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.
For all those reading this from the Great White North, Happy Canada Day! Mind you, it's fairly soggy here in Toronto for the 149th birthday of the country but that's fine...we needed some of that precipitation. In any case, it's a good long weekend for us here and in the United States since we've got Canada Day on Friday and on the other side of the weekend, it will be Independence Day in America so I figure we'll have plenty of activity and business crossing the border both ways. Not too busy for me here since I am taking the day off from any translation and I had to pull off a re-installation of my Norton software due to some annoying glitch.
(cover version)
In any case, a few days ago, I wrote a BEST article on the summer band TUBE, and that particular album had its last few tracks devoted to the TUBE-associated project known as Nagisa no All-Stars（渚のオールスターズ）. So I'm just providing a follow-up to that and giving tribute to Canada's first long summer weekend during which there will be mass exodus from the cities.
First off is "Nagisa no Merry Boys"(Merry Boys of the Beach) created by two members of Nagisa no All-Stars, singer-songwriters Tomoko Aran and Tetsuro Oda（亜蘭知子・織田哲郎）as this happy-go-lucky tune done like a Beatles-by-the-beach piece right down to the guitars and even the vocals going "Woooooo". If the Fab Four had ever decided to move to the sands of Shonan after their tour of Asia (which I found out had its share of issues), maybe this could have been one song that John and Paul could have concocted (my tongue is fully buried in my cheek, by the way) although I think by that point in their career, they were probably looking farther afield in their musical ambitions.
(cover version)
Second on this article and the final track on "TUBEst" is "Day In Vacation". Also taken care of by Aran and Oda, this sounds more like the soaring sound of TUBE that I've come to see as summertime on the beaches of Japan. This was the 2nd single by Nagisa no All-Stars released in July 1989 a little over a year following their debut release of "Be My Venus".
One of the new songs that I was able to hear on that techno kayo album I purchased back around Xmas last year was Tamao Koike's（小池玉緒）"Kagami no Naka no Juu-gatsu" (Automne Dans Un Miroir). It's definitely one of those rare gems since Koike, who was a model, actress and singer, only released one single under her real name, one album under another alias, and a smattering of other songs in various compilations.
"Kagami no Naka no Juu-gatsu" was released in September 1983. While Masao Urino（売野雅勇）provided the lyrics to the breathy vocals of Koike, Yellow Magic Orchestra wove the pensive techno kayo melody in a French pop manner, according to the singer's biography on J-Wiki. Indeed, there is something about her delivery that brought to mind Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）and the New Wave mode of Miharu Koshi（コシミハル）.
As for Koike, the singer was born in Tokyo in 1962 and was scouted as a teenager in 1978 to become a model in magazines. Then in 1982, she provided vocals for the B-side of Haruomi Hosono's（細野晴臣）"Sangokushi Main Theme"（三国志メイン・テーマ）. According to her bio on J-Wiki, it seems that she dabbled just a bit in acting and singing with modeling being her main gig. However, she is currently retired.
The liner jacket for the techno kayo album. Really, I just bought it for the songs!
The NHK asadora (morning serial drama) has been a viewing mainstay for my parents since basically forever. Frankly, I've been far more persnickety since I long shed my interest in Japanese dramas. The last drama I caught regularly was "Ume-chan Sensei"（梅ちゃん先生）, for instance. However, I've kept more of an open mind toward the theme songs for those 15-minute serials. They have varied widely in terms of hit appeal but I do remember "Haru yo, Koi"（春よ、来い）by Yuming（ユーミン）for the 1994 entry of the same name which has now become one of her classics and "Sakasama no Sora"（さかさまの空）, the ever-cheerful theme for the aforementioned "Ume-chan Sensei" from 2012.
In the inaugural episode of "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, the new NHK kayo kyoku program wanted to show off some of its new finery by presenting a fairly long segment on those asadora theme songs. "Haru yo, Koi" was featured of course, but then there was this lovely ballad sung by the just-as-lovely Ayaka Hirahara（平原綾香）that got me right here.
The song was "Ohisama ~ Taisetsu na Anata e" (To My Dearest You) which was the theme song for the 2011 asadora from April to October, "Ohisama". That beautiful arrangement and Hirahara's voice were the perfect combination....still gives me shivers when I hear it in my head.
