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 this week's Reminiscings of Youth, I bring you a single that I first heard on FM radio one afternoon after lunch during my university years.
Level 42 had already been around for some years before "Something About You" made its premiere, and I would find out some of their earlier gems on the dance floor. I think back then, Mark King and his band were providing their share of jazz-funk, but "Something About You" was the first song by them to hit my ears. And as soon as it did, I felt that there was something about them. The song didn't sound jazzy and neither it was supremely funky; in fact, I thought it was more along the lines of synthpop with the emphasis on pop.
Coming out in September 1985, "Something About You" became my latest target to find on the airwaves to record it onto one of my haphazard Canadian Tire tapes (many people collected stamps, I collected songs from radio), and of course, I would eventually get "World Machine", the source album. The song was one of the many tunes that burrowed its way into my head and not let go, primarily because of that catchy keyboard work. However, getting "World Machine" wasn't enough for me; I just had to track down the extended remix, too.
The song did pretty well in Canada where it hit No. 13 on the RPM Singles chart and it even went all the way up to No. 4 on US Billboard's Dance Club chart. "Something About You" opened up the world of Level 42 to methrough their past songs such as "Hot Water" and "Micro-Kid" and then I would also get an even more successful album "Running in the Family" a few years later.
A couple of acts made their debut in Japan a few weeks before the arrival of "Something About You".
The first time that I had ever heard of the musical expression Vocalese was, not surprisingly, through The Manhattan Transfer's 1985 album"Vocalese". I soon learned that it was that form of jazz singing in which lyrics were crafted and grafted hand-in-glove onto original pre-existing solo instrumental performances. My first question was "So, is it like scatting?", and the answer to that was "No!" since scatting was using nonsensical wording instead of the actual words for Vocalese.
The Manhattan Transfer wasn't the first group to come up with Vocalese. According to Wikipedia, that honour goes to Eddie Jefferson and then I found out about Lambert, Hendricks & Ross among other artists who had been practicing their Vocalese before the Transfer. However, when I think of the famed quartet and their Vocalese virtuosity, I usually remember their incredible take on "Four Brothers" which came out on their 1978 album"Pastiche". Just to give credit where credit is due, though, "Four Brothers" had originally been composed by jazz saxophonist and composer Jimmy Giuffre in 1947.
Just to be able to create that stream of Vocalese and then make it sound seamless while performing at warp speed is a supreme feat, but just imagine trying to do the same thing with "Four Brothers" in Japanese. And yet, someone did try to do just that.
Almost a couple of years ago, I noted the Queen of Commercial Songs, Masae Ohno（大野方栄）, pulling off her version of "Lover, Come Back To Me" under the title of "Eccentric Person, Come Back To Me" for her 1983 debut album"Masae A La Mode". It looks like for this album, Ohno wanted to do covers for a few of the standards, and Track 1 was "Four Brothers" under the title of "For Darling". There may be no Big Band horns in this rendition but it's still plenty of jazz, and Ohno indeed takes on the big task of putting her own lyrics onto the quicksilver Giuffre melody. She does pretty well for the most part, I might add, as she dives into the pool and cuts through the water like a shark's fin, although I'm sure that she was absolutely exhausted in the recording booth.
I've also got to marvel at the lineup backing her up. Yuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）and the late Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）, who I usually see in the City Pop file, were jamming happily away on guitar and piano respectively while the members of fusion band Casiopea were also helping out. Sato took care of the arrangements for the entire album.
I remember getting the very first iteration of Sony's PlayStation in the mid-1990s. Basically, I was all for the puzzle games and the Sim City sort of software. Some of my friends, on the other hand, were more game for the dating sims which had me knitting my brows in some mystery. Me and Casanova were light-years apart in temperament and passion so I thought some of those buddies would have had much better luck with flesh-and-blood 3D folks than me, but I'll leave it at that.
My anime buddy has mentioned a supposedly legendary dating sim for the PS and other platforms called "Tokimeki Memorial"（ときめきメモリアル）, and I gather that one of the popular girls there was Shiori Fujisaki（藤崎詩織）. From what I've read on Wikipedia, she and the other characters were far more innocent on this game than some of the other more lascivious examples out there.
In any case, the seiyuu for Ms. Fujisaki was Mami Kingetsu（金月真美）who has been in the voice acting industry since the mid-1970s. However, she also began a singing career in the mid-1990s, and between 1995 and 2001, Kingetsu has released 12 singles, and up to 2015, she has also released 12 albums.
Her 10th single from December 1999 is a cover of Stardust Revue's（スターダスト・レビュー）"Twilight Avenue" which originally came out as a single back in 1983. Written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by band leader Kaname Nemoto（根本要）, Kingetsu's rendition is a soaring daytime ZARD-esque pop take compared with the sunset Margaritaville AOR feeling of the original. I'm kinda wondering whether Nemoto was actually helping out quietly with the background chorus. I'm also not sure whether her cover was ever included onto an album.
