Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, Anri ~ Showa Era City Pop Resonates with Generation Z! Why These Classics of Yesteryear Have Garnered Such Attention, Part 3

 

For this trilogy of KKP articles on the entire "Shuukan Josei PRIME"（週刊女性PRIME...Women's Weekly Prime） piece (Part 2 is here) regarding City Pop, my sentimental setting has been the Shibuya branch of Tower Records since I would often visit the place almost once a week. It helped that one of my students lived not too far away from Japan's youth mecca.

One story that I have about that huge gray and orange building goes back to the late 1990s. A couple of my friends came to visit Tokyo and they liked their fair share of music, so I took them to Tower Records. At the time, there was a cafe in the basement which I think is now a presentation area. Also at the time, the move to non-smoking was starting to take a bit of hold in Japan, although smokers were reluctant to say the least. Well, the Tower authorities in their infinite wisdom decided to divide the cafe into smoking and non-smoking sections. The thing was that the non-smoking area which we three opted for was centered in the middle of the basement while the area surrounding us was still smoking-friendly...and there was no barrier for our supposed oasis of clear air, so there was no clear air. I guess the authorities took it to mean that people who had no cigarettes were free to enter the donut hole and that was it.

Yup, that's how we felt.

Anyways up to 2017, there was a cafe up on the 2nd floor of Tower Records and it was completely non-smoking as far as I know. Also, since it's been mentioned in the article by Katsumi Koizumi（小泉カツミ）, I wanted to show readers this recent YouTube video by Lost Turntable featuring Tokyo Vinyl Shibuya up on the 6th floor.

Now, let's get into the translation of the final third part of the article which will commence below this shaky photo of the city.

Will City Pop Soon Be Added to the World Music Genres?!

Tower Records' Tanoue, who was mentioned earlier in this article, says that City Pop has elements that attract overseas listeners. "While overseas music such as rock influences listeners, City Pop is characterized by having elaborate and unique chord progressions and intricate arrangements done in 16-beat. So I believe that made the genre very easy on the ears of foreigners. Because of the spread of its popularity, there has been an increase in the number of young people around the world dancing to City Pop played in places such as clubs, and I think they have gotten hooked on its groove."

Meanwhile, music critic Suzuki (also from earlier in the article) mentions that it's the sound that makes City Pop even more appealing to Generation Z. "Generation Z grew up in the age of the Internet. Basically, they grew up in an environment where they were exposed to digital right from the beginning, listening to a lot of music made on computers. The analog City Pop band sounds centering on real instruments had never been heard by them before, so I think that this was all very fresh to them".

Also, as mentioned earlier, the resurgence of the popularity of analog records has given a further boost.

"I thought the whole analog thing was only for snobby old men to reminisce about the old days, but young people are also going to vinyl records as well," Suzuki says. "Young folks who used to listen to digitally streamed music with earphones are now listening to it through speakers on record players and amplifiers. So I guess the sensation of sound emanating from the speakers and vibrating through the air feels viscerally good. That's why they've been wanting to listen to analog, especially through the old City Pop tunes".

Currently young bands such as Suchmos who have been categorized as Neo-City Pop have arrived on the scene making new sounds while also being influenced by City Pop. Having listened to them, the sound of any of those bands has been easy to hear and they have this fun groove. 

Suzuki adds "Perhaps the genre of City Pop will soon make its way to global music streaming services such as Spotify in the future".

Native Japanese music is flying into the world. If that is indeed so, it's something to look forward to, isn't it? That's the message that Suzuki left with me.

Suzi Suzuki is a music critic, radio personality and novelist. His recent book is "Keisuke Kuwata's Theory" (published by Shincho Shinsho), which explores the world of Keisuke Kuwata's lyrics.

Reported by Katsumi Koizumi for "Shuukan Josei Prime".

Translated by J-Canuck

October 25th, 2022: As for my two (non-existent Canadian) cents on the overall article, I can answer that above byline for this final section. It's already become a world music genre and it's certainly not a fad anymore. Considering how long it's been since "Plastic Love" hit YouTube and the fact that people are still talking about City Pop and even dancing to it, thanks to folks like Van Paugam, I don't think the genre will fade away into history. The first bloom of giddy discovery has probably passed though, with the result being that some folks will have gotten off the bandwagon and moved onto other genres or accepted City Pop but also enjoying other forms of music, while others are "true believers" like myself, the aforementioned Van and my good friend, Rocket Brown. Having said that, I'm not sure whether City Pop has had the majority of Generation Z running feverishly to pick up an old-fashioned record player and scrounging through record bins and online auctions like rabid squirrels to find those Tats or Toshiki Kadomatsu LPs, but it's nice to know that my favourite genre has been enjoying a second look more than 40 years later.

Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, Anri ~ Showa Era City Pop Resonates with Generation Z! Why These Classics of Yesteryear Have Garnered Such Attention, Part 2

 

Continuing on from yesterday's translation of Part 1 of the "Shuukan Josei PRIME"（週刊女性PRIME...Women's Weekly Prime） article from a few days ago with that really long title that you see in the above byline, I'd like to present the translation of Part 2. 

The above video by the YouTube channel Andy's Travels was put up all the way back in March 2010, so I was still very much living the Tokyo life back then, which included frequent visits to the Shibuya branch of Tower Records, and as such what you see there is what I regularly experienced. In my subsequent visits to the place in 2014 and 2017, it did undergo some reorganization of floors. The 7th floor English-language book section was plunked down to the 2nd floor where the J-Pop CDs used to be when I visited in 2014, and as you read in yesterday's article, I found out that the 6th floor which used to be the classical music section is now Tokyo Vinyl Shibuya, the area where all of the records are sold. I just wonder how different Tower Records looks since my days of dropping by.

Part 2 begins under the following photo.

The Man Who Started It All, Tatsuro Yamashita, Sparks a Revival in the Reiwa Era

It's said that the source of City Pop was the legendary indies band, Sugar Babe (1973~1976), of which Tatsuro Yamashita was a member. The song "Downtown" which was a huge hit for EPO (1980) was actually a cover of the original 1975 single by Sugar Babe.

"The intro of Tatsuro Yamashita's 'SPARKLE' is what makes this City Pop". Suzi Suzuki says this as he brings out the guitar and performs the chords.

"SPARKLE", recorded on Yamashita's "For You" album, starts with the crisp, dry sound of guitar cutting which really shows the characteristics of City Pop. 

In June of this year, the singer-songwriter released his newest album in 11 years, "Softly", and it's been brought out on the three unique media of compact disc, vinyl record and cassette tape. There was also publicity for this new album, with Yamashita appearing numerous times on radio programs. He even conducted a long interview on "Kan Jam Kanzennen Show", a TV Asahi music show which is popular with young people, although he only appeared via audio. His previous songs then got some attention from that interview, and at the same time, City Pop itself, for which Yamashita has been considered to be an originator of the genre, ended up in the spotlight.

The 1984 "Plastic Love" by Mariya Takeuchi, Yamashita's wife, has been replayed more than 50 million times on YouTube. Furthermore, Tomoko Aran's 1983 "Midnight Pretenders" has been sampled on one of the tracks on popular Canadian artist The Weeknd's "Dawn FM" album which reached No. 2 on Billboard and became the topic of discussion online and among music-loving young people.

Even so, there are a variety of genres in Japanese music beginning with J-Pop, and they have a long history. So, why has only City Pop spread around the world? 

That will be answered in the final part tomorrow.

Go-Touchi Songs（ご当地ソング）: The Chugoku region and Shikoku

 

From commons.wikimedia.org

Once again, Saturday is among us so it's time for the latest round of go-touchi songs, a series that I began about a month ago to commemorate some of the geographically based kayo depending on the official regions within Japan. Last week, we took care of the Kinki region including Osaka. This time, we're doing a two-for-one deal just like I did for the very first entry which looked at Hokkaido and the Tohoku region up in the north. Today, it will be the small island of Shikoku which consists of Ehime, Kagawa, Kochi, and Tokushima Prefectures and the westernmost Chugoku region on the main island of Honshu which has Hiroshima, Okayama, Shimane, Tottori, and Yamaguchi Prefectures.

1. Akiko Futaba -- Francesca no Kane（フランチェスカの鐘）for Hiroshima (1948)

2. Saburo Kitajima -- Onomichi no Hito （尾道の女）for Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture (1966)

3. Rumiko Koyanagi -- Seto no Hanayome （瀬戸の花嫁）for the Seto Inland Sea (1972)

4. Kaori Mizumori -- Tottori Sakyuu（鳥取砂丘）for Tottori Prefecture (2003)

5. Peggy Hayama -- Nangoku Tosa wo Ato ni Shite（南国土佐を後にして）for Kochi City (1959)

6. Angela Aki -- Home for Tokushima Prefecture (2005)

As usual, let's finish this off with some scrumptious dishes from the two areas. Today, we have Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki（お好み焼き）and then sanuki udon（讃岐うどん）from Kagawa Prefecture. Next week will be the final segment as we look at Kyushu and Okinawa.

Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi, Anri ~ Showa Era City Pop Resonates with Generation Z! Why These Classics of Yesteryear Have Garnered Such Attention, Part 1

 

Yeah, I realize that the above title will most likely go down as the longest one for an article in "Kayo Kyoku Plus" history, but that's what the translation for the original title amounts to. What am I talking about? Well, last night I encountered this article which was published in a journal, "Shuukan Josei PRIME"（週刊女性PRIME...Women's Weekly Prime）, and then brought onto my Mixi account. 

