Kenji Kitahara -- Furusato no Hanashi wo Shiyou （ふるさとのはなしをしよう）

Well, Tanabata has come and gone but there is still a lot of summer to be had in Japan, and that means the festival season, and then next month will be the O-Bon vacation season. Everyone and their pet will be heading back to the ol' furusato for some precious days and nights of R&R while simmering in the sun.

The O-Bon holiday never existed for me due to my choice of career. But that was OK since I didn't really have a practical furusato to head home to. Flying back to Toronto was way too expensive in the summer and frankly I was never close enough to my relatives to make the trip to that part of the country. Therefore, August was just another month but considering the craziness of public and private transportation during that time, I didn't really mind staying in The Big Sushi at all, other than the torrid heat and humidity.

Tonight's theme for "Uta Kon"（うたコン）was summer songs. There was a whole variety of hot and sunny tunes representing a number of decades but I was especially drawn to one song from the 1960s that enka singer Takeshi Kitayama（北山たけし）covered tonight.

"Furusato no Hanashi wo Shiyou" (Let's Talk of Home) was originally sung by actor and singer Kenji Kitahara（北原謙二）as one of his trademark tunes in 1965. The instrumentation and the pining for home in the words kinda makes this one another one of those kayo that straddles the fence between enka and Mood Kayo. The important thing, though, is that it hits the Japanese sweet spot of sentimentality and nostalgia for the ol' hometown, and considering the O-Bon holidays, it was well chosen for "Uta Kon" as a summer song.

It also helps that Kitahara sings "Furusato no Hanashi wo Shiyou" with plenty of heart and wishes to return to the hearth, as it were. He may sing the song but the feelings it evokes reminds me of a group of workers just sitting around somewhere in the big city talking about getting that train ride back to the old country to see family and former classmates again. The ballad was written by Noboru Inoue（伊野上のぼる）and composed by Taro Kida（キダ・タロー）.

Kenji Kitahara was born in 1939 in Osaka with his birth name being Kentaro Kitahara（北原謙太郎）. His career began singing in jazz bars before becoming a member of Eiji Suzuki and The Blue Cowboys（鈴木英治とブルー・カウボーイズ）. Then, scouted by a director at Columbia Records, he debuted as a singer in 1961. Although it wasn't for this particular song, Kitahara did make it onto the Kohaku Utagassen twice in 1962 and 1963. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 65.

George Yamamoto（山本譲二）gave his own cover of "Furusato no Hanashi wo Shiyou" in 2004.

Keisuke Yamauchi -- Koi suru Machikado （恋する街角）

Tokyo can be said to be a conglomeration of big cities and of course each of those cities has a particular night life. Roppongi still has that slightly seedy but still potent street sandwiched by two modern shopping complexes, Roppongi Hills and the newer Tokyo Midtown. The bright lights still adorn Ginza and there is also raucous Shibuya.

One of the princes of enka/Mood Kayo, Keisuke Yamauchi（山内惠介）, would like you to know that love can be found in any of those places in Tokyo, and for that matter, on any street corner in any of the metropolises in Japan. In fact, he got to perform a pretty rousing song, "Koi suru Machikado" (Street Corners of Love), as his 9th single from October 2008.

Written by Akiko Shimoji（下地亜記子）and composed by Hideo Mizumori（水森英夫）, "Koi suru Machikado" takes the listener on a classic Mood Kayo carpet ride through a few of those entertainment areas such as Susukino of Sapporo, Roppongi and Hakata's yatai (street stalls) area. I have yet to visit that last place and since I am a foodie, I really should try some of the fine fare at the stalls soon. But the song ain't about food but that other passionate pursuit, love! And perhaps the song is saying that the commodity can be bartered about as easily on those corners as getting a Big Mac. However, I don't think the song is talking about the ladies of the evening necessarily; it's probably more about the nightly give-and-take flirtations of various folks in terms of romance in a variety of battlefields whether it be an expensive nightclub or even the local Cozy Corner cake shop. One of my students once told me that one of the Ginza Cozy Corners was a regular meeting point between hostesses and their sugar daddies.

"Koi suru Machikado" did fairly well by getting as high as No. 38 on Oricon. But I think the best was yet to come for young Prince Keisuke.

Tohoku Shinkansen -- Thru Traffic

Well, this album will most likely end up being my most coveted release this year, and I was indeed very happy to get this one last week.

