idol)" which was created by their genre brethren, Flipper's Guitar, and inserted into a compilation album called "Fab Gear".
I'm not too well versed in the French pop genre of yé-yé, but "Love Is Yé-Yé" strikes me as being the story of Karie and Minekawa as happy-go-lucky teens going through some merry anarchic times in Paris or a particularly bohemian corner of Tokyo. Berets and croissants not included.
Woof! Haven't heard this one by Southern All Stars（サザンオールスターズ）in a good long time.
Back in high school, I had a middle-aged, very eccentric and fairly tragic fellow as an English teacher about whom I, along with a number of my classmates, felt that he possessed a certain genius within him but somehow it was overlaid by a lot of madness as well, and not in the congenial Doctor Who way. In one of his relatively few lucid moments, he often referred to the tribal experience where people would come together and share in something truly celebratory (kinda like the Raptors' victory celebration back on Monday). Although I wasn't in that particular class, I was once told by a school friend who had been in that lesson that the teacher once had all thirty kids stand up and do a famous march based on something by Shakespeare. My friend mentioned that was probably one of those tribal experiences that our teacher had been talking about.
Anyways, commenter Fireminer had asked about this 37th single by Southern All Stars from May 1996, "Ai no Kotodama ~ Spiritual Message". As I noted above, it's a song that I haven't heard in many years and once my ears heard it once more, I realized that it did have its 15 minutes of fame in karaoke boxes and TV shows. Listening to vocalist Keisuke Kuwata（桑田佳祐）strut and twist through the lyrics like an Olympic ski slalom master, my old teacher's concept of tribal experiences came to the fore again.
Fireminer asked about the meaning of the lyrics by Kuwata, and apparently so have a number of people online via Reddit and other sites. I myself have taken a look at those lyrics and I'm still mystified. There are fanciful expressions and references to lyric poetry, stories of blue stars, summer melodies and even the abode of the Hindu god of death, Yama. What does it all mean?
Well, after looking at those lyrics and then reading through the J-Wiki article on "Ai no Kotodama" which means "Love's Power of Language", I theorize that it was just Kuwata throwing in all of these mystical concepts and patching them together into a musical quilt. And into that quilt, he added embellishments such as playing around with the delivery of those words; when I first heard the song in the 90s, I had assumed that there was some French in there but actually it's mostly Japanese with some English contributed by tarento/host Katsuya Kobayashi（小林克也）and Indonesian rap by music scholar and gamelan performer Hideharu Umeda（梅田英春）. Kuwata's melody even includes a bit of a jazz riff (including something Miles Davis-ish at the beginning).
"Ai no Kotodama" hit No. 1 and went Triple Platinum, ending up as the 7th-ranked single for 1996. It was also a track on Southern All Stars' 12th album from July of that year, "Young Love" which also hit the top spot and the 7th spot on the yearly rankings. In fact, the album is currently the 41st-ranked entry in Oricon's all-time album charts with sales of 2 million.
All in all, I think it's Southern All Stars putting out another cool hit song but also this time, the band is having a tribal (and fun) experience with the wonderful world of the languages. The lyrics aren't there to convey a certain story but just to provide the equivalent of a linguistic playground for the kids of SAS. So, on that basis, it's probably no wonder that I was having trouble translating the song. Let the words flow through and around you, and just enjoy the sounds of the music and words. However, if any of you intrepid translators have been able to translate the entire song, let me know what you think about it.
I've come across another one of Saburo Kitajima's（北島三郎）entries in his 『女』-titled series of songs which started all the way back in 1965 with "Hakodate no Hito"（函館の女）and includes "Onomichi no Hito"（尾道の女）. This time, it's "Satsuma no Hito" (Woman of Satsuma).
The travelogue and the lady take us to Kagoshima at the southern tip of Kyushu, which was once known as the Satsuma Domain back in the Edo Era. This February 1968enka tune by Sabu-chan has got plenty of oomph with that rat-a-tat brass as the singer tries to soothe away the melancholy of a woman recovering from heartbreak in this city that has been called "The Naples of the Eastern World", according to Wikipedia.
Created by the same duo behind the "Hito" series, Tetsuro Hoshino and Nobuo Shimazu（星野哲郎・島津伸男）, Kitajima seems to be cheering up the forlorn lass through a tour of Kagoshima via places such as Kagoshima Bay and Tenmonkan Avenue in his usual chivalrous fashion. There's always that feeling of pride in his voice.
Was watching the latest episode of "Uta Kon"（うたコン）tonight and on their regular segment of looking back at past performances under the theme of travel this week, the wonderful singer Teresa Teng（テレサ・テン）appeared once more in her glory.
I don't think that this was the song featured for her in the show, but re-discovering "Yoru no Joukyaku" (Night Passenger) was very pleasant. With those strings and bluesy sax, natsukashii is an understatement. Moreover, there is that extra element from what sounds like a harpsichord which further adds to the sepia tones of time here.
Written by Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）and composed by Daisuke Inoue（井上大輔）under his real name Tadao Inoue（井上忠夫）, "Yoru no Joukyaku" inhabits that certain part of Mood Kayo which has a woman trying to flee her woes of heartbreak by traveling, with the conveyance this time being a train. The ballad was her 5th single in Japan, released in July 1975. Listening to it again brought back memories of being in either a small nomiya or a karaoke establishment.
I saw this fellow's video some months ago and was entranced by the director's love of polygons and circles, although I was a total washout when it came to geometry back in high school. I also like how even the lyrics are made to participate in the progression of the video.
This tribute to shapes was created as the environment for "Tsumetai Jounetsu" (Cold Passion) by singer-songwriter Takeshi Nakatsuka（中塚武）. The song was a track on Nakatsuka's February 2013 album"Lyrics", a project where he pretty much handled everything with the possible exception of the horns. My imagination has been running a bit hot in terms of how I would describe "Tsumetai Jounetsu"...a boho slice of French jazz-influenced pop, perhaps? With the description of French jazz, maybe it can even categorized as Shibuya-kei.
Nakatsuka hails from Yokohama and graduated from Waseda University after which he entered the current BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Inc. and worked there for several years. In the late 1990s, he led his own band QYPTHONE, and in 2004, he made his solo debut with the album "Joy". He brought over a crossover sound based on jazz and Latin as well as provide music for commercials, TV and movie soundtracks, and other singers. Up to now, Nakatsuka has released 12 albums and one single.
