Hibari Misora -- Ringo Oiwake （リンゴ追分）

The name Hibari Misora（美空ひばり） had been mentioned within my home for years and years before I finally figured out who this person really was. Once I started getting interested in kayo kyoku in the early 1980s and the Kohaku Utagassen became a regular viewing event in Toronto, Misora's legend seeped into my head. My mother told me a few times that the Queen of Kayo Kyoku was held in such awe that on the Kohaku specials she appeared on, even the most popular and most seasoned singers were supposedly terrified of even approaching her backstage. And though Misora stood very tall on the stage and TV, she was all of 147 cm (less than 5 ft) tall. That is presence.

One of Misora's most famous songs came from 1952. "Ringo Oiwake" (Forked Road in the Apple Orchard) stands out for me for Masao Yoneyama's（米山正夫） melody and Misora's vocals. Yoneyama's music evokes the image of that wooden horse-drawn cart clunking down the dirt road amongst the apple trees, and then there is the way Misora draws out the phrasing of "Ringooooooooooo". I'm not sure if the singer and the people around her had intended it, but that elongated expression reminds me of the old-fashioned declarations from sweet potato wagons that I still heard even within the streets of my old bedroom town of Ichikawa. And then there was her voicing of one single vowel, "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh" which seems to musically paint the image of a single petal from an apple blossom just flying its random path through the air after being torn off by the wind.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2t9VNpsBH4

But then there is the spoken part in the middle of the song in which Misora talks in the voice of that girl she was when she had first sung "Ringo Oiwake". She speaks about how she loves the blooming of the flowers before saying that the eventual shedding of their petals brings sad memories of her dead mother in Tokyo, perhaps due to the events of World War II. For people who were growing up or who were already grown up in the 1950s, that spoken part must have brought a lot of tears to the surface. In total, the lyrics, music and Misora's slow and controlled delivery work together to illustrate a canvas of simple beauty and peace in the countryside, perhaps in contrast to the organized chaos and pollution of the re-industrializing cities. They could also illustrate the impermanence of life and how that girl has to smile through the tears and just keep going on steadily if not all that quickly.

"Ringo Oiwake" was first released in May 1952 when Misora was just 15 years old. It broke a record for the most successful single in the postwar era at the time, selling 700,000 records. Ultimately, it sold 1.3 million records and is ranked No. 5 within the singer's most successful releases.

At the beginning of the article, I mentioned how much awe Misora attracted. Well, in that video just above, I noticed how the audience kept very silent although the familiar introduction to "Ringo Oiwake" came on as she came down the steps. Only when she finally reached the stage did the people start applauding. In 1979, Misora appeared on the Kohaku Utagassen for her 18th and final time as a special guest. She had been an annual presence on the NHK New Year's Eve special but in the early 1970s, the national network didn't invite her with the reason being her brother's gang-related dealings (although NHK never announced the connection publicly). She was very unhappy with the slight and refused to appear on the show for several years until that 1979 edition. It was the first and last time for her to perform "Ringo Oiwake" on the Kohaku. I could only imagine what the atmosphere was like in NHK Hall.

Junko Sakurada -- This Is A "Boogie"

Back in the early 70s, three young girls of around the same age auditioned on the NTV talent show "Star Tanjo"（スター誕生...A Star Is Born）: Momoe Yamaguchi, Masako Mori and Junko Sakurada（山口百恵・森昌子・桜田淳子）. The media caught onto the fact that their careers were basically launched there and then, and labeled them initially as the Hana no Chu-San Trio（花の中三トリオ...The Flower Junior High Senior Trio）. As they grew up in front all of Japan, the group name appropriately changed in terms of their school year until their final moniker was Ko-San Trio（高三トリオ...The High School Senior Trio）.

Of the three, Junko Sakurada was the one that I knew about the least in terms of her music career (although the name often popped up here and there and now and then over the decades) which would explain why I had never featured her in the blog up until now. Her popularity, like Yamaguchi's, was basically in the 70s....though several singles would come out until 1983. However, the first time I heard about her was that special (to me) 1981 Kohaku Utagassen when she performed her 36th (and 3rd-last) single, "This Is A 'Boogie'".

Released in September 1981, it looks like Sakurada was going a bit Manhattan Transfer with the 40s boogie-woogie sound. Her act stood out since her dance partner was the guy who had preceded her in the performance order, Toshiyuki Nishida (who sang "Moshimo Piano ga Hiketa Nara"). Now, knowing NHK, the double act was planned to the second, but it was still nice to see a bit of hamming it up on Nishida's side. Sakurada's appearance in the 1981 show was her 8th, her penultimate Kohaku before her final bow in 1982.

