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.
It's been a good long while since I've written about J-rocker Nanase Aikawa（相川七瀬）. In fact, whenever I think of her, my mind will always go back to her time in the mid-1990s.
Back in 2013, I wrote about one of my favourites by Aikawa which was "Cosmic Love", her 12th single from March 1999. It's definitely one of those fun and crazy sleep-rousers that had me rushing out to the CD shop to track it down and then purchase it. The coupling song, "Crying", though, makes for quite the counterpoint as it is a more introspective pop/rock ballad that sounds as if it had been made in the 80s or early 90s. Written by Aikawa and composed by Hiroshi Uemura（上邑博）, it stands out to me because I usually just hear her uptempo material so a ballad actually comes across as refreshing.
It also makes me wonder what has Aikawa been doing over the past couple of decades. According to her J-Wiki profile, her musical career hasn't officially ended, but she's also now known as a psychotherapist and is based in Tokyo's Kokugakuin University in its Shinto Studies department.
As a present from one of my students years ago, I was given a small sheaf of gift certificates worth about 10,000 yen that I could spend at just about every department store that was in existence in the Tokyo and Chiba areas. Well, I decided that I could just walk the ten minutes from my humble abode in Ichikawa to the neighbourhood Daiei store, and it was there that I spend the whole wad on this long black trench coat that I thought would look pretty good over a suit. And it did! I'm also happy to note that this coat that I got well over a decade ago is still hanging in my closet in fine condition. For that matter, the coat doesn't flinch from the usual frigid temperatures in Toronto.
To be honest, I forget which brand my coat represents. Maybe it's a Sanyo coat that seems to be getting the lion's share of praise as this trench coat brand. The company has been around since 1946 and I've got a feeling that it doesn't really have anything directly to do with the more famous Sanyo brand for appliances.
I was remarking to the uploader, Yoshio Takemoto（竹本善雄）, how much I loved the swing jazz intro and overall arrangement of this particular song "Coat ni Sumire wo" (A Violet in the Coat). There's nothing that says a classy night out on the town than some swing jazz, and in this case, singer-songwriter Issei Okamoto（岡本一生）was behind this whole ball of wax with Chinfa Kan（康珍化）handling the lyrics. Instrumentalist Naoya Matsuoka（松岡直也）took care of the arrangements.
Okamoto has been known for his City Pop material in the late 1970s and early 1980s such as his Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）-reminiscent "Midnight Station Hotel"(1980), but he also had his jazzy stuff right from his 1978 debut single"Moonlight Singing"（ムーンライト・シンギィング）. I guess that I can say that he is Japan's version of Bobby Caldwell? Anyways, "Coat ni Sumire wo" , Okamoto's March 1982 third and final single, was meant as the commercial campaign song for Sanyo Coats to stress the class and timelessness of their products. I certainly wouldn't mind traipsing down Omotesando to a dinner party while wearing my dress coat bought through gift certificates and listening to this one.
It's been about a couple of years since singer Mieko Hirota（弘田三枝子）passed away and during her time, she was known as the Queen of Pops. From the 1960s onwards, she was one of the kayo stalwarts with one of her standard-bearers being the 1969 "Ningyo no Ie"（人形の家）.
But her discography extended into the first half of the 1980s, too, with four singles and two albums coming out. For instance, her 38th single from March 1983 is "Ai no Nokori ga" (Remains of Love) which is a swinging combination of some old-style jazz and the new City Pop. It rather feels like going out on that high-flying and high-paying night out in Shinjuku, Akasaka and Ginza.
We can thank Yuji Ohno（大野雄二）, the same fellow behind the famous "Lupin III" theme song, for all that jazz in "Ai no Nokori ga" while singer-lyricist Mebae Miyahara（宮原芽映）under her pen name of Yu Chino（茅野遊）took care of the words. "Ai no Nokori ga" can also be found on Hirota's album "Touch of Breeze" which came out on the same day as the single.
I'm rather surprised that Bread & Butter's（ブレッド＆バッター）"Aoi Chiheisen" (Blue Horizon) hasn't already made its appearance on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" up to now since I've seen the title a fair bit in the last several years. Plus, it's a trackmate with "Nagisa ni Ikou"（渚に行こう）, "The Last Letter" and "Ano Koro no Mama"（あの頃のまま）on the folk/City Pop duo's June 1979 album"Late Late Summer", all up on the blog.
When comparing "Aoi Chiheisen" to those other tracks, I gather that this song is far more in the downtown core of Tokyo with the disco beat of Kyohei Tsutsumi's（筒美京平）melody although I can also hear a bit of "Charade"-mode Henry Mancini in there, too. Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）and Linda Rhee were responsible for the near-total English lyrics which has a fellow swooning over a chance love encounter in that prototypical two-ships-passing-in-the-night scenario. Considering the title, though, I wonder if the adventure couldn't have taken place on an actual ship.
I never saw the 1983 movie "Tantei Monogatari"（探偵物語...Detective Story） starring Hiroko Yakushimaru（薬師丸ひろ子）and the late Yusaku Matsuda（松田優作）, but I certainly remember the slightly haunting title track sung by Yakushimaru herself. It definitely has the fingerprints of composer Eiichi Ohtaki（大滝詠一）and done up as this grand romantic ballad.
