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.
Gonna finish my quartet of songs tonight with another urban contemporary number from the 1980s.
Yoko Maeno's（前野曜子）"Winelight" is a cover of the title track from Grover Washington Jr.'s 1980 studio album. Originally created by William Eaton, Washington's "Winelight" is a great chance to hear the saxophonist getting to have his generous portions of Beef Wellington...in a musical sense, of course. As for Maeno's cover, this was included on her final album released in 1982, "Twilight". The singer does a great job as well with those Japanese and English lyrics, although I couldn't track down who provided the Japanese (is this a job for Daemonskald?) with a nice funky group of musicians behind her.
To finish off, "Winelight" is a fine title track but the album also has a far more famous and beloved song with Bill Withers providing his vocals. And Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）managed to sing a cover of this one. Have a good weekend!
Nope, this one isn't from "Mint", but from the Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）album coming afterwards, "Lotus no Kajitsu"（ロートスの果実...Lotus Fruit）, released in July 1984.
I've heard my share of heartbreak songs over the past several days, so it's nice when I can cover the odd happy romance once in a while. Previously, I'd assumed with a title of "Cloudy na Gogo"(Cloudy Afternoon), this would be another ballad about a lonely person sighing by a raindrop-spattered window as he/she wonders what happened to the love. Instead it looks like Nakahara's creation is just about a couple spending a lovely and loving time within the confines of their urban apartment while the clouds open up on the city. Never a bad thing, that.
That familiar piano that comes in and out puts "Cloudy na Gogo" in good ol' City Pop territory, and of course, Nakahara is one of my princesses of the genre, but there are also those strings and the arrangement sometimes that kinda steals this mid-tempo tune into simply romantic pop balladry. But by the end, City Pop and AOR come up with one of their own by throwing in that saxophone. It's a nice way to end "Lotus no Kajitsu".
For all you slice-of-life anime fans, remember "Shirokuma Cafe"（しろくまカフェ）from 2012? That has been one of my favourite shows since coming back to Canada, and it is the mellow anime response to the NBC long-running sitcom "Cheers" with its mix of humans and animals interacting with each other.
Well, as one YouTube commenter said it, he found the anime adaptation of "The Office". Indeed, both the anime buddy and I found it too for this season's crop, and that would be "Africa no Salaryman"（アフリカのサラリーマン...African Office Worker）. Again, we've got a whole herd of anthropomorphized animals getting in all sorts of shenanigans in and outside of the corporation. The humour here is wacky compared with the gentler if quirky version in "Shirokuma Cafe".
Not surprisingly then, the opening theme "Soul Flag" is good, loud and in-your-ears. It's performed by seiyuu Hiro Shimono（下野紘）as the oft-trouble-making toucan Ohashi (I hear he has a cousin in America who works for Kellogg's). His over-the-top performance comes off his other crazy stint as Zenitsu, one of the demon hunters in "Kimetsu no Yaiba"（鬼滅の刃）, who should never be allowed to get near any Red Bull.
As I was listening to "Soul Flag" in the opening credits, that intro had me wondering if lyricist RUCCA and composer Ryo Takahashi（高橋諒）had been channeling their inner Van Halen or some other 80s rock band when they were coming up with the song. Speaking of shoutouts, those opening credits had Lion, Ohashi and Tokage dancing some steps which had become quite the thing last year, thanks to DA PUMP's"U.S.A.".
Couldn't find the full version of the ending theme, so I will go with the actual ending credits. "White Collar Elegy" by Lion himself, aka Akio Otsuka（大塚明夫）, was written by veteran lyricist Goro Matsui（松井五郎）and composed by Kodai Akiba（秋葉広大）as a calming ballad when compared to "Soul Flag". It goes well with the fading scenes of the three main characters going about a normal day and late into the night at the office. I think that it's got that singing-by-the-campfire atmosphere around it as Lion strums on the guitar.
March 16 2020: Well, now I did find the full version.
For any Japanese TV news watcher in the last couple of decades of the 20th century, there was the program "News Station"（ニュースステーション）on TV Asahi which starred the somewhat avuncular host/tarento Hiroshi Kume（久米宏）. Before that, he had been the longtime co-host of the music rankings show "The Best 10" alongside Tetsuko Kuroyanagi（黒柳徹子）. Both of them were known for their rapid-fire speaking style.
I didn't watch "News Station" all that much since when the 10 o'clock hour came about, I had already caught NHK's 9 o'clock news and I really preferred to catch some variety show instead of overdosing on the news on my ancient antenna TV. Strangely enough, the thing that I remembered most for "News Station" aside from Kume was the theme song.
And yet, I found out that "News Station" during its 19-year run had a number of theme songs easing their way into the broadcast. However, the one tune that I have always remembered and that I'd assumed was the one and only theme was its third version (out of the ten that came out) which had a four-year stint between 1989 and 1993. Called appropriately enough "Good Evening", this was created by composer and jazz saxophonist Toshiyuki Honda（本多俊之）.
