Ikue Sakakibara -- Slow Memory（スロー・メモリー）

When I was figuring out what to include on the Creator article for Takao & Etsuko Kisugi（来生たかお・来生えつこ）, I came across this Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）ballad that had been written and composed by them but never got around to including it.

"Slow Memory" was the title track from Sakakibara's 12th album released in April 1982. I've listened to the song a few times now and it definitely has grown on me over the past number of days, which illustrates the point that there are hidden gems (depending on the listener) within the original albums aside from the obvious hits on a singer's BEST compilations. In fact, the album, "Slow Memory" doesn't have any tracks which were released as official singles, and looking at some of the track titles and even the album cover itself, it seems as if Sakakibara were going for a more adult contemporary vibe.

"Slow Memory" the song certainly has that infusion of Kisugi nostalgia and mellowness, and perhaps a tip of the hat to Eiichi Ohtaki（大瀧詠一）, although I don't think it's an absolute imitation of the late singer-songwriter. Still, knowing the ever-smiling Sakakibara mostly as the veteran tarento all these years and as a former aidoru whose discography I'm still chipping away at. it's always great when I discover something delightful that has been hidden away from me for over 30 years. The melody is admittedly not particularly original since I've heard variations on it by singers like Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）, but just taking it on its own merits, it's a pleasant and relaxing addition to that part of my brain which has been trained on the old kayo.

Yoko Takahashi -- Zankoku na Tenshi no Tehze （残酷な天使のテーゼ）

Well, another anime season has come and gone...so, a fond farewell to shows like "Hibike! Euphonium" and "Fate Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works", and welcome to the new summer season. One of the shows that my anime buddy introduced to me was something called "Sore ga Seiyuu!" about the trials, tribulations and thrills of a trio of voice actors trying to get that break in the industry. The first episode was...OK. There was nothing particularly incredible. It was just the usual cute characters, including the lead who looked curiously like the goofy Yuki Nagato from "Nagato Yuki-chan no Shoushitsu", and a similarity to "Shiro Bako". However, what got my interest was at the very end when the actual seiyuu finished up with the jolly ending theme that will include an excerpt from a famous anison each week. The producers couldn't have done better to start off the series with a rather beloved song.

Yup, hearing the ladies sing "Zankoku na Tenshi no Tehze" (A Cruel Angel's Thesis) definitely perked up my eyes and ears. And I was never an Evangelion fan, either. The anime "Neon Genesis Evangelion" started up a month before I arrived in Japan in November 1994 for my longer second stint as an English teacher. However, since I didn't get into anime during my time there, it would be months before I started noticing that word "Evangelion" being bandied about on the telly and then seeing the gigantic posters of one Rei Ayanami and the Evangelion all over Akihabara. I kinda thought the latter was a mecha as designed by Charles Addams...there was something quite Lurch-like about it.

The piece de resistance was then the opening theme itself. Whenever I watched TBS' "Countdown TV" in the wee hours of Sunday morning, it seemed that "Zankoku na Tenshi no Tehze" would always be showing up in the rankings over and over for weeks and weeks on end. For an anison, I thought that the song had gone further up the Oricon list than it actually did which was No. 27 at its peak. But it was a very long resident on the charts as it placed at No. 191 in 1995 when it was released in October of that year (a whole year after the show began?!), No. 161 in 1996 and then No. 156 in 1997.

Just a brief detour, but the opening credits for "Neon Genesis Evangelion" were something that I had only discovered quite recently. They were very well done so I guess I am indeed a sucker for quick-cut openings with a killer theme song..."Mission: Impossible" and "Space: 1999" come to mind here.

