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, for the past couple of weeks, TV Japan has been playing each of the "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線....Bayside Shakedown） movies. As I'm typing this, the second movie...the one dealing with the evacuation of Odaiba (the modern Tokyo Bay entertainment area in the Japanese capital)...is playing right now, and next week, the somewhat inferior 3rd movie will make its appearance.
Akihiko Matsumoto（松本晃彦） was responsible for the techno opening theme (already profiled), one of the most recognized themes in Japanese TV history. However, there needed to be a friendlier, more organic song to balance things out. Star of the show, Yuji Oda（織田裕二）, was more than happy to oblige, and he brought a friend, British reggae artist, Maxi Priest (who I remember on this side of the Pacific for singing "Wide World" in 1989). Together they wrote the lyrics to the happy-go-lucky "Love Somebody", a musical reflection of Oda's character on the show, Shunsaku Aoshima（青島俊作）.
The musical unit, GARDEN, provided the music and Matsumoto arranged everything. It's one of those light reggae-pop songs that has managed to insinuate itself into my brain all of these years with its lyrics of "love somebody tonight" and "never never never never never never never ever let love go". No matter how dire the situation got for Aoshima and the cops at the Bayside Precinct,"Love Somebody" at the end reassured the audience that everything was gonna be alright. Released in January 1997, Oda's 13th single peaked at No. 9 on Oricon, and was the 65th-ranked song of the year.
All things come to an end, and apparently that was true also for "Odoru Dai Sosasen" since the very last movie in the series came out in September. I'm not sure if this was the actual version of "Love Somebody" played during the end credits, but if so, it's a combination of all the past versions of the song played for the original TV series and the first three movies. I watched those first three at the theatre in Tokyo; the first two were great but the third one let down the side. I hope No. 4 left a fine legacy.
And these were the opening credits to the final movie. They had a pretty soft opening without the frenetic "Rhythm and Police" for the previous movie which may have foretold how the rest of the movie was gonna go, but with this one, glad to see that the techno and the excitement are back.
"Train" was Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子) compilation of all of those hits written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Yumi Matsutoya (under her alias of Karuho Kureta[呉田軽穂]) released in March 1985. It was also the very first Seiko album that I ever bought. Compact discs were still a few years away from me back in my university days, so when I ran down from Japanese class at University of Toronto to Chinatown (just 10-15 minutes walk), it was to get the original LP at a Chinese record shop. That come-hither face of hers on the yellow cover just seemed to say "Just $25 CDN plus tax! C'mon! You passed the kanji test...treat yourself!" Who am I to refuse the Queen Aidoru?
Since these were the Matsumoto-Kureta hits, "Akai Sweet Pea"（赤いスイートピー）,"Komugi Iro no Mermaid"（小麦色のマーメイド) and "Hitomi wa Diamond"（瞳はダイヤモンド）are all in there (and already profiled). However, I also want to profile some of the other tunes in there, starting with her 9th single, "Nagisa no Balcony"(渚のバルコニー） which was originally released in April1982 and was also a track on her original album, "Pineapple". As the title hints, it's a summery, breezy song reminiscent of an even earlier hit, "Aoi Sangosho"（青い珊瑚礁), one of my favourite Seiko-chan classics. It was her 7th straight No. 1 song and the 11th-ranked song of 1982.
I remember going home from Robarts Library at U of T with a classmate of mine from EAS120Y (1st-year Japanese) on one very cold night, and we were locked into a conversation about this very song, "Rock n' Rouge". My friend just couldn't figure out the significance of the lyrics "Pure pure lips." I merely said to him that there was a $5 all-you-can-eat buffet at Pizza Hut that had our names on it and we could discuss the oeuvre of Seiko over there. As it turned out, her 16th single was used as the Spring campaign song for Kanebo Cosmetics which would explain the reference to those facial features.
Yuming and Matsumoto showed two different sides of a date. Melodically and lyrically, a lot of the song portrayed the cool dude picking up his girlfriend in that sports car while adjusting the grease in his hair before the sweet refrain representing the girl comes in with Seiko-chan lisping "yes" and "please". Probably a lot of her male fans were melting into the tatami by that point.
"Rock n' Rouge" was Seiko's 14th straight No. 1 released in February 1984, and it was also a track on her album, "Tinker Bell". It was the 3rd-ranked song for that year.
The final song for this entry is "Jikan no Kuni no Alice"（時の国のアリス...Alice in the Land of Time) which would be Yuming's（ユーミン）final contribution to Seiko's repertoire up to now. It's a fun, uptempo song which seems to incorporate a lot of tropes from fairy tales right up to one of the most famous names in Alice. There are apples, horse-drawn pumpkin carriages and witches galore in here. Melodically, it seems to be a kissing cousin to Yuming's "Destiny" and I can imagine both her and Seiko doing a duet with this song easily.
"Jikan no Kuni no Alice" immediately came after "Rock n' Rouge" and was No. 15 in her unbeatable record of consecutive No. 1s. It also placed in 15th place for the yearly rankings and was another track on "Tinker Bell".