The duo known as Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）consisting of the late musician Hiroshi Narumi（鳴海寛）and songwriter Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）has already been mentioned on the pages of this blog through three tracks from their sole album from 1982, "Thru Traffic". And it is because of those three tracks that I had wanted to get "Thru Traffic" for many months. However, at the time, Amazon.jp and some other sites were selling the rare album for prices like 7,000 yen and upwards; too rich for my blood.

Tower Records Japan had actually been selling far more reasonably priced CDs of the album but when I checked there, it had already been sold out. Undaunted, I kept checking periodically until early June when I discovered that my old haunt was once again taking in reservations for a new batch of "Thru Traffic". Well, the fingers flew fast on my keyboard that night and made my purchase. Being the smirking cynic that I am, I figured that my luck would run out and Tower would send me a message stating that I had just missed out or that Japan Post had lost my disc. Happily, though, it didn't happen.

"Thru Traffic" is definitely a pure KKP/YouTube purchase. There wasn't even any mention of it or Tohoku Shinkansen on "Japanese City Pop". I only found out about it because I was just strolling through YouTube one night at some of the other songs that songwriter Yamakawa had provided other singers. Unfortunately, the video of the whole album has been taken down and although I understand the reason behind the powers-that-be's decision to send that cease-and-desist e-mail, I have to say that it was because of the presence of that video along with the videos of separate tracks that I could find out about the album and eventually purchase it. No videos, no "Thru Traffic" in my hands. Furthermore, I've got the sneaking suspicion that some of the other purchases of the album from Tower Records may have been because of folks coming across the videos on social media somewhere.

But before I end up pressing that soapbox into the soft earth under my considerable girth, let me step off and just say that I have brought back the opening track "Summer Touches You" as performed by Narumi, although it has already gotten its own article. One of the commenters said that the song reminded him of some of the material that Canada's own Gino Vannelli had sung, and his name does indeed pop up in the liner notes for "Thru Traffic" as an influence. I have already sung the praises but listening to it a few more times, that intro of guitars and mellow horns is simply fantastic for a guy who loves R&B and other facets of urban contemporary pop from that era.

The only other new track that I could find anywhere online was "September Valentine". And it was a song that I had already covered back in 2012. The bluesy original by Yasuhiro Abe（安部恭弘）and Atsuko Saito（斉藤敦子）has been remade into a jazz ballad on "Thru Traffic" that would make Hi-Fi Set or even the Manhattan Transfer swoon. Compared to the other three tracks represented here on the blog, it's a bit of a stylistic detour but a wonderful one thanks to Narumi and Yamakawa.

I've only had a chance to quickly skim through the liner notes of the album but what I could find out was that both Narumi and Yamakawa started their musical education in classical music. However as they were growing up, Yamakawa started falling for the Group Sounds of the 1960s and Western pop music in general while Narumi had his eyes (and ears) further opened by the sounds of artists such as Burt Bacharach, The Carpenters and The Fifth Dimension. If I've got my translation correct, the two of them were working at the Yamaha Music Foundation and it was evident that their ages and musical tastes meshed well. One day, a director at Yamaha even suggested that the two collaborate as a unit and so Tohoku Shinkansen was born.

"Thru Traffic" would be the big project for the duo with the concept covering AOR and black contemporary music of the time with that feeling of the city (despite the cover having that illustration of a white house with the wood siding perhaps out in the burbs). Basically, according to those same liner notes, there were influences from Vannelli, Bobby Caldwell, Earth Wind & Fire and George Benson.

Ah, what the heck! I brought in another video, "Tsuki ni Yorisotte"（月に寄りそって）performed by both Narumi and Yamakawa, to finish things off here. I have no idea how the album did on Oricon; most likely it did modestly at best but to me, this is a definite keeper. And if anyone ever asks about how to get in on the ground floor for Japanese City Pop or J-AOR, I could definitely recommend "Thru Traffic". If you've got the funds, you can get it on Amazon or pester Tower Records Japan for more copies to be made.

The First -- J-Canuck

Good evening! It's the end of another weekend and I think most of us are reluctantly getting ready for another work week. Not too bad for me since my commute only takes the half-second to get out of bed and into my chair.

