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.
I could only imagine what it was like during the Bubble Era in Japan during the mid to late 1980s. Mind you, I did get a taste of what the nation was like during that Toronto Japanese Language School graduation trip in the summer of 1981 but certainly at my age at that time, I wasn't getting into any nightclubs, discos or hostess establishments. Perhaps even before the Bubble, the yen was flowing like champagne.🍸
The Bubble Era is what I hear from Hideyo Morimoto's（森本英世）B-side, "Uwaki nara Ii wa"(I'm Up for an Affair, Darling), for his 1985 single"Hotel"（ホテル）. Seeing those two titles on opposite sides of the 45", I can definitely envisage some heavy romancing and liberal spending of cash here. It's some of that Latin-tinged Mood Kayo with the contemporary addition of a whining electric guitar. The prolific Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）was the lyricist while veteran Koichi Morita（森田公一）composed the melody, with Koji Ryuzaki（竜崎孝路）providing the snappy arrangement.
Morimoto was born Hiroshi Izutani（泉谷廣）in Sakai City, Metropolitan Osaka in January 1949, and it appears that he went on the Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）route of stage names after his debut in show business from 1965. He was first known as Hiroshi Nitta（新田洋）and then went with Ryuji Dai（大竜二）for a time before settling on Hideyo Morimoto in 1971. In 1973, he joined the Mood Kayo group Toshi Ito and Happy & Blue（敏いとうとハッピー＆ブルー）where he enjoyed success with their hits for about a decade, before he decided to go solo again in 1983. Since then, he's been releasing singles up to 2017.
I realize that it's a day early for Reminiscings of Youth but on hearing yesterday about the passing of The Rolling Stones' drummer, Charlie Watts (1941-2021), I felt that I should have put something up as soon as possible. Now, I was never a Rolling Stones fan but their presence in popular culture was so great that even as a non-fan, at least some of their songs were very well known to me such as "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash", and I knew about the outsized personalities of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Often when I compare 80s aidoru superstarsSeiko Matsuda（松田聖子）and Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）, I use the analogy of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as respectively applied to them.
(Video from the Drum Channel)
My lone Rolling Stones anecdote comes from years back when I was teaching at the second school during my 1994-2011 time in the Kanto region. One Monday, I had to do a series of level checks for young employees at the swanky Four Seasons Hotel in Tokyo not too far away from Japan's equivalent of The Pentagon. Once I was finished, I was given a pleasant afternoon tea service as part of their gratitude and I had a nice conversation with the hotel manager which led to some of the famous stars that have stayed at the Four Seasons. When he told me that The Rolling Stones had stayed there, his eyes rolled so hard in his head that their pupils could have bulged out the back of it. Let's say that they weren't the cleanest or the most button-down of guests.
And yet, I couldn't have imagined that Charlie Watts would have been involved in any of the debauchery (although I came to know about his vices in the 1980s). When I first saw him on television in the 70s or 80s, he already looked old to me compared to Mick and the others. Watts' hair was either already gray or graying. I don't know anything about his drumming philosophy or style but he always struck me as being the stoic parental anchor behind those drums. He appeared well-grounded and very dapper in his suits, and I think that he would have been the most approachable Stone.
For this ROY article, I've gone with one of their first hits, "Paint It Black" which was released as a single in May 1966. It's one of the Stones' songs that I know very well and even my anime buddy who has love for electric guitars has played "Paint It Black" constantly as part of his practice regime. Not being too cognizant about the Stones and their work, as I've mentioned above, listening to "Paint It Black", which was created by Jagger and Richards, there was the familiar melody with the sitar which I would find out on Wikipedia was the first time that a song with such an instrument would become a No. 1 hit. I also discovered that "Paint It Black" dealt with a person's earth-shattering loss and how he saw the world during that time of mourning.
Covers of "Paint It Black" have been done over and over in the decades since the song's initial success, and that includes Japanese artists. Given the direct translation of "Kuroku Nure!"（黒くぬれ!）, rockers such as RC Succession（RCサクセション）and Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）have given the Stones' classic their own take. RC Succession, led by the late Kiyoshiro Imawano（忌野清志郎）, is performing the song above although I couldn't find out who had provided the Japanese lyrics.
Now, what was being released in May 1966 in Japan according to Showa Pops?
