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.
This particular article takes me back quite nicely. Not to the 70s or 80s, mind you, but to the 90s. A bit recent to be sure but those were the early days of my time in Ichikawa, Chiba Prefecture. I got to know my immediate neighbourhood in this bedroom community along with the larger Tokyo area, and within the area of pop culture, I started becoming acquainted with a new group of musicians and tarento on TV.
One such person I got to know is in the above video. Born as Tomoko Suzuki（鈴木智子）of Tokyo, her stage name is LanLan Suzuki（鈴木蘭々）. With her complexion and those rather large eyes, I had assumed that the lass was half-Japanese but such was not the case. During the 1990s, she was popping up on TV in ads and shows because of those looks and her adorably goofy personality.
One of the first things that I saw her in was the Fuji-TV kids program "Ponkikies"（ポンキッキーズ）on weekday mornings during which she was paired with future superstar Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）as a pair of cute bunny figures known collectively as Sister Rabbits to perform just-as-cute songs. Mind you, the above video had the duo doing a fair bit of cosplay. Amuro had the vocal chops but so did LanLan.
Music was one of the attractions of "Ponkikies" (which is why I've added the show as a Label category on the right), and LanLan Suzuki contributed her own song close to the end of her tenure on the show titled "Kimi to Boku" (You and Me) as the 9th of her 10th singles which was released in May 1998.
Written and composed by EPO, this is a nice and light bossa nova ideal for the kiddies with the singalong part inside. I remember seeing LanLan perform this a number of times during the music segments of "Ponkikies" and listening to it again after so many years has given me that nice natsukashii glow. Her delivery with that slight warble reminds me of a mellower Kohmi Hirose（広瀬香美）.
Going into this century, I didn't see her nearly as much as before so I did wonder whether she had retired from showbiz but from what I've read on her J-Wiki bio is that she has still been acting on stage and in TV dramas, although her music career ended in 2001.
Incidentally, I thought Ms. Suzuki's stage name had been spelled as "RanRan" and the article about her on Wikipedia has it spelled that way. However since the lady herself has titled her blog as "LanLan", I will go with that.
Now, this is quite the find. As I read on a Japanese site, it wouldn't be surprising if there were quite a few folks who would be surprised on finding out the identity of this late 1980s aidoru. I had mentioned years ago when I wrote about rock band Lindberg's big hit "Ima Sugu Kiss Me"（今すぐkiss me）that I hadn't known anything about pixieish vocal Maki Watase's（渡瀬麻紀）brief aidoru past.
Well, here she is. Instead of the spiky-haired lady wearing those somewhat New Wave-y outfits, Watase had worn those cute aidoru-friendly dresses and sported a hairdo reminiscent of Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）early days. To be honest, I had seen photos of her such as the one above in various magazines such as "Myojo"to advertise a talent management company so my knowledge of how she looked back at the beginning was already there. Apparently, she was inspired enough by Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）that she decided to enter show business.
However, I hadn't known how she sounded until the last couple of days. Her debut was "Pearl Monde Kiss" which I think is how it would be romanized. It did help a little that the catchphrase attributed to her at the time was "Shinjuu no you na onna no ko"（真珠のような女の子...A girl like a pearl）.
(starts at 2:12)
"Pearl Monde Kiss" was released in June 1987 and it was written and composed by Kyoko Matsumiya（松宮恭子）. A not-too-bad peppy tune with a plethora of squeaky synths, it's interesting to see Watase bopping around making those typical aidoru moves with her hands and arms. She definitely wouldn't have looked out of place on any of those variety shows with musical segments.
I don't know how her debut single did or how her aidoru age went but sometime in 1988, she got acquainted with Tatsuya Hirakawa（平川達也）who was one of the backup musicians during that time. Hirakawa in turn introduced her to his buddies Tomohisa Kawazoe（川添智久）and Masanori Koyanagi（小柳昌法）and they all created Lindberg with their debut in 1989.
Apparently no albums came out of her time as an aidoru with only 3 singles marking her time as a teenybopper singer. However, her first album as a solo pop singer was released in September 1995, "message d'amour" which had a markedly more mature sound when compared to those early days. By that point, her name was slightly changed to 渡瀬マキ.