I'm starting my first new category in quite a while on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" and it's called The First. In this case, The First stands for The First Song or Songs That Got Me Hooked on Japanese Popular Music. And in fact, it is also a slightly whimsical project that I'm launching since I am inviting all of the collaborators who have contributed over the past five years to write about the songs that drew them into loving the raison d'etre for this blog in the first place. Furthermore, I am even inviting some of the frequent commenters over the past five years to also write about those special songs of theirs.

I've gotten in contact with a few of them already such as Karen and T-cat with positive responses. However, I would also like to hear from RagnarXIV, Laurence Green, May Lily, Francium, Kenji France, Nagaregumo, Gen Kanai, Henrique, Trevor Bordage, Yuie-Chan and Ryan Miller if they are interested as well. However, this is purely voluntary...I realize that some folks prefer to read blogs instead of writing them so I will totally understand if the answer is no. But if it's a yes, then contact me through the Contact Form on the upper-right side.

Now, when I first approached the regular contributors about the idea, one of them rightly pointed out that it would be somewhat difficult to narrow the choices down to one trigger song so in my case, I'm putting down three. And all three have been covered in the blog.

As veteran readers of KKP may already know, Japanese music has always been a part of my life since I was a baby. However, I only started getting obsessive about kayo kyoku when I made that trip to Japan in 1981 with my fellow graduates in Japanese Language School.

There were a number of songs that hit my heart as well as my ears the first time I heard them. And one was Jun Horie's（堀江淳）"Memory Glass"（メモリーグラス）from 1981 which was incidentally the topic of the very first KKP article in 2012. After the trip to Japan in July of that year, there was a quick reunion of the students and teachers at one of the students' houses in September and our host was nice enough to play a whole mess of "Best 10" shows on her VCR.

A lot of the songs stuck with me since they were getting regular rankings on that show but "Memory Glass" was one standout. At that time, I was pretty YMO-crazy so when I heard that synthesizer intro, I targeted in on the song like a heat-seeking missile. Listening to Horie, I also realized that Japanese music wasn't all enka and cute boppy aidoru tunes.

Strangely enough, Akira Terao's（寺尾聡）big hit "Ruby no Yubiwa"（ルビーの指輪）also from 1981 didn't show up to my recollection on any of those tapes playing on my classmate's video deck but I remembered hearing it through other sources. Perhaps it was through some speakers at a record store when I was walking past it in Osaka or Tokyo, or maybe it was on a commercial on TV.

However, one of the biggest and coolest City Pop hits made it onto the 1981 Kohaku Utagassen and that's where it truly imprinted itself on me. I wouldn't even know the term "City Pop" for several more years and yet there was something so appealingly urban and urbane about "Ruby no Yubiwa" but so different from anything in American urban contemporary pop at that time. It was one of the tunes that would begin the process of persuading me that there was something to Japanese pop.

Then, there is Iruka's（イルカ）"Ame no Monogatari"（雨の物語）. It actually came out in 1977 but I first heard it on a 1982 broadcast of "Sounds of Japan" which I taped. And like the above "Ruby no Yubiwa", hearing the song for the first time made me believe that Japanese popular music could be quite good and appealing. It was certainly different from enka and along with that amazing guitar intro and the wonderful rise of the strings, even listening to it on that broadcast which incessantly crackled and faded in/out didn't affect my delight and enjoyment.

Those are the three big songs for me. And thanks to them, I waited earnestly for my family to get our first VCR so that I could rent "Top 10" or "Best 10" videos, and I taped a ton of those "Sounds of Japan" shows onto cheapo Canadian Tire audiotapes. Of course, those aren't the only three to affect me, so Larry was indeed right about the difficulties in narrowing down the choices. Probably the last thing I can say here is that kayo kyoku brought me in since a good chunk of it sounded like Western music but with a certain twist to it...perhaps like an alt-universe thing. Other aspects of Japanese pop culture have formed that way.

I have already talked about the above songs in the past but I wanted to give those folks interested in our little project an example of what a sample article can look like. After all, I'm hoping that The First will now be focusing more on what other fans have to say about this shared music.

Junko Sakurada -- Watashi no Aoi Tori （わたしの青い鳥）

In my last article, I was getting all sepia-toned and nostalgic for Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）. Can you imagine how I must feel about the 1970s?! All those happy violins and high-toned vocals by the aidoru way back when. But then again, there is a major difference. My nostalgia for the 90s extends to my old life in the Tokyo area but hearing the old music from the 1970s and further back is about my childhood and the RCA stereo and VHS tapes.