Yoshikazu Okada（岡田惠和）, who had written the screenplay for "Ohisama", also provided the lyrics for "Taisetsu na Anata e" while Toshiyuki Watanabe（渡辺俊幸）who was responsible for the show's soundtrack created the theme melody. The interesting thing is that when the serial first premiered that April, "Taisetsu na Anata e" had initially been just a lovely instrumental. However, due to many inquiries from viewers about the song, and Watanabe's comparison of Japan's recovery from World War II which figured in the story for "Ohisama" to the Tohoku region's recovery from the massive earthquake that had just occurred in March 2011, the composer sounded out Hirahara, who was an acquaintance of his, to see if she would be willing to sing a lyricized version. Obviously, she consented. The full title of the song was set once the lyrics were laid down.
"Taisetsu na Anata e" was released as Hirahara's 26th single from June 2011. It peaked at No. 44 on Oricon and was placed as a track on her 10th album"Dokki!" (ドキッ!...Ba-Bump!) from February 2012. Hirahara was also able to perform the full version at the 2011 Kohaku Utagassen. The song also won the Best Arrangement Prize at the Japan Record Awards that year as well.
This is the original instrumental opening for the drama. Hirahara's sung version was used to open only the Saturday morning episodes from the middle of July a few weeks following its release as a single. Try to see if you can get through either version without getting a little misty.
It's about time to put up an Author's Picks list as far as chanteuse Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）is concerned. She was one of the pillars responsible for me finally falling for kayo kyoku, and if Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）and Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）lists are already up here, then Hiromi has to be up pronto. Back in 1981, when I first started discovering this group of young singers whose work strangely hit my heart despite me not really understanding the lingo at the time, I saw Seiko-chan and Naoko Kawai（河合奈保子）as the cute teenyboppers but at the same time, Hiromi struck me as being the classy and more mature older sister songstress with that musical-level voice, not knowing at the time about her own time as an aidoru of the 1970s. Therefore, perhaps not surprisingly, my list reflects her 80s material for the most part.
Admittedly, this is a bit of a left-field choice and it was never used in an official single, but I still love this track from her 1986 album"Wagamama"（わがまま）. And as I mentioned in the article for this album, none of the tracks except for one have representation as a video online, and this song isn't it (ahh...finally got one from YouTube). Still, I felt like I needed to put this one up although there is only the Tower Records link (Track 1) to provide that 45-second excerpt, and even those three-quarters of a minute amply show how she can lovingly caress the lyrics for this jazz torch ballad. I can't really imagine Hiromi scatting like Ella Fitzgerald but she can do some lovely jazz love songs. The excerpt doesn't include the instrumental bridge but even her humming there can make my hair stand up (sorry, I'm being very biased here :)).
This is my lone 1970s entry for the list but "Cinderella Honeymoon" takes the cake for that nostalgic disco arrangement and revealing to me that Hiromi did actually boogie it up in front of the camera before she entered that phase as the romantic balladeer. Her 14th single has that mix of disco, drama and triumph, and it just seems to be that song fit for a singer who sings in a lower register. I wonder if Akina ever covered it, then.
A nostalgic favourite especially since it was the first 45" single that I ever got of the singer. Actually, it was my brother who got it for me after his own Japanese language school graduation trip in 1982, a year after mine (he never caught the Japanophile bug that I did). Even back then, playing it on the original Victor stereo, I could appreciate the violins and that electric guitar accompanying that accomplished voice of hers.
I may have discovered recently that this Hiromi hit was actually a cover version but I still think she owns "Sumire Iro no Namida". This is the song that introduced me to her and got me lifted onto the Hiromi bandwagon. I've really yet to get off. That video above of her performing one of her most famous songs on that episode of "The Top 10" was an example of the many performances of her I saw on old VHS at my classmate's house soon after returning from Japan in 1981. I remarked at the top that I saw Hiromi as the grown-up older sister compared to the 80s aidorus; well, that image of her in the long ojo-san hair and long dress will always be the default image I will have of her.
If it hadn't been for this classic, "Sumire Iro no Namida" would have been on the top easily. However, there is something about how "Ieji" launches with that electric guitar and then proceeds with that drama and elegance which makes it my No. 1. It was used as one of the several ending themes for the suspense anthology series "Kayo Suspense Gekijo"（歌謡サスペンス劇場）, and it was perfect for that, but even listening to it on its own had me thinking of taking an especially intense walk through the park while deep in contemplation....and risking running into a light pole or something. This could have been the ideal commuting ballad for those middle-aged folks at the section chief level in a company. Time to hit the scotch on the rocks.
Come to think of it, I do have mostly ballads in here. Hiromi has performed some fine uptempo material in her career but I can't help but think of her as having been the master (or mistress) of that lovingly-crafted pop ballad. She just has the voice for it.
