Taeko Ohnuki -- YAMAZAKURA

 

Considering that a lot of my focus on singer-songwriter Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）has been on her 1970s and 1980s works through her New Music, City Pop, synthpop and baroque pop creations, it's always nice when I encounter and can write about her more recent material.

Case in point: her contribution to the soundtrack of the anime motion picture, "Cider no Yō ni Kotoba ga Wakiagaru"（サイダーのように言葉が湧き上がる...Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop）. A rom-com feature starring some big seiyuu such as Natsuki Hanae（花江夏樹）and Maaya Sakamoto（坂本真綾）and actress Hana Sugisaki（杉咲花）, it was supposed to have been released last May but COVID-19, as it has for many movies, kept pushing back the release dates until it finally came out only a few weeks ago in July.

In any case, Ohnuki wrote and composed "YAMAZAKURA" (Mountain Cherry Blossoms) as this caressing love song about reminiscing when one of the characters fell head-over-heels at a live house, and how a nice walk through the cherry blossoms next spring would be just the thing. Near the end of the song, Ohnuki refers to Cherry Coke, a drink that I could find much more easily in Japan than over here in Toronto. Considering that a main character is nicknamed Cherry as a pun on his real last name, Sakura（佐倉）, I could imagine that the young lad is being symbolized as that beloved drink.

I think when it comes to Ohnuki's songs in recent times, my impression is that they have been more of the comforting tunes such as "YAMAZAKURA" with the lilting guitar and the tender piano. Of course, that's perfectly fine with me. We could use some more of that relaxing music during these times.

Yukie Sato -- Kyoto, Hatsukoi（京都、初恋）/P.S. Sabishii desu（P.S.淋しいです）

 

(from Sankei News)

Well, I'm going through the annoyances of a summer cold right now (and I'm hoping that it is merely a cold). I think that I've gone through half a box of Kleenex already.

Anyways, I'm trying to remember that day in Kyoto during our school graduation trip there in July 1981. We tried to watch the Gion Festival parade in a crowd that was three people deep from the curb in weather that would be charitably described as broiling. By the time, I returned to my room, I literally dropped on the bed and slept for a few hours. The former capital of Japan could make the current capital look like an iceberg in comparison during the summer.

Speaking of Kyoto, I found this aidoru number by Yukie Sato（佐藤雪絵）called "Kyoto, Hatsukoi" (First Love in Kyoto). Sato was another one of the many teenybopper singers who tried to hit it big in Japan only to quickly disappear, and "Kyoto, Hatsukoi" was her second single from 1988, according to her page on "Idol.ne.jp".

Written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）, composed by Hiroaki Serizawa（芦澤廣明）and arranged by Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）, the song sounds a little more old-fashioned than an aidoru tune from the late 1980s, and in fact, there are times during "Kyoto, Hatsukoi" when I thought that the singer was delving close to enka. The only other bit of information that I could get from "Idol.ne.jp" is that despite her affections for Kyoto in this tune, Sato actually hails from Maebashi, the capital of Gunma Prefecture.

The B-side is "P.S. Sabishii desu" (P.S. I'm Lonely) which was created by the same trio behind the A-side of "Kyoto, Hatsukoi". This one sounds more like the conventional aidoru ballad and I think it's here that I start to enjoy Sato's voice. One commenter for the video even posits that she sounds like the late Yukiko Okada（岡田有希子）, and I have to say that he's not wrong. Incidentally, two singles were all she wrote for Sato.

Natsu Summer -- Toki no Silhouette（時のシルエット）

 

Had a talk with Scott from "Holly Jolly X'masu" and he has just put up his latest episode on Ryoko Moriyama's（森山良子）Christmas album so feel free to take a gander at that if you want to get into that cooling mood away from the heat and humidity (and yep, it's plenty hot and humid here in Toronto...there was a huge sweat stain on the back of my shirt after returning from some errands).

Also, he brought up the topic of singer Natsu Summer（ナツ・サマー ）and it was a name that I had heard before, and sure enough, a few years ago, contributor T-cat had written about her for the first time through one of her albums, the 2017 "Hello, future day". So I decided to see what else I could find about her.

