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.
My first two entries of Rumiko Koyanagi（小柳ルミ子）were her two beautiful ballads of the early 1970s. "Ohisashiburi ne" （It's Been A Long Time) was definitely far more uptempo and showed the Takarazuka-trained Koyanagi in feisty form. It's one of my favourites of the 1980s and I don't think I'm going too far out on the limb when I say it's probably one of the last great kayo kyoku pop hits.
Written and composed by singer-songwriter Masato Sugimoto（杉本真人）, "Ohisashiburi ne" has the instrumental tropes of a typical enka tune but aside from the classy piano intro, it just has this relentless energy which doesn't have time to stop off at an izakaya or watch a cargo ship leaving the pier. It's as if Koyanagi was declaring, "Enough of the 70s good girl stuff! I wanna paint this town red!"
And here is the lady several years after its July 1983 release performing "Ohisashiburi ne". Long time, no see indeed! Whenever I hear this song, I will always envision her TV appearances when she performed it on stage as she is whooping it up with her younger male dancers.
But it took the song half a year for it to finally gain access into the Oricon Top 10. Although it didn't finally break through until January 1984, the song's popularity otherwise got her the invitation for the 1983 Kohaku. It got as high as No. 8, her first Top 10 single in several years and her very last one up to this date, and would eventually become the 24th-ranked song of 1984.
Koyanagi must've been in a great mood when she recorded this tune. She even got her manager to do the backup vocals!
"Dancing All Night"is a song that I've encountered now and then on the Japanese music retrospectives. I wasn't a huge fan of it when I first heard it but over the years, it has grown on me. I think Yoshinori Monta's（門田頼命）gravelly voice kinda turned me off initially. Perhaps my initial dislike could be analogized by my hatred of sashimi and wasabi until I was close to my teens when a gastronomic light switched on, and now I eat the stuff several months a year.
To throw in another analogy, Monta's big hit of 1980 was the equivalent of a journeyman baseball player hitting a World Series-winning grand slam homer in Game 7. He had dropped out of high school in Kobe to start a career in music in the late 60s before making his official solo debut in 1971. Even before the late 60s, as a teenager, he had become a huge fan of The Beatles and started a band. However, after almost a decade of no hits, he was ready to throw in the towel.
But then, he made one more try and got together a band called Monta & Brothers. The grand slam came in April 1980 when "Dancing All Night"was released. Composed by Monta and written by Keiji Mizutani（水谷啓二）, the composer treated the song as his last chance. Breaking into the Oricon charts at No. 19, the song flew up to No. 4 the following week, and then hit the top spot a week after that. It stayed at No. 1 for 10 straight weeks. More glory came for the band with Grand Prizes coming from all of the major Japanese music awards, an appearance on the Kohaku Utagassen and 2 million records in sales. And to top it all off, it was the No. 1 song of the year.
Still not a huge fan of the chorus section, but overall I enjoy it now and then as an example of nighttime City Pop.
Well, it's been a couple of days since my last entries. Yesterday, I had a hell of a monstrous translation plus some horrible logistics which contributed to a very tense me. But strangely enough, I got my lone happy moment of the day when the good folks at Amazon.jp were able to deliver something to my mailbox that I had ordered several days prior:
EPO--Uwasa ni Naritai
Yup, it cost me a goodly sum of 6,478 yen, but since I am a fan of hers and her discs are getting rarer by the year, I wasn't about to let this opportunity pass. This is EPO's 4th album, "Uwasa ni Naritai"(I Want to Be Talked About), released in May 1982 Considering what she was wearing on the cover, I'd say that her wish probably did come true. I acquired this one since the first track was the Ray Parker Jr.-composed "Girl in Me", the fun disco tune that was my first profile of her on this blog. Very radio-friendly, it also happened to be the only single released from the original record. And there are a few more tunes that I've heard from this album since they've been included on her BEST compilations.
Track 5 is "Ame no Meguriai"（雨のめぐり逢い...Love Affair in the Rain), a ballad composed and written by EPO herself. The one thing I've liked about her is that she's always had this clear-as-a-bell, energetic voice for her uptempo stuff. "Ame" is a lovely tune but if she could have just softened her voice a bit more, it would've been that much more effective.
This is the title track, which starts off with a bit of a Latin piano riff before going into a happy-go-lucky melody about a young lady not trying too hard to hide an unseemly past from her new beau. I think if there has been a lyrical theme to EPO's repertoire, it's been cheeky fun....kinda like that best friend who always seems to get the hero/heroine in trouble.
The final track is a cover of the song that got her into the limelight, "Downtown". This version is even poppier and more radio-friendly. Although this song has EPO handling all of the vocal arrangements, the album has her usual co-horts, singers Taeko Ohnuki, Yasuhiro Abe, and Shigeki Miyata as backup singers. And her fellow RCA sister, Mariya Takeuchi comes in on one track titled "Secret Agent" as the English-speaking spy. The above, though, is a concert version.
Not all of the songs are winners. One of the last songs just has her blasting even more loudly which kinda reminds me of something being played at too much volume. Didn't even bother to confirm the title. Could be one of those "It'll have to grow on me" ones.
The scary thing is that I can emulate what she's wearing.