Is that Agatha Harkness in the photo? Not sure but the above is actually a shot of Roppongi during Halloween night 2009. There are plenty of areas in Tokyo which have their various drinking establishments and certainly Roppongi was one of them. Although I was never much of a drinker, I did go with the gang to Shinjuku, Shibuya, Yurakucho, Shimbashi, and yes, Roppongi for the rounds at the local izakaya or even the odd Irish pub.
I can honestly say, though, that my shadow never frequented a bar in the Yaesu area which is right by Tokyo Station, although I came fairly close with that visit to a Yurakucho hole-in-the-wall one night. And that is my segue for Hikota Aoi's（蒼彦太）3rd single from September 2014, "Yaesu no Sakaba" (Yaesu Bar). Back in 2019, I contributed an article for what was at the time, his most recent single "Udatsu"（梲）from January that year (he came out with another single in 2020).
"Yaesu no Sakaba" is an enka tune that got me right from the start with that nostalgic accordion and then the Latin guitar poured on in. Written by Kyosuke Kuni（久仁京介）and composed by Akito Yomo（四方章人）, the song is an affectionate tribute to that beloved watering hole as Aoi describes it as that locus for people from all walks of life in all sorts of stages in their lives. The melody also screams traditional and welcoming comfort through heartwarming libation.
The same songwriting duo was behind the coupling song for "Yaesu no Sakaba", "Iwashigumo"(Mackerel Sky) which literally translates as "Sardine Sky" (to each country, its own fish). This one is done a whole lot more wistfully as Aoi sings about a fellow in the big city pining about how much he wants to return to his hometown but knowing that he can't due to unknown circumstances. At this point, the titular sky may be the only link between him and the old town.
I had just written about one of Yomo's very early compositions, the very melodically different "Shiroi Kassouro"（白い滑走路）for Terumi Azuma（東てる美）all the way back in 1978. Yomo has definitely gone into more traditional music in the last several years at least.
Well, a little over 6 months must mean "fairly soon" in my addlepated head. Yeah, that's what I said when I wrote up the first article for aidoru Megumi Kawashima（川島恵）back in late December. Although she had started as the average teenybopper singer, she then decided to take on a more shibui path just around the mid-1980s and tackled the genre of enka. I wrapped up the article by writing that I would write about a duet that she did with comedian Manzo Saita（さいたまんぞう）...fairly soon.
That duet is here now. "Tokyo Country Night" is a song that Saita and Kawashima recorded together for release in March 1987. Just for information on Saita, he's a fellow who's based out of Nakano Ward, Tokyo (my final posting as an English teacher) and along with him being a comedic TV personality, he's also been a singer since 1980 and even a baseball umpire.
"Tokyo Country Night" is your typical jaunty duo-powered Mood Kayo that probably made for a popular karaoke choice back in those days which was written and composed by a singer-songwriter named Beethoven Suzuki（ベートーベン鈴木）. As for why he's named that way, even his sparse website doesn't divulge that reason, but it does identify this fellow from Ibaraki Prefecture as "a composer with a genius-level intellect in music and comedy." I'll settle for the observation that he enjoys coming up with the comical tunes.
Mind you, I don't think "Tokyo Country Night" is necessarily a comical song. It comes off as that quintessential Latin guitar Mood Kayo with Suzuki sprinkling a lot of shoutouts to various neighbourhoods in the Tokyo area among the trials and tribulations of love. Saita and Kawashima do a pretty good job with the delivery interspersed with some of that scattershot banter.
A decade later in June 1997, Saita released a cover version of "Tokyo Country Night" under the new title of "Ahh, Tokyo Country Night"（ああ東京カントリーナイト）as a solo song with only a slight difference in the arrangement (maybe more guitar). It's still Mood Kayo but this time, the lyrics were changed by Mitchi Dobashi*（ミッチー土槁）and two different versions for the train fans: the JR version and the private railway version. Apparently, it was all about the major stations in the area.
*Couldn't find a confirmed pronunciation of the last name and even Jisho.org couldn't rustle up anything.
Welcome to June! We're looking forward to some more summery weather but some rain, too, since we were a little dry last month. Of course, some reopening from the pandemic will also be happily appreciated.
From that title, "Mizu no Naka no Knife" (Knife in the Water) reads as something far more ominous than it really is. This track by Miyuki Kosaka（香坂みゆき）from her penultimate album"Nouvelle Adresse" (sic) released in October 1987 is actually quite mellow. Written by Yumi Yoshimoto（吉元由美）and composed by Hitoshi Haba（羽場仁志）, the song sounds like the type of music that I was hearing from a number of female singer-songwriters such as Miki Imai（今井美樹）and Midori Karashima（辛島美登里）in the late 1980s to early 1990s. It's the sort of song that I would probably hear over the speakers in some sort of peaceful café in the neighbourhood.
Hopefully, the only knife involved here is the one slicing out a wedge of cheesecake or apple pie in that café. Incidentally, I wouldn't mind seeing those opening up again really soon.
