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.
Well, I figure if I have talked about the missus, I have to talk about the hubby. Yup, following Mariya Takeuchi (竹内まりや）, I now introduce you to Tatsuro Yamashita(山下達郎), he of the falsetto and Beach Boys vocal effects. Yamashita was influenced by American pop and rock throughout the first two decades of his life, and started his band, Sugar Babe, in the early 70s which resulted in one well-regarded album, "Songs"in 1976. Among his bandmates was Taeko Ohnuki (大貫妙子）who has also gone on to carve her own successful career, albeit in a significantly different direction.
"Ride On Time" is a classic Yamashita song: summery and soaring with guitar and sax. Unlike his wife's initial retro-pop and later straight-ahead pop, Yamashita's tunes have a bit more rock, R&B and funk mixed in. It's ironic, then, that his most famous tune happens to be a Xmas song.
In any case, "Ride On Time" got as high as No. 3 on the Oricon charts, and its album of the same name, was at the No. 1 position for about a week in October 1980. Over 20 years later, the song became the theme of a popular drama called "Good Luck" starring Takuya Kimura(木村拓哉）, which gave it a return to the charts, getting as high as 13th place.
August 13 2021: Have a listen to the all-different demo version of "Ride on Time"!
The full title of Mariya Takeuchi's(竹内まりや）2nd single is "Dream of You: Lemon-Lime no Aoi Kaze"(レモンライムの青い風）with the last three characters meaning "blue wind". An appropriate title for a breezy song with a hint of Connie Francis' 50s/60s pop and the West Coast sound of the 70s. The first few years of her career going into the early 80s were characterized by this retro sound which reminds me of the aforementioned Francis, Shelley Fabares ("Johnny Angel") and even early Olivia Newton-John. Tunes of candy-cotton fluffy love...perfect for a young Japanese girl or boy.
The single itself didn't go much higher than No. 30 on the Oricon charts, although the album that it later came on, "University Street", went up to No. 17on the album charts, pretty respectable for a sophomore effort. In fact, it seems that her albums have been getting more of the love than the individual singles; case in point, Takeuchi had to wait until her 20th anniversary in the business in 1998 to finally get that No. 1 single,"Camouflage", although "Single Again" came pretty darn close a decade previously.
Not quite sure where the retro sound originated from, although I am curious. Was it from her parents' collection of old American LPs? Or could it have been from her 1-year stay inIllinois as a high school student?
Keeping on the Leiji Matsumoto bandwagon after my entry on the "Space Cruiser Yamato"(宇宙戦艦ヤマト） theme song last night, I offer this much more low-key and beautiful song by Kumiko Kaori（かおりくみこ）, a veteran anison singer. "Yasashiku Shinaide"(Don't Be Gentle) made its appearance in the first film made of "The Galaxy Express 999"(銀河鉄道９９９）, arguably Matsumoto's most famous work after "Yamato". I remember watching the adventures of the mysterious Gwyneth Paltrow-lookalike Maetel(メーテル） and her young companion, Tetsurou Hoshino(星野鉄郎）, on board the fantastic Galaxy Express on VHS years ago. The movie was accompanied by rousing orchestra and Godiego's(ゴダイゴ） hit eponymous tune throughout it. But then in the middle of the movie, young Tetsurou creeps into this hole-in-the-wall saloon on hearing this ballad being sung and strum. And the movie just stops. Not in a bad way but in a magnetic one as Ms. Kaori sings of someone who has just gotten tired and embittered of love. The characters in the saloon all look tearful or mournful, and I'm sure a number of the movie audience were feeling the same way. Considering the theme of the tune, it came off as very enka. The movie went back into adventure mode soon after but for those 2 or so minutes, there was a respite of some depth. And in fact, there was an instrumental reprise of that song later in the movie.
The above is the full song. Regrettably, for some reason, it never got onto the original soundtrack for the movie, but my old friend The Anime King played it for me, much to my surprise, in its entirety a couple of days ago after not having heard it in over 20 years. Apparently, it did get onto the Eternal anniversary edition of "Galaxy Express 999".