She has described herself as a City Pop Reggae artist but T-cat also mentions that with "Hello, future day", Natsu Summer's sound hasn't really confined itself to any one category. And I am in agreement with him when it comes to her July 2019 single "Toki no Silhouette" (Time Silhouette).

There really is a mix of stuff with this song. For the first few seconds, it's a mystery about how Natsu will go with the song but then the melody joins her vocals, and I immediately get hit with that push beat of reggae via piano, some neo-City Pop via the Vaporwave/Future Funk filter, a bit of synthpop, and even what sounds like a tribute to Bobby Caldwell's classic "What You Won't Do for Love". It's quite the melodic gumbo but above all that is Summer's fairly ethereal voice and a veil of synth strings.

Natsu Summer's website doesn't seem to be all that active anymore, but her accounts on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook look to be up to date. Glad that I got the reminder from Scott!

Miki Matsubara -- Sannin de Odoranai（三人で踊らない）

 

As mentioned in my last article, I got together with City Pop expert Van Paugam in a podcast earlier this afternoon to talk on some of the works of the late Miki Matsubara（松原みき）, and those included her first six albums released in the 1980s during her career. I had a chance to go through those albums and one of them was "Myself" which came out in March 1982.

Curiously enough, I don't think that I had ever chosen a track from this album for the blog before so this would indeed be fresh territory. And good territory as well since I enjoyed almost every track on "Myself". In fact, arrangement and performance of all of the tracks were done by the American fusion band Dr. Strut, a group of session musicians from both the East Coast and West Coast who formed up in 1977 to push some envelopes. They enjoyed a good deal of popularity in Japan, apparently, and so they got the gig for "Myself" and for Matsubara's previous album "-Cupid-" in 1981, Dr. Strut had been the backing band for the Side A tracks.

Track 2 is "Sannin de Odoranai" which literally translates as "Three Don't Dance" but perhaps I could posit that it means "Three's A Crowd". From what I could understand of the lyrics by Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）, one "corner" of the love triangle has a major decision to make to revert this shape back to a line segment. The music is provided by singer-songwriter in the City Pop field Issei Okamoto（岡本一生）. He and Dr. Strut create a nicely refined number with a moody intro and a fairly cheerful main melody with a touch of Latin class. There may be a painful rejection taking place but it's happening in the background of some cool music. However, there is also a sudden injection of an upbeat jazz interlude thanks to Dr. Strut's David Woodford and his honey-toned sax.

Motohiro Hata -- Nakiwarai no Episode（泣き笑いのエピソード）

 

Hope you all have had a good weekend. I was able to meet up with a couple of friends yesterday for coffee and danish for the first time in almost a year. Then, today I got to do a podcast with Van Paugam (which should be coming out sometime next weekend, I believe) on the themes of Miki Matsubara（松原みき）and City Pop in general. Some good fun today and he confided that he enjoys a good flute in a song.

And I have to say that I also enjoy a good flute as well. I guess it might be due to its frequent usage in bossa nova songs, and as you may already know, I do like that genre. There's something about its inclusion that provides some comfort and mellowness...a breath of fresh air, in a way.

Before I start making jokes about Ron Burgundy and his jazz flute, though, I will move things onto singer-songwriter Motohiro Hata's（秦基博）24th single, "Nakiwarai no Episode" (Episodes of Tears and Laughter) which was released in January 2021. I've heard the song before a few times including during his appearance on NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）some weeks ago, and it's a comforting winner because of that flute, and for that matter, there's even a bassoon in the music video!

This contemporary pop song was used as the theme for an NHK morning serial drama broadcast between November 2020 and May this year titled "Ochoyan"（おちょやん）whose main character goes through the rigors of the acting world between 1920 and 1970. According to the J-Wiki article for the song, Hata had read through the script to give him some insights before creating "Nakiwarai no Episode".

It peaked at No. 17 on Oricon and was included in his second BEST compilation, "evergreen2" which was released in March 2021. That album hit No. 11. If you're interested, you can also take a gander at another song of his that was also used as a theme song, "Himawari no Yakusoku"（ひまわりの約束）.

