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.
Ooooh...can't believe it's almost been a year since I actually put up a B'z single, and I can't believe that I hadn't put up this particular single. But "LADY NAVIGATION" isn't in my Top 3 favourite B'z songs truthfully although the song is familiar to my ears.
However, I'm probably in the minority with that opinion since B'z's 8th single from March 1991 became their very first million-seller (although "Taiyo no Komachi Angel", their 5th single, was their first Oricon No. 1 hit), and it would start a streak of consecutive million-sellers up to their 20th single in 1996, "Real Thing Shakes".
Created by the B'z boys, Koshi Inaba and Takahiro Matsumoto（稲葉浩志・松本孝弘）, "LADY NAVIGATION" has got all the B'z tropes: Inaba's uniquely sultry yet near-Banshee voice, Matsumoto's famous guitar licks (sometimes they remind me of Prince) and those stop-start notes in their early works. Going into the lyrics, it seems like Inaba has got the major hots for some lady almost to the point of being labeled a stalker. But I'm not sure where the NAVIGATION part of the title comes in. For me, the song is OK but not quite on the same level of "Bad Communication","Love Phantom" or "Be There"....but again, that's just personal opinion. Your opinion mileage will vary.
Some more statistical achievements on "LADY NAVIGATION". It hit No. 1 for 3 weeks (2 of them in succession) and went Triple Platinum. The single also got used for a Kanebo Cosmetics commercial. By the end of 1991, it became the 7th-ranked single of the year. B'z were indeed buzzing.
The folks behind Miku Hatsune（初音ミク）came up with a different interpretation of the melody here...more R&B/dance. And to be honest, I actually like this version better. Please be kind.
Wow! Inaba actually does wear a shirt
from time to time!
I was looking over all of the "Kayo Kyoku Plus" entries for Yuming（ユーミン）and noticed that there hadn't been an article for one of her very early songs since February 2015 under the singer's maiden name of Yumi Arai（荒井由実）. And since this particular article will end up being my 70th entry forthe Queen of New Music, I think it's time to remedy the situation.
And I believe I have found the ideal song wrapped up in this heartwarming story of someone trying to help out a group of students. To explain, when Yuming was DJ'ing the late-night radio show "All Night Nippon" back in the early 1970s, there was a segment called "An Image Song Just For You" during which she read out a letter from a group of female students from the Naru Island branch of Nagasaki Prefectural Goto High School. The students requested an official song for their alma mater.
Initially, singer-songwriter Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）was supposed to have created the song but his only recording somehow got lost, and so Arai took over the songwriting duties instead. And the result was "Hitomi wo Tojite" (Close Your Eyes) which she starts singing in the above video a little past the 1-minute mark. However, I was also quite happy to see the interview before the performance since it isn't everyday that I see Yuming give interviews especially so early in her career. If that video was made at around the time of the song's release, then she would have been close to 21 at the time. I'm not a profiler by any means, but looking at her back then, I could tell that she was already quite self-assured and knew where she was going.
The song was completed in October 1974 as a track on her 2nd album"Misslim". Hearing the original recorded version, there is something that is so Yumi Arai about it: mellow, breezy and calming...quite therapeutic, actually. And her lyrics made it sound like the ideal graduation song for the high school...get the tissues out.
Here is my translation of those lyrics:
When the wind dies down, let's take a ship out into the open waters We'll bring the message in a glass bottle To our friends who have gone far away So that the sound of the ocean will reach them Let's place it in the sea now To our friends who have gone far away So that the sound of the ocean will reach them Let's place it in the sea now When the fog lifts, let's stand on the small hill Perhaps we'll be able to see the unknown islands And if we're visited by small children So that the blueness of the ocean will be relayed to them Close your eyes now Close your eyes now
I believe along with Yuming's mellower vocals back then, what sold the song to me were the keyboards which brought up images of seagulls flying off the coast of Naru Island.
A couple of years after the release of "Misslim", the school actually was split into two separate entities so that the island branch officially became Nagasaki Prefectural Naru High School. There was some consideration about whether to make "Hitomi wo Tojite" the official school song, and although it didn't become so, it has remained all these years as an aikouka（愛唱歌）, or a beloved school song. In fact, an NHK documentary was filmed about the situation.