Amazing thing that "Zankoku" came out almost 20 years ago. Aside from the other "Evangelion" theme that Yoko Takahashi（高橋洋子）sang, "Kokoro yo Genshi ni Modore" (心よ原始に戻れ), this song is the only other contribution I know by her. Neko Oikawa（及川眠子）provided the lyrics, and she is the one who wrote up a number of songs for the late80s/early 90s aidoru duo, Wink, including their famous hit, "Samishii Nettaigyo"（淋しい熱帯魚）back in 1989. Meanwhile Toshiyuki Omori（大森俊之）took care of the melody which seems to have that successful mix of Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）and late 80s anison. It may not have actually cracked the Top 10 on Oricon but it did make TV Asahi's list of the Top 100 Anime Songs at No. 55. And I gather that the anime fans would have probably stood up and saluted if the song were played at any convention.

Yes, indeedy...get those glowsticks out!

And those amazing opening credits were just ripe for parody...even on live-action TV.

One of the craziest things that I read regarding "Zankoku" on the Wikipedia writeup was that initially during production of "Evangelion", director Hideaki Anno had apparently wanted to use excerpts from Borodin's "Polovetsian Dances No. 2" as the opening theme. My boyhood memories suddenly bubbled up at that cheap commercial (that you see above) I used to see for years and years where the old fellow explained how the 50s standard ballad of "Stranger In Paradise" was adapted from "Polovetsian Dances". The crazier thing was that a recording of "Stranger In Paradise" was something that I had heard even earlier on the old RCA Victor over and over. Y'know...I did like both versions but frankly, I'm happy that Yoko Takahashi got her chance for the anime.

Yoko Takahashi's backup singers?

Koichi Aoki/Chiyoko Shimakura -- Kaki no Kizaka no Ie （柿の木坂の家）

The persimmon is a fruit that I got to like somewhat later in life. It's known as kaki（柿）in Japanese, and it's not exactly too common in my area of Canada at least although it is well known in my ancestral homeland. My first experience with the persimmon wasn't too good; it tasted way too bitter, and sure enough there is the expression, shibugaki (bitter persimmon), and since I'm mentioning it here in this blog, there is the Johnny's aidoru group from the 80s, Shibugakitai（シブがき隊）.

However, once it finally ripens (or gets dunked into some alcohol for a few days), the persimmon becomes this luscious, sweet and messy thing that's quite delish. I've left a YouTube video up above just to show you what this fruit looks like, just in case some of you folks elsewhere on the planet are like I was when I was a kid and had no idea what the heck a persimmon was. To give credit where credit is due, the video was made by Perry Rush.

Anyways, on to the main song at hand here. A couple of nights ago, NHK's "Kayo Concert" paid tribute to the songs of longtime composer Toru Funamura（船村徹）who was the guest of honour on the show. Basically, Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, one of the performers of the evening, put it best about Funamura, "If there were no him, there would be no us."

I've already profiled a few songs that were composed by Funamura, and then came across this one on the show which fired up some of those old hoary memory engrams. It was "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie" (The House on the Persimmon Tree Slope) which was originally composed in September 1957 and written by the late Miyuki Ishimoto（石本美由起）. It's a venerable old ballad that has popped up over the decades on many shows, performed by many singers. In fact, it's a bit of a surprise considering how much of an enka standard it has become that it didn't earn its own article on J-Wiki.

The original version was sung by enka veteran Koichi Aoki（青木光一）who had been born in Saga Prefecture in 1926 before moving to Fengtian, Mongolia for several years and was detained in Siberia for a few years after serving in the Japanese army before being released in 1949. A year later, he would enter Columbia Records and release his debut single, "Wakai Arashi"（若い嵐...Young Storm）.

Aoki's "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie" had that reediness in the arrangement which I often related with the wartime and postwar kayo. And Aoki had that nasal and dreamy quality in his delivery which reminded me of some of those American Big Band crooners from a few decades earlier. Kishimoto's lyrics waxed wistfully on the protagonist's old hometown with that slope where his home was being just a few clicks from the little train station, how the scenes changed with the seasons and how the fellow wanted to meet that girl who may or may not have been an old flame. Probably the overall effect was to get all those folks working hard in the big city back in those days thinking about the relatively more idyllic days back in the countryside. Well, the effect worked as the song became an unprecedented hit for Aoki according to J-Wiki although I couldn't get any concrete stats on how many records were sold.