Let's see...I spent a good hunk of time trying to figure out what was wrong with the replacement cable box for the TV this morning and then a small construction team ended up fixing something right beside our condo with power tools without letting me know. I don't really meditate but I was making the words "calm blue ocean" a mantra for the past few hours. Needed a bit of stress relief.
Cooler temperatures have helped. Also, coming across this old chestnut by Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）old band, Off-Course（オフコース）, has also assisted immeasurably. Technically speaking, "Natsu no Owari"(The End of Summer) might be late by about a week but things are still transitioning here meteorologically so it's perfectly fine by me. And hearing Oda, who wrote/composed/sang this track from the band's 6th album, "Fairway", is very soothing as usual.
Another example of the band's tendency to wax romantically on old times. "Natsu no Owari" is chicken soup or chamomile tea for the J-Pop soul as Oda reminisces on an old flame. This might be just the ballad to sing on a guitar around a camp fire. "Fairway", by the way, was released in October 1978 and broke the Top 10 by peaking at No. 8.
The power tools have died down for now and the television in my room which was actually down for several weeks is finally back up. But to be honest, the idiot box wasn't missed too much by me although it's nice to have it running again. I found I could focus a lot more on the professional (translation) and the leisurely (this blog).
Not sure how that folded piece of fabric is used in your part of the world or if it even exists in your country, but here in North America, the good old handkerchief seems to merely have two uses if it is even used at all anymore: showing or blowing. However in Japan, the hanky is still a fairly essential piece of the wardrobe all the way from childhood into adulthood. I amassed a good number of handkerchiefs during my time there since I definitely needed them during the summers to mop my brow. And when it came to visits to public washrooms in the early years of my stay, they also came in handy after washing up (nowadays a lot of the places have those Dyson hand dryers); and believe me, the majority of those JR and Tokyo subway stations often made people forget that Japan is seen as one of the cleanest nations on Earth.
Earlier today, I wrote an article involving a Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）song, and of course, she is famous for that sunny and cheerful breakthrough hit, "Momen no Handkerchief"（木綿のハンカチーフ）in 1975. So, ironically enough, I'm going for another song involving that pocket square but this one is more somber. And it's called "Akai Hankachi" (Red Handkerchief), a Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）song from 1962. It became such a hit that the powers-that-be decided to expand it into a movie a couple of years later which seemed to have been the custom with hit songs in Japan in the middle of the 20th century.
The movie is described as follows from a 2008 press release of the Monthly Classics Series presented by The Japan Society in New York City:
Red Handkerchief defines Nikkatsu’s "mood action" aesthetic. In the film, Ishihara plays Mikami, a detective trying to crack a big drug case that goes awry when he fatally shoots the witness. After four years in exile, Mikami returns to Yokohama to determine the truth about the unsolved case and his shady ex-partner, who is now married to the woman he loves. Series curator Mark Shilling notes, "In the ultimate Nikkatsu ‘mood action’ movie, the passionate reunions between Ishihara and Asaoka in Ishihara’s seedy hotel room have a ripe romanticism, soaked in noir atmospherics, that makes comparisons with Casablanca not absurd." Nikkatsu studio star Joe Shishido (A Colt is My Passport, Branded to Kill) hailed Red Handkerchief as "the best Nikkatsu Action movie."
Looking at the first 4 minutes of the movie as shown in the above video, it certainly starts off with a hard-boiled simmer as punches are quickly thrown in a dark abandoned part of town. Incidentally, the tec partner of Ishihara's Mikami is played by Hideaki Nitani（二谷英明）, another actor who along with Ishihara would become bosses in their own separate TV cop shows in the 1970s. Maybe some of the head honchos in the television industry remembered those two from "Akai Hankachi" and "promoted" them to squad chiefs. Moving on, from seeing that opening and some of the scenes in the other imported videos below, Shilling may have been onto something when he made that comparison to the legendary "Casablanca" which happens to be one of my favourite old movies.
