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.
On the day before I left Japan, Dan and I were walking toward Ginza. And I knew before I had even arrived in the country that there was an establishment that I knew in Tokyo which was going to end its time on December 26th this year.
The 100% Chocolate Cafewas a place that I visited with friends perhaps around 2~3 times during my residency there and has had a good run of more than a decade. In a megalopolis which has a high frequency of restaurant openings and closings, the Meiji-sponsored cafe has done quite well.
I wasn't about to pass this final opportunity to drink at my old haunt so Dan and I did a half-hour there over chocolate drinks. Wish that I could have had some of the chocolate desserts there but after a rather large soba lunch in Akihabara, my stomach didn't have the heart. Still, I was glad that we could have one last time.
Well, perhaps there are other chocolate-themed J-Pop tunes but this is the one that automatically came to mind.
At this point in time, I'm aware of a few kayo that are meant to be odes to ancient Japanese castles, namely Michiya Mihashi's (三橋美智也) "Kojou" (古城) and Kiyoshi Hikawa's (氷川きよし) "Haku-un no Shiro" (白雲の城). I'm a fan of Michi's biggest hit and I'm in the midst of getting used to Hikawa's iconic single, but I hadn't yet got formally introduced to their spiritual predecessor "Kojo no Tsuki" until now.
"Kojo no Tsuki", which translates to "Moon Over the Ruined Castle", has a forlorn and haunting atmosphere, created by long drawn out strings and, in some versions I've heard, the tinkling notes of the koto (adds a more Japanese flavour). This eerie composition, written by the short-lived Rentaro Taki (滝廉太郎) in 1901, highlights the fact that these fortresses, once grand in their time, are now nothing but moss-covered ruins and remnants of the past. This brings to my mind the phrase "If the walls could talk, what would they be saying?". Perhaps the cobblestone walls must be lamenting over their fate of being forgotten or having been turned into a tourist attraction after being the epitome of power in their prime.
Yoshiko Yamaguchi's version
I digress. Moving on, the inspiration for the two aforementioned hits by the huge enka stars actually started out as a tune for music lessons in school. After Taki passed on, one thing led to another and some changes to his score were made and the lyrics were added by poet Bansui Doi (土井晩翠). Eventually, it did become popularized nationally as well as internationally in the 1920's, although I'm not very sure who was the first to record it. The English Wiki stated that operatic singer Yoshie Fujiwara (藤原義江) recorded it in 1925, but the J-Wiki has no mention of it. That aside, it was covered a number of times by a myriad of artistes, like the venerable Yoshiko Yamaguchi (山口淑子), Ichiro Fujiyama (藤山一郎), and of course, Michi and Hikawa. I'm not able to find Michi's take, but I've put up the others. I don't have a favourite, but I feel that Yamaguchi's soprano gives "Kojo no Tsuki" an extra layer of loneliness and eeriness.
Mr Fujiyama's version
Between "Kojou" and "Haku-un no Shiro", I think the latter resembles "Kojo no Tsuki" more in terms of its music. You can hear it in the video below. The score of "Kojou", on the other hand, sounds like it has slightly more modern touch to it.
Hikawa's "Haku-un no Shiro"
A little tidbit of information here: The castles the words and the music were based on were different. Taki had Oita prefecture's Oka Castle in mind, while Doi pictured the Aoba Castle in Miyagi and Aizuwakamatsu Castle in Fukushima.
Personally, I've not visited many castles in Japan. The only one I've actually gone up to for a look was the Osaka castle about 4 years back. T'was a majestic sight against the night sky and it's nowhere near ruin, but to be frank, I was more interested in this enormous Siberian Husky or Alaskan Malamute (probably the latter) that was stationed inside a photo shop. I really wanted to give it some love but I was advised not to - the elderly shop owner seemed sour over people going into the shop for the dog and not for the photo services. Well, lady, what do you expect when you've got a dog big enough to be ridden into battle? I wonder if Fido is still there.
Better-late-than-never situation here. This song, and the album that it is included in, is now over 20 years old but didn't know about its existence until tonight.
I've known CHAKA and Toko Furuuchi（古内東子）separately as singers with some wonderful voices, the former during her time with PSY-S and the latter during her early career in the 1990s. Never did I think that the two would actually get together for a duet, though. But that is what they did for one track, "Huckleberry Friends", on CHAKA's 2nd solo album"with friends" in 1996.
CHAKA took care of the lyrics while Furuuchi came up with the groovy and relaxed melody in a nice collaboration about two friends sticking with each other through thick and thin. And as the title would suggest, I would say that the pair makes for good buds hanging out with each other on the weekend at a cafe or at a baseball game. The only other surprise is that "Huckleberry Friends" wasn't used as a theme song for a J-Drama or something.
If I had known about this song and album, it would have been up on my shelf for a couple of decades already. Just goes to show that there are still treasures to be found in the Japanese music iceberg.
Friday was the final full day of my time in Tokyo. Met up with Dan one last time and did some more shopping around in the big city. Before meeting up with my congenial host from the past weekend, Rob, and some of the others, Dan and I went over to the Shinjuku Station branch of Tower Records. It just so happened that on the 7th floor where the J-Pop stuff was located, there was quite the yelling and shouting.