I'll make this half-joking recommendation. Listen to it while sipping down a tumbler of whiskey-on-the-rocks.
In my last entry on enka, I mentioned that the genre can be geographical...such as Yokohama or Nagasaki or Hokkaido. Another theme is also drinking. Just like American country and western with its honky-tonks, enka also goes into detail about the Japanese version of pub crawls.
Takashi Hosokawa(細川たかし） was in the business for about 7 years when he hit pay dirt with "Kita Sakaba"(Northern Bars), a jaunty song about a night of fun, drinking and women on a bar-lined avenue. According to J-Wiki, it was apparently so jaunty that it was thought to be more of a regular pop song than an enka one. But I think it still fulfills the enka category in terms of melody and theme.
I did also state that "Yukiguni"(雪国) was my go-to song in the karaoke boxes. Well, this was my No. 2. After all, I couldn't get away with just singing one tune.
"Kita Sakaba" got as high as No. 3 on the weekly Oricon charts and was No. 5 on the yearly singles in 1982.
September 13 2022: Future Funk meister Night Tempo has given his version of "Kita Sakaba".
I heard a sound yesterday while I was having brunch with my good friend, The Anime King, at EggsSmart. And that was my jaw hitting the table, rattling my scrambled eggs and sausages, when he told me that "Space Cruiser Yamato" was being rebooted and premiering in less than 2 months, kinda like J.J. Abrams'2009 "Star Trek". Of course, me being the late bloomer that I always have been, I found out several months after the news had been officially given...even before I left Japan (hanging my head in shame).
Over here in North America, of course, it was known as the just-as-beloved "Star Blazers". As junior high schoolers back in the late 70s, a lot of us basically sprinted home once class ended at 3:15 so that we could catch the adventures of Captain Avatar, Derek Wildstar and company heading for Iscandar to get the Earth-saving Cosmo DNA. And just like John Williams and the London Symphony Orchestra did for "Star Wars" in 1977, voice actor/singer Isao Sasaki（ささきいさお） and the songwriting partnership of Yu Aku (阿久悠）and Hiroshi Miyagawa (宮川泰）was that 10th baseball player on the team with what is arguably the most famous anime theme song of all. It can probably still rouse us 40-somethings out of our armchairs and salute the TV. Then again, it was composed to be a military march.
That opening fanfare can still get my hair standing straight up on the back of my neck, even 38 years after it first played on the Nippon Television Network. It's been played at various venues, and that even includes the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade in New York City one year by the city's police department marching band!
Yu Aku wrote the lyrics for the song. He was basically the Irving Berlin of Japanese popular music, having written for dozens of enka and pop singers including Pink Lady and Beat Takeshi (yup, he also sang, too).
Well, I'm keeping my ears peeled to hear how the theme sounds like in 2012. The 70-year-old Sasaki will be doing this one, too.
"Ue wo Muite Arukou", despite all of its cheerful music and Kyu Sakamoto's grinning demeanor, is a deceptively depressing song. The lyrics hints at the singer having gone through some major crisis and trying to keep spirits up. The title translates as "Let's Walk Looking Up".
Here is my translation of the lyrics:
Let's walk looking up
So that the tears don't spill over
Remembering that Spring Day
A lonely night
Let's walk looking up
Counting the blurry stars
Remembering that Summer Day
A lonely night
Happiness is above the clouds
Happiness is above the sky
Let's walk looking up
So that the tears don't spill over
Walking while crying
A lonely night
Remembering that Fall Day
A lonely night
Sadness is in the shadows of the stars
Sadness is in the shadow of the moon
Let's walk looking up
So that the tears don't spill over
Walking while crying
A lonely night
A lonely night
Just wanna curl up into a fetal position, doesn't it?
But as I said, the song has become a uber-standard on both sides of the Pacific. One of the more successful covers of "Sukiyaki" was in 1981 by an R & B group called A Taste of Honey, with vastly different lyrics, of course. And that's their video above.
