Miki Ito -- Shakishaki Beach Town (しゃきしゃきビーチタウン)

What I present here today is a marvelous Stock Aitken Waterman rip-off, something that was not rare in Japan during the late 80s.

The first time I listened to Miki Ito’s (伊藤美紀) “Shakishaki Beach Town” I was instantly mesmerized by its cheap electronic sound in the form of Eurobeat-esque synths and a very catchy chorus. In addition, Miki Ito’s aidoru voice singing “I love you” near the end was almost too much for me to handle. I almost questioned myself why this kind of music is not considered cool nowadays.

After one or two listens, something started to bother me: “Shakishaki Beach Town” sounded like a very catchy SAW song, and I needed to remember which one. Well, it wasn’t that hard, as I quickly associated it with Rick Astley’s classic “Together Forever”, one of the most “cookie-cutter” songs that came out of SAW’s hit factory. In fact, the melody during the first lines of “Shakishaki Beach Town’s” chorus is exactly the same of Astley’s hit, and the cute keyboard twinkles repeated in the background just keeps the ongoing fun. It can’t get more sugary than that.

After this discovery, I checked some Japanese sites to see if someone commented about this little curiosity, and, of course, there was one site. It was sad, because I truly believed I had invented the wheel (not really... I was certain other people had done the same easy association in the past), but whatever. Click here for the link.

“Shakishaki Beach Town” was released in July 1988. It reached #38 on the Oricon charts, selling around 8,000 copies. Lyrics were written by Jun Tochinai (栃内淳), while music was composed by Yoshimasa Inoue (井上ヨシマサ). As for the arrangement, Ryo Yonemitsu [???] (米光亮) was the responsible.

Source: http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_nss2f9g7BE1qf331vo1_1439060805_cover.png

Wink -- Fuyu no Photograph （冬のフォトグラフ）

Well, the pleasant surprises that I find out about from Japanese pop music. I was just traipsing through the City Pop section of YouTube last night when I came across this video by Wink of all acts. Wink? City Pop? Never would have imagined the connection.

And listening to "Fuyu no Photograph" (Winter Photograph), there wasn't anything there that would have it definitely fit into that particular genre, but it is quite Xmas-y. The song was the only original tune in Wink's December 1988 mini-album "At Heel Diamonds" between their 1st and 2nd album; the rest of the tracks are covers of Western songs including their big hit "Ai ga Tomaranai"　（愛が止まらない）.

What is surprising for me when it comes to "Fuyu no Photograph" is just how so smooth Shoko Aida (相田翔子...who is doing a solo here) sounds with Yukinojo Mori's（森雪之丞）lyrics and how adult contemporary Yasuhiro Kido's（木戸やすひろ）melody is considering that my impression of Wink during this early part in their career was always about the Eurobeat. The ballad is something that Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）would have included in her Christmas repertoire at around the same time.

TINNA -- Shining Sky

I discovered the female vocal duo of TINNA within the pages of "Japanese City Pop" a few years ago and had wondered about how they sounded. TINNA consisted of singer-lyricist Tomoko Soryo（惣領智子）and Japanese-American singer Mariko Takahashi（高橋真理子...not to be confused with the vocalist originally from Pedro & Capricious...高橋真梨子）, and although their J-Wiki page has their time together as being 1979-1981, they were apparently together as of 1976 when they came up with this song "Shining Sky". The single version didn't come out, though, until July 1979. The songwriters were lyricist Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）and Yasunori Soryo（惣領泰則）.

"Shining Sky" was the theme song for the music radio program, "Music Sky Holiday" on Nippon Broadcasting System which lasted from 1976 to 1984 in its first incarnation as hosted by Ryoko Taki（滝良子）. Sponsored by All Nippon Airways, the program, which was broadcast on Sunday nights, seemed to specialize on the mellow music covered by AOR, New Music and City Pop according to what I have heard from the 15-minute excerpt above. And "Shining Sky" has that melodic feeling that would make it the perfect theme for that ubiquitous image for that plane symbolizing City Pop itself. Plus, Soryo and Takahashi had a vocal style which reminded me of vocal groups Hi-Fi Set and Circus.

The purpose of the program seemed to be to transport the listeners off to footloose and fancy-free lands, thanks to the mix of Western/Japanese songs and light and pleasant banter between the co-hosts.

I wasn't quite able to follow all of the talk and conversation with Taki and her colleague, but listening to "Music Sky Holiday", I could imagine what inspired my old favourite radio program of "Sounds of Japan" from decades back. Plus, listening to the program reminded me of my days in the 80s when I was listening to radio everyday as I was studying after dinner or pulling all-nighters. My interest in listening to all sorts of music, not just Japanese, was born in that decade and that fueled my habit of spinning the dial all throughout the AM and FM bands as I tuned in stations like CHUM, CHFI, CFNY and CFTR.

However, my old hobby almost instantly shrunk to nothingness after graduating from U of T in 1989 and then heading over to Japan for my JET stint. Compared to the crowded airwaves in North America, Japanese radio was a relative desert, and what irked me about the format at the time was that there just seemed to be too much talk and truncated songs as if the record companies basically declared "If you want to hear the whole thing, pay us!" Besides, I was just getting too much into Japanese variety TV and enjoying my quickly growing collection of CDs.

