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.
It's been almost 2 years since my last Mizue Takada（高田みづえ）article. Time to rectify this and get some of that nostalgic pop feeling tonight.
When it comes to my impression of Takada, I usually get that music that straddles the line between kayo and City Pop with that twang of electric guitar a la "Namida no Jiruba"（涙のジルバ）.
However, "Umi wo Wataru Kisetsu" (The Season to Cross The Sea) takes Takada into more languid Fashion Pop territory, as the title suggests something akin to leaving the nation after a romantic breakup. It's a sad but lovely ballad for which the singer's vocals match very well. There is that combination of melancholy and uncertainty within the melody provided by Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）with Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）writing the lyrics.
"Umi wo Wataru Kisetsu" was a track on Takada's 5th original album"Imagination"（イマジネーション）from October 1980.
Couldn't resist here. I just had to purchase another disc from the "Light Mellow" series of City Pop/AOR music. This time, the album has been dubbed "Wing".
(23:10)
One of the tracks just happens to be "Sobakasu no Aru Shojo" (The Girl with the Freckles) which goes well with a beach table and a couple of cocktails. The band is the legendary Tin Pan Alley（ティン・パン・アレー）with lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer Shigeru Suzuki（鈴木茂）concocting this dreamy paean to the titular girl in the same way that Charlie Brown dreamed of his Little Red-Haired Girl.
Still exploring the oeuvre of Tin Pan Alley but they were really pushing the envelope in a nation that was into the mainstream enka and Oricon-friendly aidorus in the 1970s. "Sobakasu no Aru Shojo" nicely sums up what New Music was all about in that decade: laying down Japanese lyrics on Western-style pop melodies created by Japanese musicians. The song was a track on the band's debut album, "Caramel Mama"（キャラメル・ママ）which was released in November 1975.
Well, I guess an era has finally come to an end. Supposedly, Namie Amuro's（安室奈美恵）career won't officially head off into the sunset until later this September on her birthday, but apparently she had the final concert of her final tour last night. NHK's "News Watch at 9" had one of the co-anchors perform an interview with Amuro, and this time to me...and for Amurers everywhere, this isn't an insult at her...she finally looked her age. She didn't look like a teen or a callow twenty something but a fully mature woman talking about her business.
As I mentioned in a previous article, "TRY ME ~ Watashi wo Shinjite ~"（TRY ME 〜私を信じて〜）was my introduction to Amuro and the future group MAX when they were known as Namie Amuro with Super Monkey's, just some months into my second stay in Japan. I gather that by that time, the group had embraced the mix of pop and club culture which would give birth to that whole Amurer fashion boom.
I often looked at the discography of Amuro in J-Wiki and noticed that there were a number of songs that had come before "TRY ME", and realized that there was a time before the superstar Amuro. This is a weird analogy but humour me, since I am a geek by nature, y'know. My feeling in this paragraph is rather akin to my early memories of "Doctor Who". I first got introduced to the famous Time Lord via his foppish third incarnation played by the late Jon Pertwee (although at that point, I hadn't been keeping count) before meeting Tom Baker'sBohemian Fourth Doctor. But then, through a poster celebrating the arrival of the Fifth Doctor, I noticed that there had been two incarnations prior to Pertwee's: the cranky original and the clownish Second Doctor. In conclusion, bringing things back to J-Pop, there were those four songs before "TRY ME"...when Amuro hadn't even been named at all in the byline but was represented simply as part of Super Monkey's.
Therefore, I went all the way back to the equivalent of Precambrian times...to the debut single of Super Monkey's, "Koi no Cute Beat/Mister U.S.A." which came out in September 1992, a mere few days before Amuro would turn 15.
I couldn't find "Koi no Cute Beat"（恋のキュート・ビート...Cute Beat of Love）but did come across a few YouTube copies of "Mister U.S.A.". All I can say is "Wow!". Considering all of the slinky R&B and dance music that Amuro and MAX were known for over the decades, it was still quite a revelation to hear "Mister U.S.A." sounding as if it came from the day-glo candy side of Eurobeat. It's quite catchy, actually, as Super Monkey's dance and sing about what could have been a Japanese teenager's thought and dreams about living on the West Coast of America at that time.
Written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）and composed by Minoru Komorita（小森田実）, "Mister U.S.A." does sound like something that would have been in the discography of Debbie Gibson or Tiffany. And it didn't do too badly although it didn't break into the Top 10...it peaked at No. 29. It was also a track on Namie Amuro with Super Monkey's BEST compilation, "ORIGINAL TRACKS VOL.1" which was released in September 1996. That album hit No. 3.
This was another reason that I've enjoyed writing this blog with everyone!
Was happy to know that there would be a second season for "Amanchu!"（あまんちゅ!）titled "Amanchu Advance"（あまんちゅ！～あどばんす～）. The first season back in 2016 was this very gentle slice-of-life anime about the budding friendship between two high school girls in the city of Ito as one helps the other in the hobby of scuba diving. "Amanchu!" was just the show to watch at the end of an all-day anime session to help digest dinner although I'm sure the producers had never meant it to be a visual digestif.