In 1988, the alumni of Naru High School donated money so that the lyrics of Yuming's ballad could be inscribed onto a monument. The singer herself came to the unveiling ceremony. The song was not only used indeed to commemorate the graduation ceremony, but it was also used whenever any of the island's citizens left port permanently or for an extended time. Finally just last year in 2015, Yuming returned to the island to join others in the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the school's founding which culminated in a joint rendition of "Hitomi wo Tojite" with the students.
Last week's "Uta Con"（うたコン）had its tribute to the wonderful city of Yokohama and during its 45 minutes which I enjoyed thoroughly, there was also another song that I was happy to discover.
"Minato ga Mieru Oka" (The Hill Overlooking The Harbour) was sung that night by enka chanteuse Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）in this quiet nighttime jazzy tone which always has had a soft spot in my heart. So I was quite enchanted. And happily enough, in looking up this song online, I found out that there was an interesting story behind it.
The song was originally released in April 1947 as one of the early postwar ryukoka（流行歌...literally, popular song）by Victor. Sung by then-newbie Aiko Hirano（平野愛子）and created by Showa Era composer and lyricist Tatsuzo Azuma（東辰三）, the original version had that sweet music orchestra sound surrounding the lyrics regarding a young couple in love admiring the view of a harbour from the top of that hill. It became that huge hit for Hirano who followed up with a number of other hits and soon earned the title of "The Young Blues Queen".
However, after the sudden passing of her mentor, Azuma, in 1950, Hirano didn't enjoy another major hit and would change recording companies a couple of times. In her later years, she started a music school in her home before she passed away in 1981. She did appear in the 2nd and 3rd Kohaku Utagassen in 1952 and 1953 but not for the song of this article.
As was illustrated during the Yokohama tribute on "Uta Kon" last week, "Minato ga Mieru Oka" has been seen as one of those old songs celebrating the city of Minato Mirai 21, Yokohama Bay and Chinatown. Plus in 1962, the Minato-ga-Mieru-Oka Park was even opened with a stone memorial inside pointing out its musical lineage. However, there has been a tiny controversy over whether that was actually true. Apparently, Azuma may have created the song in tribute to his hometown of Kobe which also has that wonderful view of the port from up above. But his son, famed lyricist Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）, calmed the few ripples that may have resulted and wondered aloud whether the song had been created in tribute to both cities, and for that matter, any of the port cities in Japan.
Nonetheless, it's a lovely song, and considering the melody, I believe it could have one of the great proto-Mood Kayo tunes. To cement its classic standard status, it's been covered by a whole range of singers/musicians (including City Pop maestro Toshiki Kadomatsu/角松敏生...too bad, his version isn't online). Naomi Chiaki（ちあきなおみ）is one of those artists and she gives a slower and slightly smokier jazz cover here.
Masako Mori（森昌子）provided her own mellow Big Band cover, and although the video footage looks a few decades old, her version is on a 2007 album titled "Ano Koro"（あのころ...The Old Days）.
And then there is Rumiko Koyanagi（小柳ルミ子）with a sunny and relaxed version that could have had her performing it from a chaise lounge on Long Island. Her take on "Minato ga Mieru Oka" is on her massive 2002 6-disc collection titled "Rumiko Koyanagi CD-BOX"....on CD 4, if you were wondering.
The one last piece of trivia that I found on the article for the song, though, is that "Minato ga Mieru Oka" had also been the inspiration for Hiroshi Miyagawa（宮川泰）to create The Peanuts'"Teami no Kutsushita"（手編みの靴下）which later became Mari Sono's（園まり）hit "Aitakute, Aitakute"（逢いたくて逢いたくて）in the 1960s. That would explain the Follow-Up tag in the Labels.
OK....in perfect honesty, Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）has never had the prettiest of voices. "Tokyo Shyness Boy" doesn't break that streak in "Kayo Kyoku Plus". But with my usual random foray into the wilds of YouTube especially when I threw in that "Japanese City Pop" into the search engine, this is what I found.