By the time I got back to Toronto, I was totally weaned off of radio and then heading back to Japan to start my 2nd stint in Ichikawa, I actually lived in an area which was notoriously bad for picking up radio transmissions. All my radio-listening hobby now needed was a gravestone to cap off its death. So, listening to this old NBS radio program was refreshingly nostalgic. In fact, I wrote this whole article while listening to the two excerpts above.

Scatman John -- Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)

To preface this article, I'm gonna have to re-display my geekiness once again and refer to a 2nd-season episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation", "Loud as a Whisper".  In that particular episode, deaf and mute Ambassador Riva remarks that the key to negotiating success is making a disadvantage into an advantage.

I've often thought about that statement when I think about the heartwarming story of the late Scatman John (aka John Larkin). As a boy, he had a rather tough childhood due to a stutter. However, he was able to overcome this difficulty by using it to his advantage when he was introduced to the art of scatting at the age of 14, a couple of years into his education on the piano. John then became a jazz pianist in the 1970s.

Now, why am I introducing this fellow in a blog about Japanese music? Well, just a few weeks into my time as an English teacher in the megalopolis that is Tokyo, Scatman John released his debut single as a pop singer in November 1994 titled "Scatman (Ski Ba Bop Ba Dop Bop)", and not long after that, his face, through the above video, was all over the place. My first encounter with the anachronistically-tailored (but darn dapper) fellow with the Fuller Brush mustache was in Shibuya when I saw the video being flashed up on the big screen just across from Shibuya Station. Because of all the noise in the area, I couldn't quite hear what the video was all about but then after seeing it on TV one night, I realized the fellow was scatting at Warp Eight! It was like hearing Ella Fitzgerald and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross on acid. All that to a techno beat.

And initially, I thought that Scatman John was one of those inexplicable "Big in Japan" acts. For a while at least, he became the most popular and cuddliest middle-aged non-Japanese guy in the country. I saw him appear on a number of TV shows including the above "Music Station" on TV Asahi. And he always came across as very amiable and gracious. His debut single was nowhere near the Top 10 on Oricon, peaking at No. 36, but as I said, he became a pop culture fixture for a few years after that. Not only that, I later realized that he became quite the popular fellow in Europe and, to a certain extent, in North America as well.

One of the signs that someone or something has made a definite impression in pop culture anywhere is its ability to be parodied. So, of course, Ultraman had to put his 2 pennies in.

The monomane tarento were also more than willing to take on Scatman John. And considering John's sartorial tastes, he probably was an impressionist's dream.

Plus, the Scatman himself pushed the merchandise.

Via YouTube though, I discovered more of his discography as a jazz pianist and singer. This is the bluesy and soulful "Last Night I Dreamed".

And the above is his 1986 debut album "John Larkin".

I did mention the term "heartwarming" up above. Scatman John made that initial disadvantage into a big advantage, and although I don't think he's become an icon in Japanese pop culture, he did make his mark for a certain generation with his distinctive style, happy demeanor and, of course, his golden tongue during what would become unfortunately his last decade of life. I think he was truly grateful for that opportunity to make other people, especially people in other nations, happy. He passed away in 1999 from lung cancer at the age of 57.

Noboru Kirishima -- Tabiyakusha no Uta (旅役者の唄)

I'm not sure why, but over the past few days I had the urge do an article on a ryukoka that I wasn't that familiar with and one that was not by a ryukoka artiste I favour, like Yoshio Tabata (田端義夫). Consulting the J-Wiki pages of composers of the pre/post-war era Yoshiji Nagatsu (長津義司) and Masao Koga (古賀政男) for ideas, nothing tickled my fancy then and there when skimming through their works, and so I decided to re-watch a medley of ancient kayo which you can see up there to choose the song that either the bespectacled Noboru Kirishima (霧島昇) or the beatific Minoru Obata (小畑実) had sung. As you can see from the title, I went with the latter whose name I never knew how to pronounce until recently, with the reason being - I had not covered anything by him before.

"Tabiyakusha no Uta", which was what the frowning, sad-faced Kirishima sang at that time, isn't as jovial as Obata's "Kantaro Tsukiyo Uta" (勘太郎月夜唄), and I actually did not like this post-war song (released in 1946) the moment I heard it. But with the ryukoka medley on constant replay (I think I've mentioned this in one article before), Kirishima's forlorn delivery and the fast-paced haunting melody of "Tabiyakusha no Uta" slowly grew on me, eventually becoming a tune that would get stuck in my head from time to time... Yup, it is doing just that right as I'm writing this and won't go away for another day or so.

Anyway, remember me saying that nothing on Nagatsu or Koga's J-Wiki articles caught my attention? Well, I only found out when selecting "Tabiyakusha no Uta" that Koga was the one who had composed it. Another look at the great composer's repertoire after that revealed that Kirishima was one of his frequent collaborators, and "Tabiyakusha..." was one of the multiple works produced from this collaboration. I guess I did not see that sooner due to never looking at the song's title whenever it came up and its melody not having the high-pitched notes from the mandolin (still not sure) that I can easily associate with Koga.