"This Is A 'Boogie'" was written by Toshiharu Jitsukawa（実川俊晴） and composed by Yuuichiro Oda（織田裕一郎） who also created a number of Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子） songs such as "Aoi Sangosho"（青い珊瑚礁） and Ikue Sakakibara's（榊原郁恵） "Shining Love" (which also got onto the 1981 Kohaku).

Gonna have to explore some more of Junko's earlier hits.

Kenji Ozawa -- Otona ni Nareba （大人になれば）

It's been quite a while since I opened this one up. I had forgotten what the song sounded like and when I re-heard it, it was like welcoming an old friend again. At the time I got the single back in the mid-90s, I hadn't been so much of a die-hard Flipper's Guitar fan but I was starting to get into jazz with folks like Bill Evans and Canada's own Diana Krall. So when I first saw the now-solo one-half of Flipper's Guitar, Kenji Ozawa（小沢健二）, in a sake commercial with actor Masakazu Tamura, I rather paid attention to the light pleasant jazz playing in the ad while the two were bantering.

That turned out to be the Ozawa-penned "Otona ni Nareba" (When I Become an Adult). It was his 13th single from September 1996, and it's a happy-go-lucky ditty about a young man who feels that he's somewhere between childhood and adulthood and is just waiting to cross over that threshold to go through all that bittersweet love stuff.

Instead of sake, though, I often got reminded of the Tom Hanks movie from 1989, "Big", since the overall themes from both song and film were somewhat similar. And seeing that part of the movie took place in The Big Apple, I think the jazz motif of "Otona ni Nareba" kinda fits. As for how the song did, it did get as high as No. 7 on the Oricon weeklies and Ozawa got his second invitation to the Kohaku Utagassen that year to perform it.

Now, as for that One-Cup Ozeki, that rotgut was sold in a lot of vending machines on the way from the subway station to my apartment in Ichikawa. I was never much of a drinker but for some mad reason, I decided to get one from the machine since I was planning to cook with it, and also swigged down half of it. I ended up coming down with one of the worst headaches, and from then on, One-Cup Ozeki was only used for cooking. Make mine Kubota!

Miho Nakayama/Yurie Kokubu -- Tada Nakitakunaruno （ただ泣きたくなるの）

https://www.tiktok.com/@yoshihiro128/video/7496465576965999890

I hadn't mentioned about my old university club's JTV program in a while, but one of the last J-Dramas that got featured weekly at U of T's International Student Centre before I made my last odyssey to Japan was "Moshi mo Negai ga Kanau Nara"（もしも願いが叶うなら...If My Wish Is Granted）, a TBS comedy that starred Miho Nakayama（中山美穂） as a soon-to-be wed employee of a family restaurant discovering her three long-lost brothers, one of them being the rough-and-tumble Osaka comedian Masatoshi Hamada（浜田雅功） of the duo Downtown (long sentence, deep breath please).

Unfortunately, I don't remember much from the series itself aside from Hamada yelling a lot and Miporin trying to rein him in. However, I do remember the theme song, "Tada Nakitakunaruno" (I Just Wanna Cry, That's All), sung and partly written by Nakayama herself. It stood out to me since it had this wonderfully romantic aura to it that hit me as being faintly European for some reason. And for me, it stands as one of my favourite songs by her. Masaki Iwamoto（岩本正樹） took care of the melody, and although I'm not sure if it was ever his intention, the music seems to also have this quality of an everyday schlub attempting to gain the affections of the prettiest girl in class. Iwamoto, by the way, is also the man behind a number of Megumi Hayashibara's（林原恵） songs such as "Forever Dreamer".

"Tada Nakitakunaruno" certainly did hit a lot of hearts. Nakayama's 28th single was released in February 1994, and would hit No. 1 on Oricon about a month later. It would later become the 17th-ranked song for the year and break through the million-sales barrier. In fact, in the history of Japanese music singles, the song became the 100th single release to do so. Unsurprisingly, the Kohaku Utagassen came beckoning, and she would answer the call for the final time. Even more sobering is that the song is Nakayama's final release to hit the top spot on the charts....unless she decides to get back into the music-making business.

Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵） is someone that I had heard over the years through songwriting credits and commercial tunes. She is also the lyricist who jointly wrote the words to "Tada Nakitakunaruno" with Nakayama, and her husband is the aforementioned Masaki Iwamoto. There is no article on J-Wiki about this singer-songwriter, but from what I have been able to glean via her own website and some of her earlier music via YouTube is that she debuted in 1983 with the album, "Relief 72 Hours", a City Pop-themed LP. I've heard a few of the tracks from that album, and her sound back then was pretty reminiscent of EPO's bright and cheerful stuff. And I have come across "Relief 72 Hours" and a few of her other releases in "Japanese City Pop".