"Tokyo Shyness Boy" is a track from Hosono's 3rd studio album from 1976, "Bon Voyage co."（泰安洋行）. And I will give my regards to Wikipedia and provide the direct description of the album:
This album continues the tropical style of Hosono House and Tropical Dandy (which would continue later on with Paraiso) while showing influence from the music of New Orleans and also features performances from Tin Pan Alley and Happy End (excluding Takashi Matsumoto. The album's Japanese title was influenced by a Nagasaki convenience store of the same name that Hosono met while on Tin Pan Alley's "First & Last Concert Tour". This album was re-issued as part of a box set with the single version of the Tropical Dandy song "Peking Duck" (which was coupled with a song from this album) and an interview Hosono gave on a Tokyo Broadcasting System radio show.
I've seen the album of the cover in the book "Japanese City Pop", and I think listening to even this one track, it's pretty interesting since I know that Hosono would become one of the big three in the totally different Yellow Magic Orchestra. He may not have a great voice but I have been interested in his discography pre-YMO.
"Tokyo Shyness Boy" has that City Pop edge since I can't help but feel that this would be something which I could hear in some sort of live house in Shinjuku or Harajuku of the 1970s. Plus the fact that this can never be identified as anything conventionally Japanese puts this squarely into New Music territory. There is that down-and-dirty brass sound in there which reminded me of the house band on the various incarnations of "Saturday Night Live" over the decades.
One other piece of trivia about "Tokyo Shyness Boy" is that Hosono whipped this up as a bit of a tease against Keiichi Suzuki（鈴木慶一）of the Moonriders. Apparently, Suzuki was the type of person who would blush at the drop of a hat. As for "Bon Voyage, co.", it made it as high up as No. 76 on Oricon.
P.S. There was quite the lineup of musicians on the album: old Happy End bandmates Shigeru Suzuki and Eiichi Ohtaki (guitar and backing vocals respectively), Akiko Yano (piano), Taeko Ohnuki (backing vocals) and Hiroshi Sato (piano and clarinet) among others.
I borrowed Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）13th album, "Supreme" from a university friend back in the mid-1980s, and I think it was still the time when Seiko-chan was away from the spotlight. And of course at that time, it wasn't nearly as easy to find out about the latest news about Japanese aidoru as it is now so I was wondering whether the Queen Aidoru of the early 80s was going to make her retirement permanent.
The one song that I remembered from that album was the final track, "Ruriiro no Chikyuu"(The Bright Blue Earth).Takashi Matsumoto's（松本隆）lyrics were all about love of humanity and about what a wonderful blue ball we all live on (let's try to remember this now in the era of Brexit, ISIS and potential President Trump). Still, I couldn't quite help thinking that this ballad with all of the heartrending strings and delicate piano could have been the swan song for Seiko-chan.
Shinji Kawahara（川原伸司）was the composer behind the music here although he used his pen name of Natsumi Hirai（平井夏美）for "Ruriiro no Chikyuu". With the grand scale of the melody, I think this would have been one of the final tunes at a Seiko concert with the proverbial darkened stage and one lonely spotlight on Seiko. In keeping with the feeling that this could have been made into the goodbye song for the lass, "Ruriiro no Chikyuu" would have been to Seiko-chan as "Sayonara no Mukou Gawa"（さよならの向う側）was to the premier aidoru of the previous decade, Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）. An epic pop ballad for the young woman who was no longer an aidoru and was on the cusp of motherhood. The audience would have been going through the collective box of tissues like a hot knife through butter.
Incidentally, the above video has Seiko and daughter Sayaka Kanda（神田沙也加）doing a duet version of "Ruriiro no Chikyuu". According to J-Wiki, the ballad had been recorded during Seiko's pregnancy. Sayaka has mentioned that whenever she listens to this particular song, she gets this rather odd feeling. In any case, it is still the song that struck me as being the coda to Seiko's pure aidoru period.
