Michiru Yuasa -- Osozaki no Hero（遅咲きのHERO）

 

A few weeks ago, we were watching NHK's "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新・BS日本のうた）on Jme, and thankfully, it's finally returning on a regular schedule, when we saw a slim young lady with short hair in what looked like a rocker's outfit. Hm...I thought that she rather stood out among the other enka and Mood Kayo guests.

Well, shades of Ayumi Nakamura（中村あゆみ）and GAO. This is singer-songwriter Michiru Yuasa（ゆあさみちる）from Niigata Prefecture and her profile has stated that she's basically open to any genre to sing. But in this case, her 7th single from May 2024, "Osozaki no Hero" (Late-Blooming Hero) is a good ol' rock-n'-roll tune from yesteryear and that's why I made the comparisons to the first two singers. It kinda feels like a 80s pop-rock song. Written by Yuhei Hanaoka（花岡優平）and composed by Masato Sugimoto（杉本眞人）, the song seems to be paying tribute to the little guys...the people who plug away at their professions day in and day out, just trying to make a good living and lifestyle. 

As for further information on Yuasa, she won a prize at the "Nodo Jiman"（のど自慢）national championship in 2007, has participated as a backup singer on a GLAY album, recorded songs for commercials, and made her official major debut with the single "Watashi no Hana"（私の花...My Flower） in 2020. She was also greatly influenced by acts such as Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）and the Carpenters. Among her hobbies are illustrating, reading and making her rounds of the onsen.

Yutaka Kimura Speaks ~ Japanese City Pop Masterpieces 100: Yoshitaka Minami -- Hizuke Henkosen（日付変更線）

 

Number: 067

Lyricist: Yumi Matsutoya

Composer: Yoshitaka Minami

Arranger: Ryuichi Sakamoto

From Minami's 1978 album: "South of the Border"

According to Minami（南佳孝）himself, "Hizuke Henkosen" (International Date Line) was a complete song once the chorus was changed from a minor to a major key. With a percussion that wraps around a bossa nova rhythm, the song has the sound of traveling to tropical climes from Tokyo and crossing the International Date Line. The addition of a synthesizer is also splendid, and even among the arrangements of Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）in his pre-YMO days, I'd say that this is one of his best. The refreshing female background chorus belongs to none other than Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）.

The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).

Yuki Okazaki -- Café B.H

 

That was a fine gooey chocolate cupcake in that café!

The last time I wrote about singer-songwriter Yuki Okazaki（岡崎友紀）was back in late 2021. Her "S-O-O-N" and "Sweet Joke" both come from her 1981 album "So Many Friends" and they follow the City Pop aesthetic. However with its track mate, "Café B.H", which was written by Okazaki herself and composed by Yutaka Hosoi（細井豊）, there is very much more of a a 70s soft rock vibe and a tribute riff to the Doobie Brothers in the chorus. Not sure what is up with the initials in the title but the café sounds appealing enough to merit a visit and the journey there can be accompanied by that cool rhythm in the arrangement.

Good to hear that she's still active. According to her J-Wiki article, Okazaki had a concert late last year in Tokyo to celebrate her 70th birthday.

Tomoko Kuwae -- Wind & Kiss

 

It was over five years ago when we took that cruise on Royal Caribbean's Harmony of the Seas which at that time was the largest cruise ship on the planet. However, the Harmony has been supplanted three times since then with the current champion being the Icon of the Seas. I heard that the Icon had recently suffered a bit of a fire problem.

After being on two cruises last decade, I feel that my time on a cruise ship is pretty much over. Not that I hated my time on them but I never really became a fan of ocean cruises. Still, having said that, I can't help but get that cruise ship feeling when I listen to singer-songwriter Tomoko Kuwae's（桑江知子）"Wind & Kiss" which might have something of The Love Boat in mind. A track from her "Mr. Cool" album from April 1980, it's indeed a sunset summer breeze of a Resort Pop tune to listen to while relaxing on the lounge chair and enjoying a Summer Breeze cocktail (indeed, it does exist)🍹. Kuwae's plaintive vocals and the background chorus help out immensely.

Back in 2022, I also wrote about the title track from "Mr. Cool", so have a listen to that one as well. Also, give the Summer Breeze a try if you're into mixology.

Sunburst -- Sunburst（サンバースト）

 

Last Friday, I posted an article of The Square's "Mr. Coco's One", the first track on their 1979 album "Make Me a Star" and at around the same time, I noticed that I had also bookmarked a song by this other fusion band but decided that instead of jamming the two of them into one Friday, I would wait a week to bring Sunburst over.

And that's right. The band was known as Sunburst which may have been far less known as The Square or Casiopea but was also capable of bringing the groovy and summer fusion. They had a self-titled album in 1980 and that may have been it for Sunburst because judging from the star lineup in the band, they were probably too busy with solo projects and other collaborations to hold the group together. We are talking about saxophonist Toshiyuki Honda（本多俊之）who I've written about before and one of guitarist Kazumi Watanabe's（渡辺香津美）acolytes, Yuji Karaki（唐木裕史）, along with drummer Keiji Kishida（岸田恵士）.

The first song on "Sunburst" is in fact the title track itself and right from Note One, we've got some major shuffle-worthy tropical fusion deserving of a conga line and many cocktails. Honda takes lead right from the get-go before passing it off to Karaki, and the whole theme is having fun on the beach or on the Lido Deck of a cruise liner.

Shigeru Suzuki -- Summer Wine（サマー・ワイン）

 

Considering the lush goodness of this song, I should be forgiven if I were to think that singer-songwriter and musician Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）held a monopoly on summery songs of the 1970s. I had just provided a Yutaka Kimura Speaks article based on his "Hachibu Onpu no Uta"（８分音符の詩）last Friday, but I couldn't resist here and after all, since we're now all in the hot season (well, those of us in the Northern Hemisphere), why not?

"Summer Wine" is a classy and elegant track from his January 1978 album "Caution!", and considering that release date, this particular song by him and lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, his old bandmate from Happy End（はっぴいえんど）, must have been a good tonic for fans to realize that summer would come eventually once more. It can have many labels added to it, and indeed I did do that in Labels...I can hear some bossa nova, Resort Pop, sophisticated pop and soft rock. With the lyrics including one fellow deciding to take a step romantically by using the tactic of offering to read his partner's palm over a bottle of that titular wine, I can imagine this being played out in some 1960s exotic romance filmed in Panavision.

Sachiko Kobayashi -- Ibara no Ki（茨の木）

 

It was at the end of last month that I put up the article on my three favourite Sachiko Kobayashi（小林幸子）songs in tribute to her 60th anniversary in show business. And that was through her appearance on "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新・BS日本のうた...Songs of Japanese Spirit） where she also performed what I had assumed was a new song by her.

But in actual fact though, "Ibara no Ki" (Tree of Thorns) was her 88th single released in October 2012. Written and performed by veteran folksy singer-songwriter Masashi Sada（さだまさし）, the song about going through all of the rough stuff to attain some level of happiness as analogized through nature has been categorized as an enka tune, which is indeed Kobayashi's genre. However, considering that this is Sada who is involved here and just listening to the arrangement, I can't even say that this is some form of neo-enka ballad. This actually strikes me as being more of the hybrid genre of New Adult Music with the enka liquor being mixed with a Fashion Music tonic, so perhaps not so much of a traditional Japanese song but something that has a fair bit of European elegance infused here. On the Oricon regular chart, it scored a No. 38 but on the more specific enka and even indies charts, "Ibara no Ki" managed to peak at No. 2 and No. 1 respectively.