The article goes into what has made City Pop so popular with the current young generation although this rather goes against what Masa experienced when he asked a bunch of youth in Shibuya about the genre earlier this summer. Regardless, I've decided to translate the whole article and divide the translation into three parts over the weekend because: 1) of course, I am a huge fan of the genre and I've also been interested in the reaction to its flourishing over the past few years in Japan and abroad, and 2) the setting is Shibuya's Tower Records, one of my beloved destinations to visit in Tokyo for many years. It's a guarantee that as long as that familiar building stays open, I will visit it again and again during my next vacation there.

So, why don't we begin then? The translation begins under the following photo.

The 6th floor of Shibuya's Tower Records in Tokyo. Given the name of Tower Vinyl Shibuya, there are rows upon rows of analog records on display here (J-Canuck: the 6th floor used to be where the classical CDs were sold). 

The Young People of Generation Z Buying Analog Records

Tsuyoshi Tanoue of the Shibuya branch of Tower Records explains it so. "It was just one year ago that this floor was created to meet the demands of the expanding old/used record market. Even just at this branch, sales of records have increased 10-fold. Before the pandemic, foreign customers went into a tizzy and bought an incredible amount of Japanese pop albums. Those included a large number of Americans, Europeans and Asians. Overall sales of analog records at this branch went up 10%~15% compared to last year. I have no doubt that City Pop was one trigger behind this.

Five years ago, Tatsuro Yamashita's 1982 "For You" album sold for around 7,000 yen but now it sells for over 10,000 yen. Anri's 1983 "Timely!!" was just 2,000 yen but it's now going for 7,000~8,000 yen."

If you look around the store, you can see young people and female customers mixed in with middle-aged and older people. Why in the world have famous Showa Era songs, many of which are City Pop, gotten another look?

Music critic and radio personality Suzi Suzuki remarks "There is an index known as the Global Viral Charts which shows how often songs have been replayed on the music distribution service Spotify, and up to around three years ago, Miki Matsubara's debut single "Stay with Me" from 1979 was notable for having spent 18 straight days at No. 1 there and thus it spread across the world before we knew it. That was probably one factor".

This song has now gone beyond the 100 million replay mark on Spotify. Suzi says this is a modern phenomenon.

"One point is online music distribution and YouTube. Unlike before, there's no need to buy media such as CDs to easily listen to music from around the world. Because this environment had come about, music lovers all over the world discovered this special kind of music called City Pop and found it fascinating".

Stay tuned for Part 2.

Hideki Naoi -- Omae wa Inryoku（おまえは引力）

 

One of our stops during that 1981 summer graduation trip to Japan was Toyota City in Aichi Prefecture since it was the hometown as it were for the famous automobile enterprise. Through one of the many pamphlets that I got on Toyota and its corporate philosophy, there was also a hierarchy showing everything from the most inexpensive car in the line to the most expensive which was the Crown. Basically, as that name intimates, the Crown was for company presidents and similarly statured executives.

If I'm not mistaken, the second-highest car in the Toyota line was the Cressida. Strangely enough, not long after our trip to Toyota City, we had our three days of homestay in Nara with the Tezukayama Girls' High School students. My host sister and her father came to pick me up and the latter drove us to his home in his Cressida. At the time, I didn't really think about what Akiko's father did for a living but that was one fine interior for the Cressida.

I'm not sure where the Toyota Corona fit in the grand scheme of things but at one point, it did have a snazzy tune for its commercials, namely in 1983. There's just a thimble of information give about singer Hideki Naoi（直井秀樹）which is simply that he is currently a music producer and that back in the day, he had at least one single and one EP come out under his name. The single was "Omae wa Inryoku" (You are the Attraction) which was that snazzy tune.

Composed by the late Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）, written by Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）and arranged by Akira Inoue（井上鑑）, according to the writeup of the song on Hip Tank Records, "Omae wa Inryoku" had some inspiration from Elbow Bones & The Racketeers "A Night in New York", a 1980s return to all that jazz and high-flying class which was on heavy rotation on the radio here back when I was a high school kid. There is some of that feeling in "Omae wa Inryoku" but I don't think that the Elbow Bones' influence is quite that direct and it's mixed in with some of the tropical jazz from Kid Creole & The Coconuts. But let's not take anything away from "Omae wa Inryoku"; it's still a fun and bouncy tune for Naoi.

Seiko Sato -- Hoshi no Inai Shuumatsu（星のいない週末）

 

(cover version by Miku Hatsune)

Never heard of singer-songwriter Seiko Sato（佐藤聖子）before but she had her time behind the microphone between 1992 and 1998, and the Saitama Prefecture native was also appearing as a tarento on television. During those 1990s, she released thirteen singles and six albums of which her debut album was "Bright Lights" from February 1992.