Not a huge fan of rap in general, let alone the Japanese variety, but "DA.YO.NE" (Ain't It So?) by short-lived unit EAST END×YURI has kinda stuck with me over the years. The reason is not particularly because it's one of my favourite songs but it did begat a variety of intra-national dialectical variations and it is believed to be Japan's first hit of the genre.
I saw the release date on J-Wiki and Wikipedia for "DA.YO.NE" which was August 1994, and I had first thought that I must have missed something since my remembrances of the phenomenon surrounding the song were set after I had arrived in Japan for my second tour of duty there from November 1994. But after reading the articles for the song, I realized that "DA.YO.NE" had had an initially slow history before it got a well-needed boost of promotion from a Hokkaido radio station which gave the song some heavy rotation on its turntables and then widespread exposure across the nation.
Seemingly, though, the song and the unit seemed to get real big overnight although I knew next to nothing about EAST END×YURI. However over the years, I learned that YURI was Yuri Ichii（市井由理）, a former aidoru from Tokyo Performance Doll（東京パフォーマンスドール）who got into this collaboration with hip-hop group EAST END (consisting of Yoggy, Gaku and ROCK-Tee) to create this safe pop-rap tune (no sex, drugs or alcohol or deep social message) incorporating plenty of Japanese teen-speak. And just like one of those earworms, it was pretty much everywhere for a time including the big music shows such as "Music Station". Just to be specific, the song was written by Gaku and Mummy-D from Rhymester and composed by Yoggy.
"DA.YO.NE" came in at the right time, I think...just between the pop-rock of the early 1990s and the musical tidal wave of the Komuro Boom with Namie Amuro, Tomomi Kahala and trf that would take over a lot of J-Pop for the next few years. It broke into the Top 10 by peaking at No. 7 and it broke through the million barrier. Plus the rap also got EAST END×YURI their invitation to the 1995 Kohaku Utagassen, almost 18 months after the song's release. "DA.YO.NE" would end 1995 as the 33rd-ranked single. Before the song was released as a single, it had already been a track on the unit's debut album"denim-ed soul" which had been released in June 1994.
Ah, I did mention those dialectal variants, didn't I? As a cool reminder to folks not from Japan about the number of regional dialects there are, parody versions of "DA.YO.NE" were whipped up. For example, there was the Osakan "SO.YA.NA" by WEST END x YUKI which came out in February 1995. The WEST END were a couple of Yoshimoto Kogyo comedians, Koji Imada and Koji Higashino（今田耕司・東野幸治）, joined by Yukiko Takeuchi（武内由紀子）from Osaka Performance Doll（大阪パフォーマンスドール）.
Hearing this version, there was so much Kansai-ben thrown about, it sounded like a lot of the usual banter among my family and friends put down to a musical beat. "SO.YA.NA" actually exceeded the original in the Oricon weeklies by hitting No. 6 although in the yearly rankings, it finished somewhat lower at No. 59.
Then, there was "DA.BE.SA", the version in the Hokkaido dialect which was released a couple of months after "SO.YA.NA" by NORTH END×AYUMI. The NORTH END was Takayuki Suzui（鈴井貴之）, who was hosting a late-night TV program in Hokkaido at the time, and Ryusuke Denno（伝野隆介）, a local tarento. AYUMI was Ayumi Ito（伊藤亜由美）who was also a local TV personality at the time. This northern take performed a bit more modestly, hitting No. 43.
Following those, there came versions from the Tohoku district, Nagoya, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka. All of the dialectal covers ended up on the album "SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO DA.YO.NE".
After all of the linguistic hoopla launched by "DA.YO.NE", there was still one niggling question from me. Sampling in hip-hop is no surprise but for the life of me, I couldn't recognize the sample in that particular song. My need to have my curiosity sated gradually waned as the song slowly disappeared into music history. But recently, the question popped up again due to the blog. And the smooth piano sample was straight out of George Benson's"Turn Your Love Around", a hit from 1981 that I used to hear all the time on Toronto radio, so I wanted to slap myself upside the back of my head a la Special Agent Gibbs-style for the non-recognition.
In any case, according to the J-Wiki article on "DA.YO.NE", Bill Champlin of the band Chicago, who had helped create "Turn Your Love Around" along with Steve Lukather of TOTO and producer Jay Graydon, just happened to be in Japan when he heard those familiar notes in "DA.YO.NE". Apparently, there was the point about not getting official approval for using the sample (oops), and Champlin made an issue about it, but in all likelihood, it didn't get nasty since with the proper payment of royalties the following day, all was copacetic. That made for a smoother resolution that a certain other song didn't enjoy.