I actually have this song on Kohmi Hirose's（広瀬香美）BEST album"Love Winters" which came out in 1998 but had no idea that it had also been the first ending theme for the anime "Card Captor Sakura"（カードキャプターさくら）. A few days ago, I wrote about how much I loved the second ending theme "Honey" by chihiro and then came my discovery of Hirose's contribution to this apparently iconic show.
"Groovy!" was Hirose's 13th single from September 1998, and all I can say is that "Card Captor Sakura" really liked to boogie with its music. I'm now convinced that Hirose can cure the common cold with that voice of hers. She came up with both the words and music, and as for the latter, it really does groove with that sound that had me hearkening back to another Japanese singer with cheer and voice, EPO, and some old-style poppy R&B. It's just a shame that it got no higher than No. 67 on the charts.
And look here...even Miku wants to get into the mix! Can't say I blame her! That piano and the Santana guitar gets me every time.
It's been a fairly washoku（和食）weekend for me. Well, I have Japanese food all the time at home but what I meant was that the past couple of days have been spent with friends and colleagues enjoying the fare outside. On Friday, I met up with my fellow translators for dinner at a Okinawan-style izakaya known as Ryoji in Little Italy before going up College St. a few blocks away for further drinking at another izakaya named Hapa. I think it was the first time in over 4 years that I've actually done any sort of hashigo (barhopping...literally translated as "ladder") where J-watering holes are concerned...mind you, Friday's affair was just one rung on the ladder.
The earnest hashigo that I experienced regularly was back in my Gunma days over 25 years ago. The teachers back there could really knock them back...and I guess teaching junior high school kids can bring its own share of stress. Anyways, barhopping in the wilds of the Japanese Alps usually meant the main dinner and then a drink at an izakaya or nomiya followed by a late-night slurp of ramen or ochazuke. One time, we even went 5 stages...I don't remember much from that. However, karaoke would somehow inevitably slip itself among the rungs at one of the bars.
"Hanamachi no Haha"(Mother of the Hanamachi District) would be one of those enka songs sung at the bars. Because the teacher group on the hashigo would mostly be in their thirties and older, enka and Mood Kayo were often the genres of choice. The thing about "Hanamachi no Haha" was that it wasn't my first choice for a Tatsue Kaneda（金田たつえ）song tonight. Earlier this afternoon, I was watching NHK's"Nodo Jiman"（のど自慢）weekly song contest and heard one of the citizens try out what was probably a much later Kaneda single but couldn't find any information about it at all. So, looking at the singer's J-Wiki discography, I did see one song that picked up attention and that was "Hanamachi no Haha". And as it turned out, it is an enka that I have heard over the years without knowing the original singer or title.
Tatsue Kaneda was born and raised in Sunagawa City, Hokkaido Prefecture in 1948. And a few years following her win at a minyo-singing contest when she was an early teen, she made her way to Tokyo in 1965 at the age of 17 and ended up marrying the president of the company representing her in the same year! A couple of years later, she made her debut as a minyo singer.
However, Kaneda decided to make the genre shift to the more popular enka for which she debuted with "Hanamachi no Haha" in June 1973. Written by Shohei Mozu（もず唱平）and composed by Toshi Miyama（三山敏）, the sad song is about a geisha performer who longs to be with her daughter after so many years but cannot do so due to the demands of her profession. The hanamachi mentioned in the title, by the way, refers to the geisha district of a city or town (believe me, I am no expert on the life of a geisha but this is what I've been able to pick up online so if there are any errors in the above, please let me know). Despite the gentle melody by Miyama, the lyrics gradually make it clear that the geisha has resigned herself to her lot in life and can only imagine what her daughter may be doing.
According to Kaneda's biography on J-Wiki, the lyrics also hit the singer hard in the heart. Originally, "Hanamachi no Haha" was only meant for release in the Osaka area but Kaneda felt that the story in the song resembled elements in her own life so she pushed the people around her to have this released in a much wider area. It gradually became known nationwide and 6 years later in 1979, it finally became a hit (although Kaneda had also released 18 or 19 other singles by that time) and even got her an invitation to appear on the Kohaku Utagassen for that year for the first time. By 1988, the single managed to sell over 2.5 million records.
