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, since I already put up another wonderful song due to "Light & Mellow: Dream", here is another track from the compilation album,Eri Kojima's（小島恵理）"Lonely Feeling". To be honest, I was surprised that this is my first entry of hers on the blog since I thought I had come across another song by her in the past. The little slip of information I had gathered in the past was that she also had some dealings in the anison genre including one song for "Lensman". (November 20 2019: Received a message from a fellow City Pop fan on Discord that Eri and Noeri Kojima are actually two different folks.)
In any case, "Lonely Feeling" is the B-side to her debut single in 1984, "Foul Play". Kojima took care of both music and lyrics, and I enjoy the arrangement that I've often referred to as "a champagne-&-caviar night in the big city". The title might refer to something lonely but the music is certainly high life in Tokyo, and I do love the saxophone.
Plus, I gather that other people have enjoyed the beats in "Lonely Feeling" so that it has been given the Vaporwave (Chillwave?) treatment and put onto a transformation sequence for Sailor Moon. Just imagine the villain-of-the-week asking Usagi-chanand the other Sailors to keep on transforming since he/she likes the song so much.
Kojima herself was also very busy in helping out in the areas of backup singing, chorus arrangement and vocal training of other singers with her own vocal school. So it was very sad to find out that she had passed away suddenly early last year according to a couple of other sites.
Continuing on with my listening of those CDs I purchased last month, I picked up another of the "Light & Mellow" series (this time titled "Dream") solely on the cool and groovy "Somewhere in Tokyo" by comely Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）. And I think I hit the jackpot with this particular edition since there are some more gems in this compilation.
Case in point: Masaki Matsubara's（松原正樹）"Silly Crush". Now I've seen Matsubara's name through liner notes of many an album over the years and apparently according to the liner notes for "Light & Mellow: Dream", he has the reputation of being Japan's No. 1 session guitarist with over 10,000 songs that he has participated in starting from 1974 backing up Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）. I can only imagine the callouses on those fingers.
However, he has released his own albums since 1978, one of which was his 4th album from 1983, "Painted Woman". "Silly Crush" is one of his tracks on the album, and when I heard the vocals, I automatically thought Kenny Loggins. But actually, the voice belongs to Eric Tagg, a name that has shown up in the pages of this blog when he provided the original "No One There" which was covered by Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善）on his 1995"Cornerstones" album. Both Matsubara and Tagg worked on "Silly Crush".
Indeed, I am a sucker for a good tight horn section and this one has the prolific Jake H. Concepcion on sax once more.
The 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo were seen as the coming-out party for a rejuvenated Japan, so I wouldn't be too surprised to find out that there were probably a lot of kayo (more than usual anyways) coming out in the months and perhaps years leading up to the Games proudly boasting about the capital city. Of course, there is Haruo Minami's（三波春夫）"Tokyo Gorin Ondo"（東京五輪音頭）which was the theme song for those Games that was just performed again on the Kohaku Utagassen last week.
And just a few months before those Tokyo Games launched, there was another Tokyo-based enka tune under the title of "Tokyo no Hi yo, Itsumademo" (The Lights of Tokyo Always) by Jiro Shinkawa（新川二朗）. There isn't very much information on the singer on J-Wiki and only this song is given as his discography, but the Ishikawa Prefecture-born Shinkawa was performing at the Kanazawa Health Centre when he was approached by no less a legend than singer Hideo Murata（村田英雄）and invited to ply his singing skills on a professional level.
In 1962, he debuted with "Kimi wo Shitaite"（君を慕いて/Yearning for You）but his really big hit was "Tokyo no Hi yo, Itsumademo" which was released in July 1964. Written by Tetsuro Fujima（藤間哲郎）and composed by Toshio Saeki（佐伯としを）, the song related the nostalgia of a former romance with certain areas in The Big Sushi such as a foggy Hibiya and the melancholy at Haneda Airport, truly a lyrical departure point for many things. The lyrics may have name-dropped certain areas in Tokyo but the music had a certain jaunty traditional festival feeling as if the song were advertising more about the upcoming local summer festival season than the big international sports event. Still, I came across one commenter on YouTube who remarked that the song often reminded him/her about the Olympics back then. Perhaps the song will get further airplay as the 2020 Games draw near.
Shinkawa appeared on the Kohaku Utagassen of 1964 with "Tokyo no Hi yo, Itsumademo", and is apparently the only performer from Ishikawa to appear on the NHK special up to now.