As I've said before, Junko Sakurada（桜田淳子）is the one member of that media-formed group Hana no Chuu-san Trio（花の中三トリオ...The Flower Junior High Senior Trio）which also included 70s stars Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）and Masako Mori（森昌子）that I know the least in terms of her music. Mind you, all that means is that I have the privilege of exploring more of her discography.

One example is this sweet tune, "Watashi no Aoi Tori" (My Bluebird) by Sakurada which came out as her 3rd single in August 1973. Written by master lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composed by Taiji Nakamura（中村泰士）, it's about as innocent as a bluebird or a lamb with the aidoru tweeting her friendship with the bird of note. It's about as 70s kayo as one can get. If music videos actually existed back then, Sakurada would have been Snow White traipsing around with Disney bluebirds flocking all around her.

"Watashi no Aoi Tori" peaked at No. 18 on Oricon becoming one of the singer's trademark tunes and selling about 150,000 records. It also won her Best New Artist honours at the Japan Record Awards for 1973.

I've suddenly got this urge to head outside and catch butterflies with a net while wearing a beanie cap.

Namie Amuro -- Taiyo no Season （太陽のSEASON）

Let's see...when I left Japan in 1991, there were the female rock bands such as Princess Princess and Pink Sapphire and the solo female singers, some of whom specialized in some mellow/happy pop including Miki Imai（今井美樹）and Mariko Nagai（永井真里子）. Then, on coming back to the nation in late 1994, probably the very first female singer I encountered on TV was dance-aggressive teen fashion icon Namie Amuro（安室奈美恵）ready to hit the floor. What a difference a few years make.

Of course, it's been well over 20 years since that discovery so perhaps hearing that brand of keyboard and even the genre of Eurobeat as Amuro and her Super Monkeys are dancing and singing away brings a goodly amount of natsukashii in any event. I can truly say that I haven't heard synthesizers like those in many years.

"Taiyo no Season" (Season of the Sun) was the Okinawan native's debut single as a solo singer. It came out in April 1995 with Kazumi Suzuki（鈴木計見）on lyrics and the Hinoky Team on music. I never got the CD single for this although I would purchase later songs by Amuro but on seeing and hearing the song again after so long, I will most likely end up getting one of her BEST purchases. Very much doubt that I will be dancing to it, though; I will break a hip.

The song did very well for Amuro as her starter. It went Double Platinum, peaking at No. 5 on Oricon and ranked No. 56 on the annual charts. It ended up selling a little over 600,000 copies and made its first presence on a studio album in October 1995 via "DANCE TRACKS VOL.1", Amuro's debut album. That became a No. 1 hit and quickly became the 21st-ranked album for the year and barely moved downward the following year, finishing at the No. 22 position on the yearly charts.

To give credit where credit is due, though, "Taiyo no Season" was the cover version of "SEASON" by Veronica Sales from 1994.

Hisako Mitsui -- Getsuyoubi wa SICK SICK （月曜日はシックシック）

I was listening to a collection of 80s Japanese aidoru that I was able to acquire thanks to JTM earlier this afternoon, and I came across this fairly catchy number by an aidoru named Hisako Mitsui（三井比佐子）.

Mitsui was totally unknown to me until today but she had a brief stint as an aidoru in 1982 after being part of an aidoru triumvirate called Pansy（パンジー）which also featured Sawako Kitahara（北原佐和子）and Chiemi Manabe（真鍋ちえみ）. Manabe has already gotten representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" through nikala's article on techno kayo songs and Kitahara also has an article as well.

Anyways, her debut single (she only released two as a solo act) was "Getsuyoubi wa SICK SICK" (I'm SICK SICK on Monday) from June 1982. Not that Mitsui was a great singer by any means (after all, we are talking about the average 80s aidoru) but seeing her in the hairdo and fashion of those days and hearing the youthful energy, she still brings that certain nostalgia factor. Plus, that enthusiastic backup chorus hounding her throughout the song reminds me of "Mickey" by Toni Basil which came out the same year, I believe.

Tetsuo Takahira（高平哲郎）took care of the lyrics about getting all hot and bothered about a guy to the point of distraction while at school while Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）came up with the music. I don't know how "Getsuyoubi wa SICK SICK" did on the charts but considering how brief her J-Wiki article is, it most likely didn't crack the Top 10. Still, it was a pretty pleasant enough 3 minutes in my earbuds and I guess I still have a soft spot for the launch pad kayo of my youth.