As we went from the 80s into the 90s, one of the musical trends in Japan was the band boom. And one of the big bands was Lindberg. Named after the famed aviator Charles Lindbergh (without the 'h' though), guitarist Tatsuya Hirakawa（平川達也）, bassist Tomohisa Kawazoe（川添智久） and drummer Masanori Koyanagi（小柳昌法）were right behind former aidoru-turned-vocal sparkplug Maki Watase（渡せマキ）.
I first came across "Ima Sugu Kiss Me"when I was watching this Fuji-TV Monday night 9 pm drama titled "Sekai de Ichiban Kimi ga Suki"（世界で一番君が好き....I Love You The Most in the World). Now back then, 9 pm on Monday for Fuji-TV was the prime programming slot for the star-powered, super-popular trendy dramas. So, the band had quite the ace in the hole when the song was selected to be the theme for this drama.
Then I came across the music video which in itself has become one of my memories of life in Japan during that time. Seeing the bouncy spiky-haired Watase just bopping along like a stray electron in the popular Harajuku fashion of the time has been seared into my brain. I also love her voice which seems to be that of a prepubescent choir boy just at the point of breaking...try to imagine that voice leading a rock band!
The band's 2nd single, released in February 1990 and composed by guitarist Hirakawa and written by Miyuki Asano（朝野深雪）, hit the top spot and became the 3rd-ranked song of the year.....a big boost for a new band that would continue for 12 years. In 2009, Lindberg got together one more time just to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Strangely enough, considering where their name come from, all of the members are terrified of air travel.
One of the most beloved anime songs from the 1980s, Yoshimi Iwasaki（岩崎良美）will forever be connected with "Touch". The younger sister of Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美), Yoshimi started out as an aidoru in 1980, some 5 years after her sister's debut. Although labeled as an aidoru, her music tended more towards the adult contemporary side of things into genres such as AOR or City Pop, thanks to some of the songwriters who had been sought out such as the Kisugi siblings. But her 20th single,"Touch" had that 50s rock sound imbued into it. "Touch", by the way, was the anime adapted from the original manga by Mitsuru Adachi（あだち充), who had also written "Miyuki"（みゆき） which has its own memorable theme songs by H2O (already profiled). The plot involved the Uesugi brothers and their love for baseball...and also for their friend from childhood, Minami Asakura.
This is a performance by Yoshimi Iwasaki herself. I've always found her delivery to be a bit lighter and more nimble than that of Hiromi, so I think she and "Touch" made a perfect fit. Adachi was also known to have been a big Yoshimi fan as well so I can imagine how he felt when his idol was given the mike to sing the theme song.
Written by Chinfa Kan（康珍化）and composed by Hiroaki Serizawa（芹沢廣明）, "Touch", after its release in March 1985, reached as high as No. 12 on Oricon and was the 39th-ranked song of the year.
This is another one of my enka songs from my childhood. The flourish of strings within Minoru Endo's（遠藤実）melody at the beginning makes "Kitaguni no Haru" (Spring in the North Country) instantly recognizable for me. Haku Ide's（いではく）words about heading back home after a long time away evokes that eternal enka love for furusato (home). And Sen's plaintive singing at the end of the chorus: "Shall I go home?" always reaches those hearts who have traveled far from home.
Masao Sen（千昌夫）is one of the few enka singers who have made the trip to Toronto to do a concert for the Japanese-Canadian community. I didn't go to that concert in the 80s but my parents sure did. They dressed up to the nines as did, I'm sure, every one else who attended to see Sen and his wife at the time, Joan Sheppard. Sen has had that old-fashioned balladeer's voice which beautifully renders the lyrics even more tenderly for this song. It also didn't hurt that he is also from that north country....Iwate Prefecture, to be exact.
"Kitaguni no Haru"was Sen's 26th single since his debut in 1965, and the song has become his trademark. Since its release in April 1977, it managed to reach its peak of No. 6 on the Oricon charts, but it has also achieved many other accolades as well. Not only did it sell 3 million records, it also earned the Long-Seller Prize at the Japan Record Awards since it remained on the charts for 92 weeks! In fact, in 1979, it was the 5th-ranking song of the year.
Getting on the Kohaku Utagassen was a foregone conclusion. The success of "Kitaguni no Haru" helped him get on the New Year's Eve special for his 5th appearance in 1977 (his first in 6 years), and he repeated the same performance for the next couple of years afterwards. He would sing his trademark song a couple of more times before the century was out, making it the most-sung tune on the Kohaku up to the year 2000. And he did his 6th rendition of the song just last year.... considering the events of March 11 2011, Sen's singing must have held special significance.
The song also became very popular outside of Japan as well. It has been sung in Mandarin and Thai, and in China, it's apparently recognized as the most well-known Japanese song there.
One of my favourite Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美） songs during her aidoru days in the 70s,"Cinderella Honeymoon" is one of those ironic tunes created by the team of Yu Aku and Kyohei Tsutsumi（阿久悠・筒美京平）about a supposedly ideal relationship which gradually shows a darker side. It has that mix of 70s aidoru, disco and a touch of Latin.
Released in July 1978,Iwasaki's 14th single went as high as No. 13 on the Oricon charts and ended up as the 89th-ranked song of the year. It also won a Gold Award at the Japan Record Awards as well as earn the singer another appearance at the Kohaku Utagassen. The single was also a track on Iwasaki's 7th album, "Pandora no Kobako"（パンドラの小箱...Pandora's Box）, released the following month. That album went as high as No. 11.