As I was commenting to Noelle on her fine opinions on the 66th Kohaku Utagassen a couple of days ago, the most recent version of the NHK New Year's Eve special had quite a bit more meat to chew on. Although I read that the special experienced even lower ratings overall than for the program in 2014, I actually enjoyed the Kohaku for the first time in several years, and this is somewhat of a reversal on my more dour feelings on the show, but in an age in Japan when there are so many more things to do outside the home on December 31st and people can just as easily record the program for later viewing, managing a 39.2% in the Kanto area and a 43.0% in the Kansai area during the 2nd half of the show is not too shabby. But yeah, the glory days of the Kohaku are pretty much a part of history now.
For me, one of the highlights of No. 66 was the appearance of Lady Shiina. It wasn't so much seeing singer-songwriter Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）come onto the Shibuya stage as it was witnessing a sliver of a Ringo Shiina concert appear magically in the middle of the Kohaku. She performed her latest single from August 2015, "Nagaku Mijikai Matsuri" (A Long Short Festival), and it's obvious that she has cornered the market on sexy and sultry Neo-Japaneseque fashion.
"Nagaku Mijikai Matsuri" brings a bit of club and a bit of fusion for a nice aural evening on the town accompanying Shiina's purring vocals with vocal assistance from guitarist Ukigumo（浮雲）who used to perform on her old band, Tokyo Jihen, for several years. The song strikes me as being more reflective of her more recent jazziness than her early jangly rock roots, and it would make for some good musical accompaniment on some bar hopping in either Shinjuku or Shibuya. The single managed to peak at No. 6.
The music video has got its own story. As the song is playing on with Shiina and Ukigumo popping up in excerpts, the main scenes deal with a young woman having one final fling in the city before unrepentantly facing her fate following dealing with some ugly business at home. Not a lady to cross.
"Nagaku Mijikai Matsuri" even became the summer campaign tune for Coca-Cola as well.
I shall be starting off the new year with none other than Kiyoshi Maekawa (前川清) and the song of choice is "Hanabi" - looks like there's some word play going on in the title.
When I got to see those responsible for putting "Hanabi" together in the MV's description, rather than the familiar names of the songwriters who usually work on Mae-Kiyo's songs like Toyohisa Araki (荒木とよひさ), I read instead that the kayo crooner's own son, Hiroki (紘毅), had done both the writing and composing. At that point I could guess that "Hanabi" wasn't going to be anything close to Mood Kayo, let alone enka. Judging from Maekawa Jr.'s ikemen-like style on an episode of "Inaka ni Tomaro!" (田舎に泊まろう!) - a show where some celebrity gets dropped in some random countryside town and he/she has to find a local's home to stay in for the night - he didn't look like he'd be into what Maekawa Sr. specializes in.
(cover version)
To be frank, I was skeptical as to what Hiroki would come up with (Noelle from 4/1/2016: To be more specific, I was skeptical of Hiroki's songwriting ability. Should've been clearer on that.), especially with his pop's previous single being written by a venerable figure in enka, but it turned out alright when listening to the pleasant and laid-back pop melody upon taking a look at the MV. Together with the lyrics, "Hanabi" feels like a very hopeful song. I do enjoy it and it's nice to see the once disapproving father collaborating with his son - Mae-Kiyo was against Hiroki's decision to enter the music business. However, I don't think I'd consider it to be one of my favourite Mae-Kiyo songs. Also, from the number of times I've seen "Hanabi" being performed on the "Kayo Concert" and "Nippon no Uta" stage, I find that Maekawa Sr. tends to have a tougher time singing this tune.
Anyway, "Hanabi" was released on 17th September 2014 and it peaked at 100th place on the Oricon charts.
Happy New Year! Today, I'll continue with Midori Karashima (辛島美登里). The song is called "Mizu no Seize (水の星座)", or "Water Sign."
Do you believe in astrology? I personally believe some of it. I've always loved "mysterious stuff" and around 10 years ago I even picked up palm reading and Zi Ping Ba Zi (子平八字), a branch of Chinese astrology, on my own.
In Western astrology, it categorizes the 12 zodiac signs into 4 elements: Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. For instance, I am an Aquarius and its element is Air (contrary to the word aqua which leads people to think that it's Water!). In fact, Aquarius, Gemini & Libra are Air elements and they're said to belong to the Air Sign. Similarly, the Water Sign includes Pisces (Feb 19 - Mar 20), Cancer (June 21 - July 22) and Scorpio (Oct 23 - Nov 21).