It was interesting seeing The Big Man crooning the song as above through the bar-packed streets (reminded me of the mock-up of 1960s Tokyo at Yokohama's Ramen Museum). Remembering Ishihara as the tall and lean young tough who drummed up a storm in the 1950s and then as the burly seen-it-all father figure in his cop shows of the 1970s, he looked like he was in transition above. He wasn't nearly as gangly in the 1960s and there was a bit more grizzle about him. Plus, his singing style with "Akai Hankachi" had me reminiscing about his later years as the inveterate Mood Kayo singer with a bar surrounding him and a tumbler of Old Parr in his hand.
The full recorded version of "Akai Hankachi" sounds a bit more enka than the Latin-infused version that starts the movie and the performance by Ishihara when he strolls the streets. Written by Shiro Hagiwara（荻原四朗）and composed by Kenroku Uehara（上原兼六）, the original version's arrangement has me thinking more of a traveling ronin in the Edo Era rather than an intrepid detective in postwar Japan, aside from the trombone. Hagiwara's lyrics also take things into a more rustic setting as Ishihara sings about a man perhaps looking from afar at his former belle dabbing her tears with that red handkerchief (perhaps his) under an acacia tree, probably lamenting that he will never meet her again.
We haven't gotten too much rain this month but today was the day for a goodly amount of precipitation in the Toronto area. Not a bad thing at all considering how dry it was during the summer months, and it's always nice to see the lawn pop up in a brilliant green the day after.
So for my daily contribution to "Kayo Kyoku Plus", let's go with the appropriate "Ku-gatsu no Ame"(September Rain) by 70s aidoru Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）. According to J-Wiki, her 9th singlefrom September 1977 (good golly, 39 years ago!) was her 3rd big hit following the very sunny "Momen no Handkerchief"（木綿のハンカチーフ）in 1975 and "Akai High Heel"（赤いハイヒール）a year later.
As with those previous two hits, "Ku-gatsu no Ame" was created for Ohta by the prolific Takashi Matsumoto and Kyohei Tsutsumi（松本隆・筒美京平）. With Tsutsumi's mix of kayo and a dash of disco in there along with the singer's vocals, the overall effect reminded me of the early sounds of another Hiromi....Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）, and not surprisingly, Tsutsumi was also creating hits for Ms. Iwasaki at the time. As for Matsumoto, his lyrics relate the tale of a young woman in the back of one of Tokyo's reliable taxis driving through the rain as she wonders about her boyfriend probably canoodling with another woman. Not sure if the cabbie should inquire about this one.
Considering the urban milieu covered in "Ku-gatsu no Ame" and that nice fat bass thrumming away there, I could probably say that the song can belong in the City Pop genre. Although the video above is of a much older Ohta revisiting her 1977 hit, I read in the J-Wiki article that the song was her ticket to a 2nd appearance on the Kohaku Utagassen and during her performance, the Candies,Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, Hatsumi Shibata (しばたはつみ) and Junko Sakurada（桜田淳子）acted as her back dancers twirling the umbrellas.
As I said, the song was Ohta's 3rd big hit and it would turn out to be her final Top 10 song, peaking at No. 7. It was also the 40th-ranked single for 1977 and was a track on her 6th album from July 1977, "Coquettish"（こけてぃっしゅ）.
Those big 3 hits for Ohta, especially her first one "Momen no Handkerchief", may be the songs that she will always be remembered for. However for me, that part of my heart reserved for the singer contains the really summery "Minami Kaze"（南風）, the first song that I had ever heard from her on "Sounds of Japan". It may only have gone as high as No. 22 on Oricon but it is my sentimental favourite.
In 1978, aidoru Hitomi Ishikawa（石川ひとみ）made her debut and during that first year, she did a peppier cover of "Ku-gatsu no Ame" that until the 21st century had only been available on an audiotape titled "Kurumiwari Ningyo/Migimuke Migi=Watashi wa Hi-to-mi="（くるみ割り人形・右向け右 =わたしはひ・と・み=...The Nutcracker/Right-Turning Right=My Hi-to-mi=）released in that year in September. Then in 2002, it was included on a BEST compilation CD of her music, "78-86 Bokura no Best, Ishikawa Hitomi CD-BOX"（78-86ぼくらのベスト 石川ひとみCD-BOX...78-86 Our Best, Hitomi Ishikawa CD-BOX）.