Ichiro Utsumi/Hachiro Kasuga/Senri and Mari Unabara -- Dontonbori Koushinkyoku（道頓堀行進曲）

 

Thanks to this blog, I've not only been able to enjoy the various types of Japanese popular music of the current times and relatively recent times but also the kayo going back way before my birth. So I'm talking about a very young Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）, Ichiro Fujiyama（藤山一郎）, etc. Part of the reason that I've been able to enjoy and appreciate some of the Japanese music spanning back to even before World War II is that I had already been getting a taste of the old orchestra pop stuff as a child.

When I was a kid, I used to watch Charlie Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy and The Little Rascals all the time on television. "The Little Rascals" was regular afternoon fare for years so as I was watching the hijinks of Spanky, Alfalfa, Buckwheat, Porky and the rest of the bunch, I heard some of that music as the soundtrack. Once in a while, the gang even held their little concerts and performances on homemade stages.

What got me remembering my childhood days today was listening to this particular song "Dontonbori Koushinkyoku" (Dontonbori March), first recorded by singer and theatre director Ichiro Utsumi（内海一郎）. Released in December 1928, as the title signifies, it's a brisk and jaunty little march composed by Seihachi Shiojiri（塩尻精八）celebrating the activity of Dontonbori, one of the most famous areas of Osaka. Right now, it's known as one of the great foodie neighbourhoods within a metropolis that has been called the stomach of Japan but even way back then, Shigejiro Hibi's（日比繁次郎）lyrics note that Dontonbori was quite the place for happy carousing. Incidentally, Hibi may have been the pseudonym of novelist Koichi Hata（畑耕一）according to some YouTube comments and other webpages, but his J-Wiki article doesn't make that perfectly clear.

Utsumi was known as a singer of jazz songs but with "Dontonbori Koushinkyoku", I'm not quite sure if this original version of the song would be placed as such. It sounds like a kayo of that time or maybe it was even the equivalent of the sweet music that had been played by orchestras in the West as a counterbalance to the so-called sinful jazz.

According to the uploader for this video, the legendary Hachiro Kasuga（春日八郎）gave his own marching band take on "Dontonbori Koushinkyoku" in an album titled "Kasuga Hachiro no Taisho Showa Hayari Uta"（春日八郎の 大正昭和はやり唄...Hachiro Kasuga's Taisho and Showa Era Popular Songs） released in 1963.

Then in 1977, the Osakan sister act comedy duo Senri and Mari Unabara（海原千里・万里）released their own cover of "Dontonbori Koushinkyoku" as a single. This version is quite a lot of fun with a playful poke at "In the Mood" in the intro before going into some swinging Dixieland jazz. The sisters had another hit tribute to their hometown through "Osaka Rhapsody"（大阪ラプソディー）the previous year.

Shin Saegusa with Day & Nights -- Namida no Tokyo（涙の東京）

 

The song "Namida no Tokyo" (Tokyo in Tears) is a pretty rollicking Group Sounds song in itself but it's the makeup of the GS band Shin Saegusa with Day & Nights（三枝伸とデイ＆ナイツ）that first caught my eye. 

For one thing, it's a pretty large band with eight members, and for another, there are two female members in Day & Nights. Of course, there have been the male-only groups such as The Spiders and The Tigers, and I've even heard of the more obscure female Group Sounds bands which have yet to be covered on the blog. But I had never heard of a GS outfit that had both men and women...until Saegusa with his Day & Nights.

They debuted with the February 1967 "Namida no Tokyo", a GS-appropriate twangy song about how cruel the big city can be in the world of love. It was written and composed by leader Saegusa who was behind most of their songs as the songwriter, and although the female members just come in here for this particular song with the background chorus, they do add to the high end of the harmonies to the extent that I'm left wondering about why couldn't there have been more mixed GS groups. Maybe there were but at this time, I only know about Day & Nights. I'm also curious as to whether the women had their time as lead vocalists.

Not much information is available for the group although the Showa Pops Encyclopedia shows that the group only released four singles up to the following year in 1968. J-Wiki has an article on one of the members, guitarist Shuu Tanaka（田中収）who would later become the leader and vocalist of his own band, the so-called New Adult Music group Nyc Nyusa（ニック・ニューサ）that debuted with "Sachiko"（サチコ）in 1981. Earlier on, Tanaka has also had his stint producing entertainers such as Finger Five.