As I mentioned, "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie" has been covered by many enka singers over the years. The above link is for one version sung by Chiyoko Shimakura（島倉千代子）, which was released in May 2004. The arrangement is lusher (which is how I've always remembered the song) with the addition of those enka strings, although it still retains that feeling of the countryside. 

Like Funamura, the 89-year-old Aoki, who is even older than the composer by 6 years, is still active in his career. He is even a Chairman Emeritus of the Japanese Singers' Association.

B'z -- Ultra Soul

Well, we're almost through the first week of the Pan Am Games in Toronto, and Canada has been reaping a Golden harvest. As amazing and wonderful as it sounds, the home of J-Canuck is so far on top of the medal board...yep, even ahead of the United States. I guess something has to be said about home country advantage. And even more importantly, it looks like Torontonians have finally gotten into the swing of things after a lot of us (yep, me included) had been grumbling big time about the costs and the potential inconvenience for everyone in the GTA (still, I'm not sure how successful those HOV lanes on the highways have been).

Anyways, I found out that B'z's 31st single, "Ultra Soul" from March 2001 has been quite the darling song for Japanese sports programs and a competition. It was apparently first used as the theme song for the 2001 World Aquatics Championships held in Fukuoka in July of that same year, and then producers all over the air waves were so tickled by the usual B'z explosive brio that it started getting used in other TV sports shows, especially when they dealt with swimming.

Can you imagine being a competitive swimmer walking out into the pool area while hearing "Ultra Soul"? You could probably feel like taking on Michael Phelps himself. It's all so classic B'z with Koshi Inaba's（稲葉浩志）booming vocals and Takahiro Matsumoto's（松本孝弘）distinctive guitar blasting away at the water.

"Ultra Soul" hit No. 1 and stayed there for 2 consecutive weeks but just missed cracking the Top 10 Songs for 2001, ending up in 11th place. It went Triple Platinum and it was a track on the duo's 12th original album from July 2002, "Green". That album also hit No. 1 and became the 7th-ranked release for the year.

Another part of the reason for putting this up is that I saw a parody version of "Ultra Soul" performed on "The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan" by the character of Kyon at an onsen. I believe the title in that universe was "Gira Gira Shake". However, as we all know, the song goes:

ULTRA

                          SOUL

                                       HEY!

Yuki Saito & Takao Kisugi -- ORACION - Inori （ORACION -祈り-）

I think with the recent article I did on the various works of the sibling songwriting duo Etsuko and Takao Kisugi（来生えつこ・来生たかお）, there is one song by them that has kept nagging at me over the past few days, but I held off on including that one in that article since I did want to feature it solo for its duet nature.

"ORACION - Inori" (ORACION - Prayer) was the official singles for both Takao Kisugi and Yuki Saito（斉藤由貴）which I first came across in one of the former's BEST compilation way back when. Just for the record, it was Kisugi's 23rd single and Saito's 11th single released in June 1988, a month before the movie "Yuushun ORACION"（優駿 ORACION...Fine Horse ORACION）was released with the song as the official theme. Not surprisingly, Saito was the heroine of the flick as Kumiko Wagu, the daughter of a captain of industry who was given a racehorse, Oracion, which eventually ran in The Japanese Derby. I vaguely remember seeing some scenes from the movie.

Usually when I think of these horse movies, titles like "International Velvet" and "Black Beauty" come to mind, and all of these heroic songs with horns and low strings come riding in as fast and as urgently as the steeds themselves. However, Kisugi and Saito bring far more cuddly sweetness into "ORACION" as if the title horse were still that just-born colt wobbling about on his legs. You just wanna take that CD and hug it.

As mentioned, the Kisugi siblings created the song which got as high as No. 4 on Oricon.

Sayuri Ishikawa -- Hatoba Shigure (波止場しぐれ)

Ah, I just love it whenever I'm able to figure out and differentiate the music styles of different composers, especially between Tetsuya Gen (弦哲也) and Chiaki Oka (岡千秋), since some of their works sound somewhat similar at times. Both put together elegant pieces filled with strings and the koto. However, I've noticed that Gen generally incorporates the accordion into his works, and when you can hear the harmonica and the guitar being strummed at a lower note, it's most likely going to be Oka's doing.

