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.
Eating by yourself in a pretty classy restaurant? Not the most comfortable situation...believe me, I've been there. It's one thing to have dinner at a ramen restaurant or a McDonalds where solitary dining is common. But at a place that offers fine dining where it's considered appropriate to have at least one other person with you? I did get my fair share of stares.
That seems to be the topic of "Yume yori Kurushiku" (More Painful Than A Dream) by City Pop princeTatsuhiko Yamamoto（山本達彦）. Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）provided the lyrics of the hard and lonely experience while Yamamoto composed the urbane and breezy melody that I could consider to be Sad Steely Dan. It's a cool song regardless as long as I don't linger too much on the lyrics...brings back too many memories.
"Yume yori Kurushiku" is a track on Yamamoto's 10th album"Music" which was released in June 1984 according to J-Wiki (although iTunes states that it came out in December 1987). The album managed to get as high as No. 6 on Oricon. I don't have "Music" but luckily, the song is part of his BEST compilation "70s & 80s BEST" which came out in 2008.
Apples are my fruit. I was practically weaned on Macintosh, Golden Delicious, etc. and apple pie (especially the crumble-top variety) will always be my favourite form of the pastry. When we were kids, it was an October tradition for the family to head over to Chudleigh's Apple Farm just west of Toronto to go pick those apples. That crisp autumn morning over there provided some wonderful goodies in the form of the aroma of baking apple pie and apple strudel, and often enough, we would be plied with warm and sweet apple cider. It's one of the things that I miss doing nowadays.
On tonight's episode of NHK's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, the theme was the autumn festival in Sendai, and the Tohoku area of Japan is well known for its own apple orchards. I got to hear an enka tune performed originally by Michiya Mihashi（三橋美智也）, sung tonight by Midori Oka（丘みどり）, that I'd never heard before titled "Ringo Mura kara" (From The Village of Apples).
This was a single released back in 1956 by Mihashi that has the sentimental ring of the old hometown, a trope in kayo kyoku that was quite popular back then for all those folks who made the journey to the big cities like Tokyo to find work. The lyrics by Ryo Yano（矢野亮）start right off the bat with "Do you remember?" which could have set a lot of eyes watering up at the memories.
The music was composed by Isao Hayashi（林伊佐緒）, and Mihashi's delivery is strong but perhaps also somewhat mournful as if reflecting the feelings of all those who made that big move to the city but will not be able to return for a long while. "Ringo Mura kara" is considered to be one of Mihashi's classics and it ended up selling around 2.7 million records which is apparently his 2nd-most successful hit among his kayo songs. According to J-Wiki, "Ringo Mura kara" is tied with "Hoshikuzu no Machi"(星屑の町), and both songs are behind his No. 1 kayo hit,"Kojou"（古城）.
Currently, a couple of my good friends are having their vacation in Japan, but before they left, I was able to have lunch last Friday with the husband half. Over my medium-rare steak, he rather surprised me when he told me that he had downloaded some of the 1960s kayosince up until now, I knew him as being more of a contemporary music fellow. But as you know, I'm always welcoming of folks discovering some of the old stuff.
Perhaps one of the songs in his download was this one by singer/tarento/actress Rumi Koyama（小山ルミ）. "Sasurai no Guitar" (Wandering Guitar) was her 6th single from June 1971, and yep, although I did mention that my friend had downloaded 1960s kayo, I kinda think that this snazzy number retained some of that go-go feeling from the decade before. Koyama no longer sings but I think that she had a pretty strong voice to accompany "Sasurai no Guitar" which also seemed to possess a layer of French pop with its "Yeah, Yeah" melody by J.A.Schatrow. Kazuya Senke（千家和也）, who would also later provide some hits for Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, took care of the lyrics of a woman falling in love.
Koyama herself was born in Sapporo to a Japanese mother and a father who was an Irish soldier. Beginning a career in modeling while she was in junior high school, she soon got into acting in the late 1960s with her singing beginning with "Hajimete no Date"（はじめてのデート...First Date）in 1968. With her final single coming out in 1974, she moved to the United States and met a Japanese jeweler whom she married after which she retired from show business. According to J-Wiki, she's currently living in Los Angeles.
I believe that this song by the late and great Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）would fall under the "So-80s-it-hurts" category...but in a nice way. Kinda like musical shiatsu.
Reading somewhere on YouTube that basically Sato could do no wrong with anything he came up with, I could certainly agree, especially since coming across his summery "On The Wind". Oh, it's liquid sunshine for the soul that could potentially render any listener light and mellow. It's funky and groovy at the same time, and I think this is the second time listening to Sato that I couldn't help but feel that he was the Japanese version of Howard Jones based on his vocals.