Man, this has been the most difficult Creator article and this has been the most difficult Author's Picks article that I've ever written...in a good way, of course. Ryuichi Sakamoto has been a music producer, musician, composer and arranger for so long and for so many other artists that his breadth of work is simply too huge to cover adequately, and I'm not going to pretend that I can even try to do that (in fact, a list of his works needed a separate page on J-Wiki). Therefore, I will take the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup approach and merge the Creator and Author's Picks here for this one article.
On top of that, that list is so big that I have decided to narrow things down by just including my very favourite songs (and yup, most of them are on the technopop side) by the Tokyo-born music man, and those are creations that he has provided other singers. Therefore, none of his Yellow Magic Orchestra or his solo material are included. Even so, I had to cram the Labels section to the 20-item limit so I couldn't even include all of the genres that he has dabbled in, but perhaps I can do so here: along with the Pop that I could squeeze in on the side, there are techno, New Wave, Latin, and City Pop among others. He's also been known to have helped in the formation of genres such as hip-hop and electro but otherwise, you can get the full biography at Wikipedia.
Finally, the entries that I've given here are ones that already have representation on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", so the usual links will be present. However, some time in the next little while, I hope to get a second part of my tribute to The Professor up on the blog which will cover those songs of his that I have yet to get acquainted with.
This is a Sakamoto instrumental but it was included on his YMO bandmate Takahashi's（高橋幸宏）solo "Saravah!" album. With "Elastic Dummy", I think about my favourite salad that I bought from convenience stores such as Lawson and 7/11 with all sorts of bright and leafy vegetables with the much-vaunted protein of chicken chunks and a spicy-sweet dressing. In other words, "Elastic Dummy" has got everything of nutritious urban contemporary value: disco, detective drama soundtrack, City Pop, jazz, samba, technopop noodling, Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）, Minako Yoshida（吉田美奈子）and perhaps even a look into early 2000s J-R&B. Y'know, I wouldn't mind hearing this ball of fun (how much coffee did The Professor have when he created this one?!) being played over some ending credit sequence for a movie.
A track from Rajie's 1979"Quatre" album, Sakamoto created this funky late 1970s Bee Gees-esque tune along with Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）. It's got the technopop in there, too, but it's not merely a YMO song with Rajie as the featured guest vocalist. The singer is leading the way here with her high and floaty voice about the "Nantonaku Crystal" lifestyle in the big city.
Choosing one from the Ohnuki/Sakamoto file was quite the task considering that the two had worked together on oodles of material for several years from the late 70s well into the 1980s. Ultimately, though, I had to go with "Decade Night" from "Romantique", Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）1980 album and the LP that introduced a new direction for the singer-songwriter. Sakamoto produced "Romantique" and a majority of its tracks including the enigmatically attractive and quirky "Decade Night" that simultaneously reminds me of New Wave, avant-garde and a 1960s Hollywood romance soundtrack.
Sakamoto was applying that technopop touch through a number of genres at that particular time, so he probably figured why not do the same to the kiddies' song. And so he arranged Ryoichi Ito's（伊藤良一）"Computer Obaachan" about one cool senior citizen as a popular song on NHK's "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた） series.
The Professor produced Hiromi Go's（郷ひろみ）album"Hiromi-kyo no Hanzai" and he composed the unique breezy and futuristic-feeling title track with Miyuki Nakajima's（中島みゆき）lyrics. Go's resigned voiceovers and Sakamoto's fleet-footed synthpop might bring images of "Blade Runner" but I can't help but think that the actual setting for the song is much more of a crystalline utopia.
If Sakamoto can provide a catchy technopop tune for a former aidoru of the 1970s, then he can do the same thing for a singer who played a fictional aidoru of the future from a beloved anime franchise. Indeed, I'm talking about Mari Iijima（飯島真理）and her creation of "Blueberry Jam" from the 1983 "Rosé" album. The song is supremely bouncy like an aidoru tune but it's got that Sakamoto sheen and I can even imagine Lynn Minmay singing that one on the SDF-1.
As much as I wanted to put up a cover of this song by Miki Imai（今井美樹）, I think only the original version as partially provided at iTunes displays the Sakamoto-ness of this mix of synthpop and bossa nova. I mean, up to the time that I got her 1994 album"A Place in the Sun", I had never thought a melding of these two genres was possible but I was happily proven wrong. "Martinique no Kaze" is easily my favourite track on the album because of this fusion, Imai's vocals and Sakamoto's piano solo.
My final entry for earworm Sakamoto goodness is Miki Nakatani's（中谷美紀）"Kinokhronika" from her "cure" album. At this point, it was verging on the 20th anniversary of the formation of YMO, but Sakamoto could still come up with the techno dance beats. Just imagine him holding court in the clubs. If I need an energy boost, I sometimes listen to this one.
As mentioned all the way up at the top, these examples are just a fraction of what Sakamoto has done, and it certainly looks like I've only scratched the surface of what I know of his works. However, these eight songs by the Professor are among my favourites, but I've caught a glimpse of some of these other Sakamoto works that have been unknown to me and I'll feature them in a second tribute in the near future.