I managed to find this difference as Haruo Minami's (三波春夫) "Ganko Oyaji no Naniwabushi" (頑固親爺の浪花節) - a whimsical tune that I would love to write about but I'm still unable to find it on the Net - played through my ear pieces. I had assumed that Gen was responsible its music, but looking up the song proved me wrong. It was, instead, done by Oka. So from then on, I began paying close attention to the songwriters' styles; I picked out George Yamamoto (山本譲二) songs, since Gen has composed many of them, and compare them with "Ganko Oyaji no Naniwabushi" (primarily). Eventually I had a rough idea about the differences mentioned in the earlier paragraph, then came "Hatoba Shigure" to cement my hypothesis... Oh my, a little fragment of my science studies has made its way into my writing, hasn't it?

As I was saying, I came across "Hatoba Shigure" while on a train commute home from school about a week back. I was feeling like a soothing tune with Sayuri Ishikawa's (石川さゆり) gentle vocals, aka "Meoto Zenzai" (夫婦善哉), but while scrolling through my "Sayuri Ishikawa Playlist", I noticed "Hatoba Shigure", a song I hadn't yet touched, above my first choice, so I decided to give it a try. The moment I heard the strumming of the guitar, Oka immediately came to mind. This time, I was right, and I'm still pretty proud of this little feat! Not as soft as "Meoto Zenzai", though still as relaxing and easy on the ears, and the tinkling at the beginning of song made me think of rain drizzling down on some bay area at night, when the only thing making the rain visible are the lights in the area.

(I'm sorry but the video has been taken down.)

Oh wow, I'm not used to seeing Ishikawa like that!

Since I focus on the music here, I tend to block out whatever Ishikawa sung. The only parts I hear when I finally tune in to Osamu Yoshioka's (吉岡治) lyrics are the areas that make "Hatoba Shigure" the representative song for the offshore island of Shodo, Kanagawa prefecture, namely the Tonosho port and the Setouchi sea. The rest of it just breeze by, probably because I'm too busy watching the passing housing estates from the train, or just staring aimlessly at nothing with nothing going into that head of mine.

Anyway, "Hatoba Shigure" was released on 21st July 1985 and it did pretty well on the charts, peaking at 29th place on the Oricon weeklies. The song allowed Ishikawa to bag the "Best Singer" award at the 27th Japan Record Awards, and she sang it once during her 8th Kohaku appearance in 1985.

The video above is Oka's unplugged rendition of "Hatoba Shigure". At times, he really sounds as though there's something stuck in his throat.

www.ishikawasayuri.com

Minami Kuribayashi -- Kaze no Yukue (風のゆくえ)

As I told before, I have a big crush on Minami Kuribayashi (栗林みな実). Crush-wise, she only loses to Megumi Hayashibara (林原めぐみ). And yes, I have a crush on Megumi even if she is a forty eight years old woman now. Back to Kuribayashi, I’d like to enjoy her songs as much as I like her, but I confess I’m having a good amount of success on that lately.

Today, though, I’m talking about an old favorite, the beautiful “Kaze no Yukue”, which was released as Minami’s second single, alongside “yours”, in February 2003.

“Kaze no Yukue” is kind of a forgotten single in Kuribayashi’s discography, and it’s a pity because the song is quite nice. Personally, I like the vulnerable vibe of the song with the strings (fake or not) and all the keyboards. As for Minami, even though not very experienced at the time, she delivered an emotional and fragile performance, just like the song required.

Since the beginning of her career in the anime industry, Minami Kuribayashi is known for singing themes for adult-oriented games, and that’s the case with "Kaze no Yukue", as it was used as the opening theme for the game “Kimi ga Nozomu Eien” (君が望む永遠).

The “Kaze no Yukue/yours” single reached #68 on the Oricon charts. Lyrics and music were composed by Minami Kuribayashi herself.