Kokubu gives her own cover of the Nakayama hit through her 1995 album, "Akogare"（憧憬...Longing [although the kanji is actually pronounced "doukei" or "shoukei"）, which I did buy on the strength of "Tada Nakitakunaruno". Although the arrangement is not all that much different from the original, her vocals have a slightly more ethereal and uplifting quality. Now that I've re-discovered this version, I'm interested in checking out some of her earlier work.

Hideki Saijo -- Boomerang Street （ブーメランストリート）

Early in my kayo kyoku collecting career, I borrowed an old VHS tape from a friend which contained a Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹） concert. The tall and lanky guy sang all of the fan favourites including this one, "Boomerang Street", his 20th single from March 1977. At the time, I was still getting a hold on trying to understand Japanese lyrics (not too successfully), so a lot of what Hideki was singing was flying over my head.

However, I did get one word into my head loud and clear. Saijo started going into his next number by rotating his long arm over his own head and yelling, "Boomerang, boomerang, boomerang, boomerang....!" Of course, the crowds went wild. "Boomerang Street" was written and composed by a couple of the big songwriters of the era, Yu Aku and Takashi Miki（阿久悠・三木たかし）, and has Saijo singing very confidently about the return of that former love back into his arms just like that Australian toy/weapon. With that dynamic melody and the singer's shouts of "Boomerang", I probably did wonder if this had been a theme song for a tokusatsu series starring a hero by the name of The Boomerang. But it turned out to be a love song of sorts.

"Boomerang Street" managed to get as high as No. 6 on the Oricon weeklies while becoming the 63rd-ranked song of the year. The song also got onto his 5th anniversary album, "Go-nen no Ayumi"（５年の歩み...A Walk of 5 Years） which came out in April of the same year.

Puffy -- Circuit no Musume （サーキットの娘）

Puffy product placement and 'dorably dorky dancing! I give you my alliteration for the day. Along with the rolling fun of the song itself, the video for Puffy's "Circuit no Musume" (Wild Girls on Circuit) provides oodles of amusement, although having the heads of Ami and Yumi on race queen bodies was kinda borderline creepy.

"Circuit no Musume" is Puffy's 3rd single from March 1997. Written and composed by Tamio Okuda（奥田民男） of Unicorn fame, the song goes into the life of being a race queen, a figure that was (and may still be) part and parcel of the racing experience. Especially in the 90s, tall and long-legged and long-haired beauties in revealing fashion and heels while sporting parasols strode by the circuits and on variety shows. Methinks if Chisato Moritaka had been thinking of a different line of work...

The song was used as the commercial tune for Yamaha's Vino scooter line, and I think they were indeed used in the official music video....certainly Ami and Yumi were wearing the corporate T-shirts. I gather having "Circuit no Musume" sponsoring a line of putt-putty scooters must have further added to the daily recommended dose of irony. And according to the J-Wiki writeup, somewhere in the video, Yumi is rubbing her left leg as a bit of tribute to the fact that she had broken that leg some months before the release of the single when she fell off her bicycle; the appropriate lyrics are in there as well.

"Circuit no Musume" hit the top spot on Oricon, and later became the 32nd-ranked song of the year, making over a million sales. Like a number of other Puffy singles, I recall that this was also a popular tune at the karaoke boxes. The single is also a track on the duo's 2nd album, "Jet CD" which came out in April 1998 and also hit the million barrier.

Yuki Saito -- AXIA Kanashii Kotori （かなしいことり）

I dug out some more tapes from the dusty recesses of my shelves, including one from an old friend of mine from university who taped a number of 80s aidoru tunes. One of those tunes happened to be Yuki Saito's（斉藤由貴）"AXIA - Kanashii Kotori" (Sad Little Bird). I hadn't heard it for years and as soon as the adorable melody flowed out from the headphones and Saito's cutesy-as-all-get-out voice started trilling away, images of puppy dogs and all of the characters from a Lucky Charms cereal floated above my head....and nothing was being imbibed at the time. Amazing! Nice use of the synth-organ in there, too.

Unbelievably, "AXIA" was never made into an official single but was the title track on Saito's debut album which came out in June 1985. It made it as high as No. 3 on the Oricon album charts and contained two of her hits, "Sotsugyo"（卒業） and "Shiroi Honoo"（白い炎）. As for the song "AXIA" itself, it was written and composed by the poet and photographer Natsuo Giniro（銀色夏生）.

At the time, there was an audio tape brand called Axia of which I was a regular purchaser, so I always wondered whether Saito or someone on her team wanted to pay tribute to it. Well, it turned out that perhaps both tape brand and those producers named their respected products after the Greek word for "royal thing".