According to an Ameblo blog, "On The Wind" was released as a 12-inch single back in October 1985, and the song was used for a commercial. However, since then, it has been added to the re-released version of his 1988 album"Aqua". Fine addition, if you ask me, but I have also written on another good track from that release, "Seat For Two".
Monday night...the evening to get over the first day of the work week, and perhaps the toughest night next to Wednesday (Hump Day) to salve those existential blues.
Well, allow me to help out a bit with this short and sweet article. This is based on Hiroaki Igarashi's（五十嵐浩晃）song "Twilight Bossa" from his 5th album"Soyokaze no Koro"（そよ風の頃－SEASON OF BREEZE－）which came out in May 1983. As the title says, it's some nice light Latin to have that first drink of the week with. Igarashi's brand of soothing AOR was written by the singer and Shun Taguchi（田口俊）with Igarashi taking care of the music.
Strangely enough, with all of the City Pop/AOR albums that I've been purchasing over the years, I've yet to get an Igarashi album. Something to mull about as the year starts winding down. Of course, this would be dependent on how that Canada Post strike goes.
This is another chance encounter with an aidoru who never really made it big but listening to "Aoi Suiheisen"(Blue Horizon), I think that there is some pleasant nostalgia when it comes to this teenybopper tune.
"Aoi Suiheisen" was sung by Tomoko Izumi（和泉友子...not sure about the reading of that first name; if it is actually Yuko, please let me know） as her first of only two singles according from what I could find on this archive for 70s and 80s aidoru. It was released in June 1981 and the timing was pretty appropriate since it does have that summery and breezy feeling. There is unsurprisingly no J-Wiki entry for Izumi because of her very brief discography but from that archive, the author mentioned some similarity to an aidoru who was becoming very big at the time, Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）.
The arrangement is quite reminiscent of that time going from the late 1970s to the early 1980s when it comes to aidoru music, but listening to "Aoi Suiheisen", I'm also reminded of the music of Yoshie Kashiwabara（柏原よしえ）and the vocals of perky Ikue Sakakibara（榊原郁恵）. The song, which apparently didn't even break into the Top 100 on the Oricon weeklies, was written by Kazuko Katagiri（片桐和子）and composed by Yusuke Hoguchi（穂口雄右）.
We're a few weeks into the anime season for Fall 2018 but I got to see some of the new entries yesterday. I had been expecting a more introspective lineup but there were quite a few zany ones in there, including this one whose ending theme I will be writing about tonight.
I never caught "Tiger & Bunny" in its entirety although I remember catching several minutes of one episode on Tokyo MX in my final year in Japan, and the biggest thing that caught my attention was seeing the decals of real corporations pasted on the main characters' uniforms.
Well, the same folks and company behind "Tiger & Bunny" have come up with another intriguing justice-based show called "DOUBLE DECKER! Doug & Kirill"（ダグ&キリル）. Half-sardonically, I had first assumed that the anime was about London-based trolley buses which metamorphose into heroic mecha named Doug and Kirill. Instead, there is indeed a Doug and Kirill but they are actually an initially mismatched duo of special cops on a very colourful team. I saw the first three episodes last night and "DOUBLE DECKER!" seems to be filled with shoutouts across the pop culture geek spectrum. There were tributes to cop shows such as "Hawaii Five-0", "Abunai Deka"（あぶない刑事）and "Taiyo ni Hoero!"（太陽にほえろ！）, and some hints of "X-Men", "Men In Black" and perhaps even "Strikeforce: Morituri". Heck, Episode 1 threw in a "Terminator" reference.
Plus, you got mysterious Doug looking like a young Bruce Greenwood ("Star Trek", "I, Robot", "Thirteen Days") and usually creamy-voiced seiyuu Saori Hayami（早見沙織）playing an extremely tough and sweary Seven-0 team member. My attention has been caught.
Another catchy thing? That ending theme by singer-songwriter Vickeblanka（ビッケブランカ）, "Buntline Special" which comes across as hard as a bullet from the actual gun that it's named after. Let's take that song onto an Anthem raid. It's the one theme song from yesterday's batch of anime that launched as an automatic earworm. So far, it's just been the ending credits that I could find, but I'm hopeful that a full version will hit YouTube pretty soon.
Vickeblanka, who hails from Aichi Prefecture, was born Junya Yamaike（山池純矢）and touts his influences being Elton John, Billy Joel and Michael Jackson. He released a couple of indie albums in 2014 and 2015 along with a downloadable single before making his major studio debut release in 2017, "Fearless" and two singles this year.