What I didn't know was that the soundtrack for the movie has its own article on J-Wiki although my discovery of one of the songs on the record was through YouTube rather than the article itself. "Souyo Mambo" (Yes, It's the Mambo) has got those lovely Latin jazz horns but it also has the use of a cheesy-sounding keyboard that makes it sound as if it had been performed at a lounge in a Holiday Inn in the 1980s. You know, the one that has the singer telling everyone to drive safely and that people can go for one more round at the buffet table before it closes for the night. I've got no idea where in the movie it had been placed but I could imagine the scene being of Hiroko and Yusaku in some tropical-themed hole-in-the-wall in Tokyo.
One of the commenters for the video above for "Souyo Mambo" rather likened the performance by singer Lisa Akikawa（秋川リサ）to a pleasant round of karaoke, and to be honest, I don't think that chanteuses like Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）and Mariko Takahashi（高橋真梨子）would have felt particularly threatened. Still, compared to my average take in the karaoke bar or box, Akikawa isn't too bad but then again, her occupation isn't listed as singer on J-Wiki. She's an actress, model and tarento who once had a regular gig on NTV's late-night program "11 PM" in the 1970s under the name of Lisa Tatsuki（立木リサ）.
Under that particular name, there is a KKP article when she recorded a duet with the late movie/music critic Yuji Konno（今野雄二）for "Kibun wo Dashite Mou Ichido"（気分を出してもう一度）in the late 1970s. Konno had also been a regular on the aforementioned "11 PM". Interestingly enough, "Souyo Mambo" was created by the same duo behind "Kibun wo Dashite Mou Ichido", the husband-and-wife team of lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）and composer Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）with Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）handling the arrangements for all but two tracks (including the title track) on the entire album. The soundtrack, by the way, hit No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies, selling a little over 150,000 records.
Beginning my journey into kayo kyoku and then J-Pop included following the fame and fortunes of the eternal aidoru Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）. There were all of the rumours about her love life and then there were all of those changing looks right down to her hairstyle; the famed helmet-like Seiko-chan cut was really only the beginning. The singer was going from sweet girl-next-door teen idol to glamourous queen chanteuse throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. What I hadn't known was that she was also campaigning for the famous chain of esthetic salons run by Yuri Takano（たかの友梨）.
Amazon.jp
That might explain the cover featuring her bare midriff for her 38th single, "Kagayaita Kisetsu e Tabidatou" (Let's Travel to the Shining Season) released in December 1994. It was used as the campaign tune for the Yuri Takano commercials, and despite that release date, the song sounds like it was partially inspired by some West Coast AOR of the early 1980s, her former temporal stomping grounds as an aidoru. I was looking for the name of David Foster, but actually the song was created by Seiko-chan herself with the singer taking on the lyricist nom de plumeMeg C. since she was a fan of actress Meg Ryan at the time.
Co-composing "Kagayaita Kisetsu e Tabidatou" was Ryo Ogura（小倉良）and the arrangement was handled by Yuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）. The single hit No. 12 on Oricon and ended up as the 94th-ranked single for 1995, and it earned Matsuda her first appearance on the Kohaku Utagassen in six years. Apparently, the return of Seiko wasn't lost on anyone since she came down on a huge mirror ball onto the stage where she performed the entire song, something that is pretty rare on that program. "Kagayaita Kisetsu e Tabidatou" is also included on her 25th album"Its' Style '95" from May 1995 which peaked at No. 2.
On the April 12th episode of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）, there was someone on the guest list that I never thought would have appeared on the weekly music show. However, it was indeed the divine Ms. Maki Nomiya（野宮真貴）, the third and the most famous of the lead vocalists for Shibuya-kei royalty Pizzicato Five back in the 1990s. She was there with her good buddy, Ken Yokoyama（横山剣）of Crazy Ken Band (with whom she's worked in the past), to sing something sweet, soulful and revue-ish.
In my own mangled way, I'm trying to say that she and Ken sang their take on "Sweet Soul Revue" which was not only Pizzicato Five's fourth single from April 1993, but also their first single after transferring to the Nippon Columbia label and P5's second single with Nomiya at the mike. As the music video indicates, "Sweet Soul Revue", written and composed by P5's Yasuharu Konishi（小西康陽）, was their tribute to The Staple Singers, the R&B singing group responsible for hits like "Respect Yourself", and when I had heard the audio only in the past, I did think that this song was reminiscent of the soul of the 1960s and 1970s.
Under the music video in the comments section (unfortunately that video has been taken down), I read Jake_Ro_X's description of how "Sweet Soul Revue" became a hit in the Philippines because it had been used as the background music in any television commercials for the anime "Ranma 1/2"（らんま 1/2）. That's one funky backup for a cartoon! Strangely enough, "Sweet Soul Revue" was originally produced for the summer campaign commercial back in 1993 for Kanebo Cosmetics (yes, for beautiful human life!).
The song hit No. 19 on Oricon and was placed as a track on P5's 7th original album"Bossa Nova 2001"（ボサ・ノヴァ2001）which came out in June 1993. One sardonically humourous piece of trivia that I got from the J-Wiki article for "Sweet Soul Revue" involved songwriter Konishi being in the department store Barneys New York in the Big Apple when he suddenly heard this very song being played on the speakers. When he slyly told a salesperson that he had been responsible for the song's creation, the salesperson dryly replied with a whisper of a smile, "Oh, isn't that special?". I'm sure that Konishi learned a valuable lesson. 😝
In early March 2022, a digital single was released for a cover of "Sweet Soul Revue" with Nomiya, YouTuber singer Rainych, who had made an explosion about a couple of years ago with her rendition of Miki Matsubara's（松原みき）"Mayonaka no Door"（真夜中のドアー）, and Neo-City Pop band evening cinema. Perhaps it's been 30 years since the release of the original single, but Ms. Nomiya is still plenty divine.