"Hoshi no Inai Shuumatsu" (Starless Weekend) is the track that launches "Bright Lights". Written by Yui Nishiwaki（西脇唯）and composed by Sato, it's a song that straddles the line between bouncy girl pop and 90s City Pop. I'm not sure that they needed those hints of New Jack Swing, though. But I do like Sato's voice which reminds me of Reimy（麗美）and Cindy. The lyrics tell of a young woman heading home from the supermarket and looking up at the night sky, but instead of pining for love, she sees bright hope up there despite the lack of astral bodies. 

Once Sato retired from singing, she went full-time into practicing her flamenco dancing, a hobby that she had started back in elementary school. In fact, she established her own flamenco school, according to her J-Wiki profile.

Moonriders + Nanako Sato -- Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz

 

I've already mentioned the fact in the last few days on Twitter, but as I was scrolling down "The Japan Times" online, I found an article titled "Nanako Sato brings back the groove of a bygone era" dated August 22nd, 2022. In it, the singer-songwriter（佐藤奈々子）that I had first discovered in the pages of "Japanese City Pop" related her surprise reunion with a spate of songs that she had recorded live with the rock band the Moonriders（ムーンライダーズ）in a radio station studio back in 1979 via a long-lost CD that was passed onto her via acquaintances. Those songs have now been placed into an album titled "Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz" which was earlier in August on CD and Spotify. It consists of songs that both Sato and the Moonriders recorded in their respective earlier works; for Sato, her songs came from her 1977 album "Pillow Talk", while for the Moonriders, their tunes originated from the following albums: their 1976 "Hinotama Boy"（火の玉ボーイ...Fireball Boy）, "Istanbul Mambo" from 1977, and "Nouvelles Vague" from 1978.

By the way, "The Japan Times" allows unsubscribed readers to go through an entire article just once unscathed before they stop you from reading a second time so that you can set up an account with them. So, unless you are interested in getting a subscription with the newspaper, get to the article that one time and do a copy-and-paste if you plan to peruse it more than once.

I'll cover about half the album since I don't want to steal all of your spirit of adventure in exploring this fascinating set of eight tracks, although I may decide to check out some of those other songs in future individual articles. Let's begin with the first song "Swimmer"（スイマー）which was originally on the aforementioned "Nouvelles Vague". Written and composed by vocalist Keiichi Suzuki（鈴木慶一）, it's a hit-the-surf-running tune in this version as it takes on the rock side of New Music, and especially with Moonrider Masahiro Takekawa（武川雅寛）going off on his violin, I thought things were pretty progressive rock or progressive pop. If I've read the lyrics correctly, the song is about comparing getting into the love game with trying to swim through turbulent waters.

Nanako Sato is on the lead here as she purrs her own "Coin Laundry"（コインランドリー）which originated from her "Pillow Talk" LP. Sato took care of words and music along with her boyfriend at the time, Motoharu Sano（佐野元春）, also helping out on the melody. With all of the tracks coming from previous albums, I'm interested in hearing them all on those records, but I'm especially intrigued by "Coin Laundry" which may be the sexiest tune about a clothes-washing establishment ever made. I have to check out the original version, but I'm already sold on the song as-is here on "Radio Moon", thanks to the 1970s City Pop "haze" synthesizer effect, the jazziness of it all, and Sato's breathy bedroom vocals (plus Takekawa's violin) which has me thinking this as a Fashion Music piece. Mind you, instead of her draped on a grand piano, she must be lying on top of a Maytag.

"Black Pepper Jealousy"（ブラックペッパー・ジェラシー）is also from Sato's "Pillow Talk" and has Sato and Sano working on this one as well. It's not only got more of a tropical paradise feeling, but it sounds like a number that Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）and Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）would have shaken up like some cocktail at a Tiki bar. By the way, Sato's thank yous and introductions are very appealingly distracting.

The final track on "Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz" is "Jub Up Family" (ジャブ・アップ・ファミリー), a song which got its KKP article all the way back in March 2013, thanks to contributor nikala. Armed with a truly Devo-esque music video and a New Wave spirit that predated the genre by a couple of years, this was one bizarrely fun song to first hear. As performed on "Radio Moon", "Jub Up Family" takes on more of a Gypsy Jazz and Hosono tropical feeling once more as even Sato gets involved in this lyrical fight between a married couple.

By no means is my selection here a representation of my favourite tracks. I think that all of the tracks are great and would like to read some of your comments about the above and the ones that I have yet to talk about. "Radio Moon and Roses 1979Hz" is a wonderful discovery by me and a delightful re-discovery for Sato and presumably the Moonriders themselves. It's always nice to unearth some long-lost treasure.