It turned out that yet another aidoru group was making its presence felt in a Tower Records. This time, it was the 5-girl unit Rock A Japonica（ロッカジャポニカ）and they were actually there performing what I assume was their latest single. The audience was quite the lively mob, being proactive and reactive to what was happening on stage. Of course, I couldn't take any photos lest the Tower Records staff and group's representatives started swarming me with crossed arms (it's happened to me once before).
To give a taste of what Rock A Japonica is like, this is their 2nd single from July 2016,"Kyōka Shock!"(Teaching Song Shock!), a high-speed tune which reached No. 5 on Oricon.
Was getting a tad noisy so we went up another floor to ease our ears. I was surprised to find a small but noticeable display of City Pop in one corner, and as you can see in the above photo, there was even a listening post for Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"Sunshower" and Takako Mamiya's（間宮貴子）"Love Trip". That latter album was a real shock since for the past decade, I had always understood it to be one of the rarest and most obscure releases that I had ever known about in contemporary Japanese music although it is one of the classics of the genre in my estimation.
Perhaps its popularity on YouTube might have gotten the attention of a few Tower staffers...or perhaps this blog (heh, heh). Whatever the case, I'm glad that Ms. Mamiya has been getting her due at last.
With just two full days left in my Tokyo 2017 trip, my friend Dan and I decided to make November 16th the day for searching for those rare albums.
So I met up with him in Akiba where his hotel was. However, since I got there an hour ahead of schedule, I ended up getting a UNIQLO cardigan and having an impromptu brunch at Vie de France. Golly, I did miss that place. My caloric intake suffered a quick increase but despite the sugar and cholesterol, it was well worth it.
Anyways, we first stopped off at some of the old/used CD shops in Jimbocho including my old haunt of Tacto and I was happy that my friend could track down one of his rarities there. After that, we took the Hanzomon Line down to Shibuya and walked it up to Tower Records. Of course, I went a bit crazy with the disc shopping and I've already talked about a couple of the new acquisitions over the past week.
We decided to have lunch down on the 2nd floor where the Tower Records Cafe is located. Apparently, for a limited time, the cafe was made into the central fan location for the aidoru group Shiritsu Ebisu Chugaku（私立恵比寿中学...Ebisu Private Junior High School）. We had never heard of these ladies before but the waitress smilingly asked us whether we would want to be seated by the huge poster where the girls were posing. I politely demurred and said that we would be happy being seated anywhere.
We got the comfy sofa set in one corner of the cafe. And the menu consisted of dishes that the individual members of Shiritsu Ebisu Chugaku had recommended. I went with the gyoza-and-fried rice combo and the mango juice. I gathered that SEC had garnered quite a fan following since some of them actually came up to our table to take photos of the pictures on the wall above us containing the girls. So this was what fame was all about, eh? To give credit where credit was due, the lunch was quite delicious.
SEC began in 2010 and had their major debut in 2012. I couldn't quite hear any of their songs at the cafe so I did some digging when I got back home to Toronto and found their 11th and latest single, according to J-Wiki. "Sing along sing a song" had come out right in the middle of my trip on November 8th, and the video and song is actually quite fun to hear. Written and composed by Motoki Ohmori（大森元貴）, the song went as high as No. 2 on Oricon.
I will have to give my respects to them as well for the food recommendations.
I don't think I ever got a photo of an Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）album to store as an article thumbnail so I'm quite happy that I could get a shot of the actual Aqua City shopping mall in Odaiba, Tokyo.
As for Kiyotaka Sugiyama's（杉山清貴）old band, their "Aqua City" was their debut album from September 1983. Initially when I saw the title for one of the tracks, "Alone Again", I had assumed for a few seconds that the band was actually doing a cover of the 1970s hit by Gilbert O'Sullivan but then again, that song had the extra word "...Naturally" in the title.
Nope, "Alone Again" by Omega Tribe was written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）, now the most prolific lyricist in Japan, and composed by Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）who could probably be credited for giving the band its mellow sound. He was the one, after all, who came up with "Summer Suspicion", Omega Tribe's debut single which was also recorded onto "Aqua City".
Listening to "Alone Again", it has all of the tropes that got me interested in Omega Tribe in all of its incarnations in the first place: smooth vocals, mellow beat and that summery sheen. Couldn't have asked for a better song for a young couple strolling on the beach at dusk while holding hands. And I gotta say that the folks who set up the concert above for Sugiyama and the band planned the setting, including the lighting, just right for the song. As for "Aqua City", it peaked at No. 4 on Oricon.
Another recent acquisition for me is the second album of veteran singer-songwriter Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, "Back Mirror" from 1977. I had seen the album at Tower Records back in 2014 but unfortunately didn't come around to getting it. This time, I didn't repeat the same mistake.
I've listened to "Back Mirror" just once so far. I will have to get back to it but in the meantime, the one standout track is "Rainy Saturday & Coffee Break" which pretty much says it all there in terms of the music. Perhaps Hayashi had a regular breakfast place that he hung out at during the weekends near his apartment in Tokyo or whichever city he was residing in at the time. I could see him sucking back on his cigarette after having done his coffee and toast and boiled egg while it's showering outside.
Whatever the scenario, I like this song. It's laidback but cheerful and I do groove to that electric piano. There's something very reassuringly 70s City Pop about it. While Hayashi took care of the music, Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）wrote the lyrics.
One of the backup singers for "Rainy Saturday & Coffee Break" just happened to be chanteuse Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）and strangely enough in the same year, she did a cover of the same song for her own album "Rainbow". This time, it was Hayashi backing her up. Slightly different arrangement but still lovely to listen to.