Still, as the formerly timid Teko advances through her scuba studies in this second season, it looks like the show itself has taken on a more supernatural quality. In fact, the last couple of episodes I witnessed last night actually had me thinking of another anime series that I had enjoyed in the season before the first season of "Amanchu!" premiered.
(short version)
Although I think the opening and ending themes for the first season are still the better ones, the opening and ending themes for "Amanchu Advance" are pretty nice to listen to and keep to that gentle tone of life in a seaside town (although Ito is officially a city).
Minori Suzuki（鈴木みのり）sings "Crosswalk", and at first, I had thought it was the seiyuu Eri Suzuki (鈴木絵理...who plays the zany green-haired Pikari) singing this due to the identical last name and the fact that she and co-star Ai Kayano（茅野愛衣）had performed the first ending theme "Futari Shojo"（ふたり少女）. However, it is actually the same singer who performed the high-energy opening theme to "Ramen Daisuki Koizumi-san"（ラーメン大好き小泉さん）as her debut single. "Crosswalk" is a much more sedate affair as her 2nd single. It was released in May 2018 and has so far peaked at No. 14 on Oricon. Maaya Sakamoto（坂本真綾）wrote the lyrics and Katsutoshi Kitagawa（北川勝利）took care of the melody.
Sakamoto is back to perform another theme song for "Amanchu!". Compared to the opening theme for Season 1 that she also did, "Million Clouds", which was ethereal and epic, the ending theme of "Hello, Hello" is a nice and grounded pop song that was also written and composed by the singer-songwriter. To me, whereas "Million Clouds" kinda presented the beginnings of a magical journey, "Hello, Hello" is a pleasant ride through Ito. Sakamoto's 28th single was also released in May.
As someone commented on Youtube: "Intro wa kakkoii...."（イントロはかっこい...The intro is cool）.
Well, a lot of Yuming's（ユーミン）songs are darn cool in their entirety, including the one that the commenter was referring to, "Yaketa Aidoru"(Burned-out Idol).
The second track on Yumi Matsutoya's（松任谷由実）10th original album"Surf & Snow", I'm a little surprised that there wasn't anything written up about this sad story of a male aidoru whose star faded below the horizon long ago and even he has since disappeared somewhere into oblivion. Perhaps even by December 1980, which was when "Surf & Snow" was released, there was most likely a street lined with the careers of once-promising or never-were aidoru. In a way, the song seems to be a tonal relative to Barry Manilow's "Copacabana".
Still, Yuming's melody with the saxophone has got the City Pop aesthetic down pat. If folks don't get too down from her lyrics, then they ought to be able to get with this kakkoii number.
I was out all day yesterday since I had a couple of group outings downtown: one with some fellow translators at the Duke of York pub in the Annex, and then later in the evening with some old and new friends on Yonge St. for good ol' Korean fare. In between food onslaughts, I did a lot of walking which included a traipse through Kensington Market just across Chinatown. I was surprised to see a Krispy Kreme at one corner (thought the franchise was run out of town years ago), and then I came across a convenience store of sorts called Ding Dong.
The place has gotten onto print since it sells a lot of Japanese dagashi including sweets such as sake-flavoured Kit-Kat and all sorts of Pocky. However, considering the heat and humidity yesterday, I was very ready for some emergency libation in the form of Calpis (stop giggling) or as it's known here, Calpico. I went for the strawberry variety at $3.58 CDN. Nope, not cheap but heck, I love the stuff and it's not everyday now that I can get it.
The name of that shop reminded me of that one track on the soundtrack of "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線）, the comedy-drama of the intrigue that goes on within the annals of a local police station in Tokyo. As I mentioned in the article for the original soundtrack, composer Akihiko Matsumoto（松本晃彦）came up with this playful earworm that combines some light technopop with the music of a mariachi trumpet. Not surprisingly, it was used for the more humourous scenes in the show.
It's too bad, though, that I couldn't find the version of "Ding Dong" used in the first movie for "Odoru Dai Sosasen", since Matsumoto then brings out the full force of a Rio Carnival. Lots of fun, that one.
Strangely enough, I was reminded of this song by 90s aidoruHikaru Nishida（西田ひかる）while looking at the chat feed on Van Paugam's City Pop radio. The person mentioned about "Love is Changing" in passing, and I was surprised that it actually had been the first ending theme for the anime "Rekka no Honō"（烈火の炎...Flame of Recca）in 1997. I had heard of both the song and the show but never knew about the connection.
Not quite sure whether Nishida's 23rd single from August 1997 would be placed in the City Pop genre, but there was certainly quite the groove in there to call it J-R&B. Although R&B, being an urban contemporary genre, should certainly quality itself as something belonging to City Pop, I guess for me, City Pop has to have a certain je ne sais crois arrangement.
But not to worry here since "Love is Changing" is nice and funky, thanks to the music of singer Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）and the lyrics of Yuuho Iwasato（岩里祐穂）. The one reason that I hadn't thought of it as an anison was that the song could totally stand on its own as a fun tune, not needing any sort of anime to support it. Plus, although the overall arrangement of "Love is Changing" is somewhat milder than that of a Kubota-sung tune, probably to match the vocal style of Nishida, it's nice to hear one of the last aidorus of the 20th century get into something more soulful. It did rather modestly on the charts, peaking at No. 54.