In the title as well as Yaso Saijo's (西條八十) lyrics, the words "Tabiyakusha" are mentioned. I did some research on it - turns out that "Tabiyakusha" are basically actors from this genre of Japanese theater called taishu engeki, or theater for the masses. The actors move from theater to theater to act, hence the "Tabi". So I think "Tabiyakusha no Uta" had Kirishima singing about the journeys of the roving thespians.

He looks so worried...

columbia.jp

Hikaru Utada -- Beautiful World

A few times at my anime buddy's place, a song popped up during the one hour of anison appreciation which occurs halfway during our biweekly anime session. Of course, I immediately recognized the voice of Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）but did not know that she had actually recorded an anime theme. I wasn't exactly a fanatic but I did enjoy a number of her songs early in her career but as we all went deeper into the 2000s, I started losing interest in her music.

So my eyes perked up when I heard this gently rolling number, "Beautiful World" by Utada (her 19th single from August 2007 written and composed by her) and my friend informed me that it was the theme song for a cinematic reboot of one of anime's most popular franchises "Evangelion Shingeki Joban: Jo"（ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:序...Evangelion 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone）which came out in September 2007. Not that I was ever a fan myself of "Evangelion" but whenever the title was mentioned, my memory always went back to that amazing theme song, Yoko Takahashi's（高橋洋子）"Zankoku na Tenshi no Tehze"（残酷な天使のテーゼ）.

So, on hearing "Beautiful World", I thought that this was a nice mellow alternative to Takahashi's super tune although watching the video of the movie's excerpts above, it looks like there was still a goodly share of strum und drang in the reboot. When I compare the two themes, where "Zankoku na Tenshi no Tehze" is this proud and hopeful anthem of having these robots successfully protect the human race, "Beautiful World" is this just-as-hopeful but more low-key theme which could accompany something as peaceful as a drive into the countryside for a picnic.

"Beautiful World" peaked at No. 2 on Oricon and became the 20th-ranked song for 2007. It was also a track on her 5th album "Heart Station" from March 2008 which hit No. 1 on the album charts and later became the 5th-ranked album of that year, breaking the million barrier in sales.

An even more down-to-earth version came out in June 2009 for the second film in the "Evangelion" series, "Evangelion Shingeki Joban: Ha"（ヱヴァンゲリヲン新劇場版:破...Evangelion:2.0 You Can (Not) Advance）.

Cousin -- Fuyu no Fantasy（冬のファンタジー）

One interesting observation I have about Xmas commercials in Japan and in Canada/United States is that with the current Yuletide ads here, it's more about taking some lighthearted pokes at ol' Santa and the entire concept of the Holidays. Meanwhile in Japan, Xmas isn't even their original holiday but Japanese advertisers have just slathered their commercials in so much Norman Rockwell sentimentality that I often got this salmon-level need to get home in the years that I decided to stay in Ichikawa between December and January. "I NEED TO PUT UP A XMAS TREE....NOW!" was a frequent pulse in my head after catching a whole series of Xmas-themed ads in my adoptive nation. The above ad was one such example...and that was for beer.

The campaign song for Sapporo's Fuyu Monogatari Beer was Cousin's（カズン）"Fuyu no Fantasy" (Winter Fantasy) from October 1995. This singing and songwriting duo consisted of two real cousins, Izumi Koga and Hiroshi Urushido（古賀いずみ・漆戸啓）, who met at a Tokyo recording studio in 1992 after having participated in their own musical pursuits and decided to join forces. Their very first output was a song created by them, "Obaachan no Tanjoubi"（おばあちゃんの誕生日...Grandma's Birthday）in tribute to their grandmother who had just passed away in 1993 with their first official single being "Ai Nante Shinjinai"（愛なんて信じない...I Don't Believe In This Thing Called Love）in 1995.

But their most famous song is "Fuyu no Fantasy", Cousin's 3rd single. Being somewhat of a J-Xmas song freak, I surprisingly didn't pay all that much attention to the song for a very long time. Perhaps I was a bit burned out on J-Xmas tunes at the time but that was indeed the case with me for several years when it came to "Fuyu no Fantasy". But hearing it performed in the most recent episode of NHK's "Kayo Concert" for the first time in a long time, I've actually started appreciating it more. Although there isn't any direct connection to Xmas in the lyrics by Cousin and Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）, with those jingle bells and the hushed tones, I think this is an Xmas tune that even David Foster would have been envious about.

"Fuyu no Fantasy" peaked at No. 8 and quickly became the 62nd-ranked song for 1996, going Platinum. According to the J-Wiki article, Noriyuki Makihara（槇原敬之）, no stranger to Xmas songs himself, participated in the backup vocals although he was not credited. This was the biggest hit for Cousin and it's certainly the one song that I always identify them with. The ballad is also a part of their 2nd album, "Love & Smile" from May 1996.

And with this, another Xmas season has begun on "Kayo Kyoku Plus".