The thing that got me hooked on "Good Evening" was that rat-a-tat style that introduced the song. That mix of synthesizers and tight snap on the snares got my attention, and now that I've given a listen to the whole thing, "Good Evening" seems to be all about a circus-like atmosphere surrounding something as serious as the evening news. Perhaps it was Honda's own interpretation of the old-style newsroom with telephones ringing off the hook, editors barking orders and typewriters clacking away at warp speed. Quite the fun ride.
Apparently one night, Honda and his band showed up to do "Good Evening" live right in front of Kume and company. The one thing that I noticed was the list of musicians backing him up underneath the YouTube video. One of the ladies on percussion was Mishio Ogawa（小川美潮）who had been the lead vocalist for the band Chakra in the early 1980s.
"Good Evening" was the theme that lasted the longest at 4 years and 3 months, and Honda would then provide a new theme for "News Station" right after called "Harmony" whose stint would go on for 3.5 years.
As much as my image of the late legendary Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）has been that of the grande dame of kayo, alternately wearing a kimono or a sparkly jazzy dress, I was surprised to find out that she did have her time of "getting down", so to speak. And I think that was in the late 1960s when she started getting hep with mini-skirts and go-go boots in her performance of "Makkana Taiyo"（真赤な太陽）. It was quite the eye-opener seeing her perform this one on TV via YouTube.
Well, it looks like she wanted to keep the good times (rock n') rollin' since the year following that massive hit "Makkana Taiyo", Misora retained the same two songwriters, lyricist Osamu Yoshioka（吉岡治）and composer/jazz tenor sax player Nobuo Hara（原信夫）, to create "Murasaki no Yoake" (Purple Sunrise) in January 1968.
With a mix of kayo and a beat similar to the one used by Group Sounds bands, "Murasaki no Yoake" has quite the similarity with "Makkana Taiyo". Not sure how it did on the embryonic Oricon charts; maybe not as well as the first song since of that similarity but it's still intriguing to watch the Queen of Kayo Kyoku shimmy.
Recently, I found this YouTube channel of kayo called abapon yamada which consists a lot of videos which contain 10 songs each by a certain famous songwriter. It's been quite interesting for taking a look for a variety of enka, Mood Kayo and pop tunes.
One such video is in tribute to the late composer Minoru Endo（遠藤実）, who I was surprised to find out had one of his compositions released as late as April 2008. This is "Kibou no Uta" (Song of Hope) as performed by enka singer Takeshi Kitayama（北山たけし）.
(cover version)
The lyrics by Takashi Taka（たかたかし）relate the story of a couple breaking up for whatever reason but with them deciding to take the high road and resolving to remember the fun times before parting for good. Think of it as the Japanese version of Rick and Ilsa's story in "Casablanca"...or perhaps it should be Kamakura. In any case, it's another example of the kayo trope of smiling through the tears through Endo's jaunty melody.
"Kibou no Uta" got as high as No. 28 on Oricon. This may have been one of Endo's final songs since in December 2008, he would pass away at the age of 76.
Because I hadn't been aware of who singer-songwriter Mioko Yamaguchi（山口美央子）was until this blog was well under way, I didn't know about her contributions to Yuki Saito's（斉藤由貴）10th album "LOVE" from 1991 when I bought the audiotape version decades ago.
(6:00)
I've now further found out that the Yamaguchi/Saito connection went back even further when the two of them worked together as composer and lyricist respectively on a track from the latter's 6th album"PANT" released in March 1988. The song, "Owari no Kehai" (The Sign of the End) was the lead track and was even used for the above NEC commercial featuring Saito herself. "PANT", by the way, peaked at No. 4 on Oricon.
"Owari no Kehai" is about the end of romance and yet Yamaguchi's melody sounds very innocent and child-like, further enhanced by Saito's near-whispery vocals. The overall feeling is of fragility as if Saito is representing someone all rolled up into a fetal position after having to go through a breakup that she hadn't wanted at all. At some points, the lass' voice almost threatens to vaporize, perhaps triggering the listener to want to pat her head and go "There, there...plenty of other fish in the sea". Then, there is the melancholy piano which takes up the last minute of the song that finishes off the effect; if I were a video director, the camera would be pulling away from Saito in that ball as the room she is gets bigger and bigger making her look even lonelier.
(excerpt only at 8:24)
What got me to write about the song in the first place was due to the fact that Yamaguchi had covered it in her latest album "FLOMA" which I took a look at last week. With the singer's deeper vocals and the somewhat more pensive arrangement, my image of "Owari no Kehai" here and now is that of an older version of Saito just going back through her memories of that long-ago romance with a little regret but also with more wisdom and distance.