Here's some Junk funk at you! I can imagine Sing Like Talking and Keizo Nakanishi（中西圭三）clapping their hands most appreciatively at this fellow who could give the legendary Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）a small run for his money.
Junk Fujiyama's（ジャンク フジヤマ）singing style's similarity to that of one of the masters of New Music/City Pop isn't a 100% match but it's still tremendous to hear the fellow bring back some of that old-style R&B. His song "Yuuwaku"(Temptation) has got some of those grunts (thanks, James Brown) and a nice tight horn section with a good thumpy bass. I never really got out all that much to those live houses in Tokyo but would be willing to pay admission to hear this guy play and sing....along with those horns.
"Yuuwaku" was originally a track on his 6th album "Junk Space" from March 2013 which was his first full major album. However, I've got it as part of his BEST compilation "The Best of Junk Fujiyama: Kazemachi" from 2014. His albums may not have flown up the charts but there is plenty of fandom for him.
Gotta admit that the title is cute and clever. Well, summer is indeed here and it has become a "Kayo Kyoku Plus" tradition to bring in a TUBE song to herald the hot season. I had actually thought about writing about one of their many singles when I figured that it has been a while since I brought in a BEST article so here is "TUBEst". Released in December 1989 (I guess the boys are not lacking in irony with that release date), it was the band's very first BEST compilation.
As for the asterisked entries finishing up the album, they are actually the products of the Nagisa no All Stars（渚のオールスターズ）, an informal summery supergroup consisting of TUBE, two of their songwriting contributors Tetsuro Oda and Tomoko Aran（織田哲郎・亜蘭知子）, and a whole bunch of other musicians. I will take care of those songs in another article but "Be My Venus" has already been covered.
"Sentimental ni Kubittake" (Sentimentally Head Over Heels) was the band's 2nd single from October 1985 when they were still known as The Tube. As with their debut entry, "Best Seller Summer", the song had more of a 1950s rock-boppy beat along the lines of early 1980s acts such as The Chanels or The Checkers, although lead vocal Nobuteru Maeda's（前田亘輝）delivery was already in there. It was created by the same duo behind "Best Seller Summer", Kisaburo Suzuki and Yoshiko Miura（鈴木キサブロー・三浦徳子）. It peaked at No. 64 on Oricon and is also a track on The Tube's 2nd album, "Offshore Dreamin'" which got as high as No. 62 on the LP charts.
As for the lyrics....just like a lot of TUBE songs, they all have to do with frolicking on the beach!
"Because I Love You" was TUBE's 4th single from September 1986 and their first ballad out as a single. It makes for a nice sunset song for the young lovers just walking on the beach. Written by Tomoko Aran and composed by Daiko Nagato and Masatoshi Nishimura（長戸大幸・西村麻聡）, it peaked at No. 13 and was the 78th-ranked single of the year. It is also available on TUBE's 4th original album, "Boys on the Beach".
Then there is the even better ballad "Remember Me" although it's much more bittersweet since it deals with reminiscing over a past romance. TUBE's 8th single from December 1988, that piano intro reminded me of an old Boz Scaggs tune. This was Maeda's first foray into writing lyrics for an official TUBE single while Seiichiro Kuribayashi（栗林誠一郎）took care of the music. "Remember Me" jumped up to No. 12, and I think as long as the young lovers don't listen to the lyrics too hard, it should also still make for good strolling-along-the-beach-at-dusk music. It belonged to TUBE's 8th original album as the title track.
Back to some fun in the sun with "Summer City", the song that triggered me to write about TUBE today. I was surprised to realize that I had yet to write about this one into the blog considering that I enjoyed the song after it came out in June 1989, about a couple of months before my arrival in Japan for the JET Programme. That intro which was the musical equivalent of a bunch of delirious surfer dudes racing to be the first one into the ocean before Maeda yells out "SUMMER CITY!" could be the clarion call for all to hit the beaches. Maeda took care of both words and music with this single which peaked at No. 11 and ended up as the 87th-ranked single of the year. It was also the title track for TUBE's 9th album which came out just a few weeks after the release of the single. The album itself topped out at No. 6 and was the 59th-ranked album of the year.
"TUBEst" itself peaked at No. 5 and became the 75th-ranked album for 1990, going Double Platinum and selling over 600,000 copies. And the good times would still keep going for TUBE with 5 more BEST albums into the 21st century.