For any Seiko-chan fan, "Train" is a must-have. It also hit No. 1 and was the 38th-ranked album for 1985.
The biggest mystery about this song is the title itself. Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）has never divulged who this David is. According to her lyrics, she uses "We" when talking about how much they want to see him again no matter how far away he is, almost as if she were referring to a fan club more than any sort of personal love. Could it have been David Bowie or David Sylvian, the latter with whom she has worked with? Who knows? Love the song, though.
"David" is a track on Yano's February 1986 9th album, "Touge no Wagaya"（峠のわがや...One's House on a Mountain Pass). According to the J-Wiki writeup, it and one other track, "Home Sweet Home" are the only songs that retain the techno flavour of her earlier works in the late 70s and early 80s, while the other tracks start going into a more jazzier direction.
The song had never been sold as a single when "Touge no Wagaya" first came out, but a few years later, when a late-night Fuji-TV comedy called "Yappari Neko ga Suki"（やっぱり猫がすき....I Like Cats After All） used "David" as its opening theme, it was given its own release. There was no particular connection between the characters and a person named David, but I gather it sounded pleasant enough.
I first heard Hokkaido-born Chiharu Matsuyama's（松山千春）"Jinsei no Sora kara"....or part of it....back on "The Sounds of Japan" about 30 years ago. At the time, I'd forgotten that it was on....I probably got engrossed in a hockey game on TV...and ended up rushing to throw in an empty Canadian Tire tape. So I missed the first half of the song. Now, Matsuyama has been labeled as a folk singer, but "Jinsei no Sora kara"(From the Sky of Life), his 9th single (September 1980) since his debut in 1977, sounds more like a City Pop/Smooth Jazz hit with the synths, flute and saxophone in there. However, Matsuyama's characteristic high crooning voice is very much in charge.
Written and composed by Matsuyama, it peaked at No. 4 where it stayed for 6 straight weeks. It sold half a million copies and ended up as the 45th-ranked song of 1980. I'm happy to say that I was able to get a full copy of the song finally when I bought the 1980 disc in the "Seishun Uta Nenkan" CD series (profiled in the Media section).
A few days ago, a veteran actress and entertainer left this mortal coil at the age of 92. Mitsuko Mori（森光子） was definitely a well-known presence on screen and stage. Especially on the latter, she was famous for a play titled "Horoki" in which one of the big scenes involved her gleefully pulling off a front-forward somersault, something that she did well into her 80s. It almost seemed like a custom for Japanese TV to show the annual somersault on the news.
Mitsuko Mori was known primarily as an actress but she also released 5 songs during her career. "Tokyo Shitamachi Atari"(In Downtown Tokyo) was her first single released in April 1973 as the theme song for a popular homespun comedy, "Jikan desu yo"（時間ですよ...It's Time!) during the 70s. Mori starred as the operator of a sento（銭湯）in Gotanda, Tokyo. Translating "shitamachi" as downtown in English is inadequate since shitamachi actually also involves the lifestyle and even how one speaks in traditional neighbourhoods like Asakusa and Kanda. Small wooden houses and old-fashioned mom-and-pop shops are compacted with each other in these areas so that very close-knit communities form. And the neighbourhood sentoin Japan was the equivalent of the local pub in the UK in that folks often gathered in the bath to talk about the latest goings-on within and without the area.
I was in Japan for just a month into my long stay and I was still getting settled in my new digs in Ichikawa. Of course, being December, the Christmas commercials were starting to pop up, especially those for Tokyo Disneyland (just a stone's throw away from the apartment). At the same time, the ski resorts were also powering up for the season, and the Japanese just L-O-V-E to ski (ski suki, see?....terrible oyaji joke). So Alpen, a famous winter sporting goods company, started throwing their ads on screen. Their sonic spokesperson? Leather-lunged Kohmi Hirose（広瀬香味美）.
It was the first time for me to hear this lady with this powerful voice as she sang a portion of her latest hit, "Shiawase wo Tsukamitai"(I Wanna Grab That Happiness) on the Alpen commercial. There was that one note in the refrain where I thought she was gonna crack the ceiling. As usual, it's a funky uptempo song which probably has attracted a ton of the young folk onto the slopes over the years as a Pavlovian response. Written and composed by Hirose herself, her 5th single peaked at No. 6 on Oricon.
However, being someone who would like to give as complete a song as possible, here is a karaoke video of someone trying the song. Speaking of karaoke, on TV Japan, via NHK, for the past several weeks, the singer has also put on a teacher's cap as she teaches a trio of students (two tarento and one university student) on how to excel in the karaoke box. Hirose-sensei is very much the nurturing den mother here. As for me, if I ever attended her class, I'd probably end up with a dunce cap in the corner.
1980 was definitely the year of YMO with their 2nd, 3rd and 4th albums all in the Top 10, but Folk/New Music singer Chiharu Matsuyama had the top album of the year, "Kishou Tenketsu"...an album of his best hits....and his follow-up album, "Roman". And at No. 8, new aidoru singer Seiko Matsuda would have her first album, "Squall" containing her debut single, "Hadashi no Kisetsu" and her first big hit in "Aoi Sangosho".