Still, I'm a bit uncertain how it became the legend it is now. I mean, I like the tune myself and I've been listening to it since I was virtually a baby. But how did it take hold of an American public, the vast majority of which cannot speak Japanese? It just goes to show that music can be a language that can go across and beyond linguistic borders, although nearly 50 years later, there has yet to be a Japanese pop song that can vie with Beyonce or Maroon 5. But acts like AKB 48 and YMO have made their own niche inroads into the States and beyond over the years. And Saori Yuki, veteran pop singer, struck some pay dirt late last year with an orchestra called Pink Martini on an album called "1969". There is always hope.
And finally, it's been interesting to note that via YouTube and other sites I've investigated that comments have been almost fawning of this tune. One fellow tried to make a modern remix of it which got a few tongue lashes.
Ah...and here is a photo of the actual sukiyaki. I love this one, too, although I'm a bit iffy on the raw egg.
Yup, when I started this blog, I knew I would have to talk about this song. If I may show my Trekkieness for a paragraph, there was an episode on "Star Trek: Voyager" in which the intrepid Captain Janeway (inside Trekkie joke there, heheheheh) had to deal with the Omega Particle, an atomic structure so rare, so powerful and so difficult to achieve in nature or in the laboratory.
Well, "Sukiyaki" was one of music's Omega Particles. For a period of 3 weeks in June 1963, an actual untranslated kayo kyoku song reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in the USA, and its legacy has continued to this day. And the song remains the only Japanese song to do so. Seiko Matsuda, Dreams Come True, Hikaru Utada...none of them have done so.
Kyu Sakamoto (坂本九）originally sang this number back in 1961, written by Hachidai Nakamura (中村八大) and Rokusuke Ei (永六輔). For a period of 3 months, November 1961 to January 1962, it occupied the top spot in the domestic rankings supplied by a magazine called "Music Life" (Oricon had yet to appear at that time).
Jump ahead several months. A British music executive by the name of Louis Benjamin is traveling around in Japan when he hears and likes the Sakamoto masterpiece, and decides to have one of his bands in the UK, Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen, create an instrumental version of it. It reaches No. 10 on the UK charts. However, there is just one change: the title. I guess Mr. Benjamin didn't really study up on hiragana, let alone the kanji. He would probably end up in retirement sooner than he would be able to pronounce the original title of "Ue wo Muite Arukou" (Let's Walk With Our Heads Held High), so he dubbed it after his favorite Japanese dish, the now-ubiquitous sukiyaki.
Now, sooner than you can say "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon", an American DJ by the name of Richard Osborne at radio station KORD in Pasco, Washington listens to the British instrumental version, and decides to play the original Sakamoto version with "Sukiyaki" title intact.
The question is: How did Osborne get the original song?
Well, I'll give you the quotes from someone who was indirectly associated with the DJ. To give credit where credit is due, I am using the quotes by Marsha Cunningham written on the Songfacts website: www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1230
In 1961-2, I was a high school student at The American School In Japan, living in Zushi, Japan. My dad was a pilot for Japan Airlines. While enjoying a movie staring (sic) Kyu Sakamoto, I heard the most unbelievably beautiful song. I purchased the record at a local record shop and brought it back to the states (sic) the next year when I attended a girls' boarding school in Sierra Madre, CA. I played it in the dormitory frequently; everyone liked it. One girl took the record home with her on the weekend so her dad could play it on his radio station, and the rest is history!
And it was indeed history. According to Wikipedia's entry on "Sukiyaki", it stayed at No. 1 on Billboard for June 15th/22nd/29th 1963. And worldwide, it sold 13 million copies. Sakamoto even got to appear on one of the most popular variety shows in the United States, "The Steve Allen Show", and almost got onto "Ed Sullivan" except for a scheduling conflict. I can only imagine how this fellow must have been feeling at the time. And this was when The Beatles were just starting to get noticed.