Now for a very City Pop song that is called "September Rain", check out Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）.
The impression that I've been getting from Chisato Moritaka（森高千里）after her chart-topping techno aidoru phase from the late 1980s going into the next decade is that she took on a slightly more down-to-earth Beatles-y sound. But I think she also wanted to achieve a summery stop-and-smell-the-roses tone in her songs as the 1990s passed by. "Watashi no Natsu"（私の夏）and "La-La-Sunshine" were two examples of the more laid back Chisato who seemed to want to now play on the sands of Shonan rather than among the towers of Tokyo.
Another later example was her 29th single "Let's GO!" from February 1997. During a time when the club pop sounds from Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）and his folks were in the ascendant, it was nice to hear Moritaka, who had once brought her own form of boppy technopop years earlier, bring something more relaxing. I first heard "Let's GO!" on a series of Lawson's convenience store commercials which starred her and YMO's Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）along with actor Masanobu Takashima（高嶋政伸）, and there was just something that clicked between that soft and wistful song and the appeal of hitting the conbini for that wonderful karaage bento. Considering that the weeks leading up to the release of the song were in the winter months, it added that further incentive to me at least to head out for some warm (or warmed over) goodies from Lawson.
I was fortunate to live in a neighbourhood which was chock-full of convenience stores, and the local Lawson was the closest one to my apartment in Ichikawa. It was virtually a minute away just around the corner. The above video apparently has a few aidoru, perhaps members from Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）since Sayumi Michishige（道重さゆみ）, the former leader of not only the Musume but of Hello Project in general, is in there. I just found out that she was the member with the longest-serving tenure in the group at 11 years and 10 months. Geez, she's 27 years old as of this writing...they grow so fast! Anyways, they are apparently going through on-the-job training. Well, it's kinda nice that Musume alumni have something to fall upon.
Getting back to the song, Chisato took care of the lyrics while Hiromasa Ijichi（伊秩弘将）, who had helped out on a number of songs for Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）and SPEED, composed "Let's GO!". It peaked at No. 19 and was included on her 12th album"Peachberry" from July 1997. In a Pavlovian sense, every time I hear the tune, I get this saliva-filled craving for bento with either karaage or hambaagu.
Rather like all those supporting actors on the original "Star Trek" such as George Takei (Sulu) and the late James Doohan (Scotty), singer Shigeru Matsuzaki（松崎しげる）will probably end his days always being known for just that one song despite having released 44 singles to date since his debut in 1970. That would be the heart-on-your-sleeve ballad "Ai no Memory"（愛のメモリー）from 1977. Plus there is that perpetual tan of his and his appearances on all of those variety programs and commercials (in voice as well as in person).
However, Matsuzaki has also done his fair share of acting over the decades including this zany detective show on TBS from 1979-1982 called "Uwasa no Keiji Tomi to Matsu"（噂の刑事トミーとマツ...The Famous Detectives Tomi and Matsu）. From what little I've seen of the show, the singer played the somewhat grumpy Detective Susumu Matsuyama who has to partner up with the faint-hearted Officer Tomio Okano to take care of cases that improbably get solved despite all of the comical stumbles that the team experiences.
The ending theme of the show turned out to be Matsuzaki's 21st single from September 1979, "WONDERFUL MOMENT" which is also a love song of sorts. However unlike the heartrending "Ai no Memory" with its touch of Latin, this ballad is as mellow and tropical as a trip down to Margueritaville. Perhaps it is where Matsuzaki's tec wanted to flee to after every case with his dopey partner. The singer's crooning style in this case reminds me of rocker Eiichi Yazawa（矢沢永吉）when he is at his most tenderhearted.
Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）, who took care of a lot of those early Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）tunes among her huge list of creations, wrote the lyrics while Juichi Sase（佐瀬寿一）composed the song. Sase, incidentally, was the same composer behind the hugely successful and legendary Oricon hit, "Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun"（およげ！たいやきくん）a few years earlier.