It is said that people with Water Sign are intuitive, sensitive, empathetic and compassionate. They're symbols of motherhood in that they're receptive and nurturing. The downside is that when it comes to relationship, they tend to be passive, emotional and may behave irrationally. Despite being badly hurt, Water Sign lovers may choose to continue the relationship due to their receptive and nurturing nature.
In Karashima's song, we meet such a woman. The relationship has been deteriorating. She senses that her lover has been having an affair even though he does not admit it himself. She wants to find out but she can't. She is too afraid to find out the truth. At the end, she chooses to turn a blind eye on her boyfriend (or husband?) and continues with this relationship.
You would expect Midori Karashima to use a lot of analogies in her lyrics. Water Sign is no exception. In the first 2 lines of the song, she uses the phase of the moon to symbolize the relationship. It's "full moon" at the beginning but now it has become a "crescent moon." Soon it'll be all dark before another new moon phase (new relationship) begins. It reminds me of something that I heard before. A student of the great writer, Soseki Natsume (夏目漱石), was trying to translate "I love you" to Japanese. He translated it literally. When Natsume saw it, he corrected his student and said it should be translated as "The moon is beautiful, isn't it?" I suspect Karashima was thinking about that when she wrote the song.
Later in the song, Karashima also uses a long-used glassware as an analogy to the relationship. It looks reliable but since it's still glass, it's brittle!
I love Water Sign's arrangement and its rhythm a lot. I especially like the beginning of the song as it conveys a mysterious mood (Didn't I tell you at the beginning of this post that I love "mysterious stuff"?). I also like the use of the flute as it adds complexity to the melody. In my opinion, Water Sign demonstrate Midori Karashima's singing talent, that she can handle a wide range of ballads.
Here's what I could find on the web:
Too bad, there used to be a video of Karashima singing this song in a music program, but it has been removed by YouTube. Although this is an incomplete version, but only the last chorus was cut so you can still hear 90% of the song.
Wish everyone a great 2016!
Note: I obtained the album image from iTunes Japan when I bought the album itself. Copyright goes to whoever's the owner.
For the decades that I have been earnestly following Japanese popular music, the various boy bands and solo acts under Johnny & Associates（ジャニーズ事務所）headed by the now-87-year-old Johnny Kitagawa（ジャニー喜多川）have been ever-present. Along with Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）, Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）and Masahiko Kondo（近藤真彦）, there have been the units ranging from Shonentai（少年隊）and Hikaru Genji（光GENJI）in the 80s all the way to the current kings of SMAP and Arashi（嵐）.
But I always wondered who the very first Johnny's act was. Was it Matchy or Shonentai or further back with Hiromi Go? Who created the Big Bang for the Johnny's universe?
Well, I guess I don't have to wonder any longer...
When I was checking out the lineup for the 16th Kohaku Utagassen in 1965 and came across Sachiko Nishida's（西田佐知子）marvelous "Akasaka no Yoru wa Fukete"（赤坂の夜は更けて）, I also saw another entry which was simply called Johnnys（ジャニーズ）and they were responsible for that old jazzy chestnut "Mack The Knife", popularized by the late Bobby Darin. I started musing "Hmm...could this be...?"
And sure enough it was. This was Johnny Kitagawa's（ジャニー喜多川）first boy group...the Ancestor Zero to Arashi and SMAP. While the future Svengali for all Japanese boy bands was working at the US Embassy in Tokyo, he encountered teenagers Teruhiko Aoi（あおい輝彦）, Osami Iino（飯野おさみ）, Ryo Nakatani（中谷良）and Hiromi Maie（真家ひろみ）playing baseball in the massive Yoyogi Park (thank you, Wikipedia) in the early 1960s, and apparently, he recruited them to become Johnnys, the first boy singing-and-dancing group in Japan. I've got no idea how Kitagawa was inspired to come up with the idea for creating such a unit while working at the Embassy, but perhaps it was a bit like Einstein coming up with the Theory of Relativity while he was puttering away at the patent office (which is probably more story than truth).
In any case, Johnnys was born in early 1962 and had their run until late 1967. And during that time, the unit released 15 singles and 1 album before calling it quits. "Mack The Knife" wasn't an official single but it was covered by the band and it was even performed on the 1965 Kohaku Utagassen on their one and only appearance on the NHK special.
Of the four members of Johnnys, Aoi and Iino parlayed their time and experience into long careers as actors/singers. Also, according to the Wikipedia article on the group,'...the group is often called "First Generation Johnny's" or "Founding Johnnys".'