Ooh, boy. I think that we broke some temperature records today and we may even top those by tomorrow afternoon. The fan and the air conditioner have been pulling off some double duty today and I figure that before I get out of bed tomorrow morning, I may turn on the fan for an hour or so. It rather feels like being back in Ichikawa during the summer but I know that things were even hotter and stickier at night over there.
Well, I figure that I can post a somewhat more cooling article tonight before hitting the shower and bed. Therefore, I'm going to go with Sachiko Kumagai's（熊谷幸子）"Koi no Iro" (Colour of Love). When I first heard her debut single from June 1992, I couldn't help but sense the Yuming-ness of the song, and sure enough, Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, Yuming's（ユーミン）husband, was behind the lyrics under the pseudonym Mica Project（マイカプロジェクト）and he also co-arranged everything with Kumagai herself. Kumagai was also responsible for the basic melody.
It's not just the mellow melody but the use of those pan flute synths and the gentle piano that worked as the equivalent of a Japanese wind chime. The only thing missing is a tall glass of Calpis! "Koi no Iro" was also a track on Kumagai's debut album"Art of Dreams" which was released in September 1992. The album also contains her 2nd single"Mirai wa Kimi no Mono"（未来はきみのもの）which I wrote about back in early 2018. Anyways, I'm going ahead to peel off my clothes to head into a shower.
It's been a while since I've seen Mako Ishino（石野真子）. Being the late 1970s aidoruand then going on to a career in acting and appearing as a tarento, I also have to realize that she also made a transition into straight pop going into the 1980s. Although a lot of folks on this side of the Pacific, which includes orthodontists, will not agree with me here, she was also known for having one of the cuter smiles due to her yaeba（八重歯）or what we would call a snaggle-toothed smile. Since then, Ishino has had that corrected.
Anyways, I have found this track from her October 1985 album"Saffron"（サフラン）called "Boushi" (The Hat). Even though I could find the lyrics by Masumi Kawamura（川村真澄）, I still couldn't quite understand them so I gather that this was more of an image-laden dreamscape that was being portrayed. It would seem that Mako-chan has found herself in a café and she takes notice of an enigmatic figure under a hat, rakishly slanted over the man's head.
The composer for "Boushi" was none other than keyboardist extraordinaire Hiroshi Sato（佐藤博）, the man behind the City Pop/J-AOR classic "Awakening", and I'm pretty sure that he's also the one behind the keyboards in this particular song. His seemingly delicate playing (along with Ishino's vocals) also adds to the dream-like quality of "Boushi". It's kinda like the equivalent of a cup of chamomile tea.
Well...just when I thought things were starting to quieten down a tad in Marvel Land (haven't seen "What If?" yet) before "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" makes its premiere next month, out comes not only the final trailer for "Eternals" but also "Spider-Man: No Way Home". Man, Marvel is really pushing the whole multiverse thing now.
In any case, in a similar way to how "Captain America: Civil War" looked like "Avengers 2.5", this latest Spidey movie featuring Tom Holland is making me wonder if this is "Doctor Strange 1.5". There's plenty of bang for the buck here and I'm sure that just like "Avengers: Endgame", there is a lot in this movie that is not being shown in the trailer, although we get to see an old welcome face again at the end.
Now going back further in the "Spider-Man" lore, earlier in the spring, I had devoted one of my ROY articles to the finger-snapping theme song for the original "Spider-Man" cartoon series from the 1960s, and as such, I related my memories of watching that series. Since then, I had heard that somehow Marvel gave permission for someone in Japan to create a manga series (can someone confirm?), I believe, and then came an actual tokusatsu show in the late 1970s.
Yup, Toei Company was allowed to produce a one-season series of Japan's own "Spider-Man" spanning a year between May 1978 and March 1979 according to the Wikipedia article. The iconic suit was indeed worn but that was about it for similarities. The hero wasn't photo-shooting Peter Parker but motorcycle-racing Takuya Yamashiro（山城拓也）, and this time, he even had a ship called Marveller (ahem) which could transform into the robot Leopardon. Plus, like any tokusatsu hero, this Spider-Man was now battling alien enemy threats to Earth all on his lonesome.
YEAH! YEAH! YEAH! WOW! I'll be honest here and say that the opening theme for the Japanese "Spider-Man" won't ever eclipse the original jazzy theme song by Paul Francis Webster and Bob Harris, especially after hearing Michael Bublé's take on it. Still, "Kakero! Spider-Man" (Run! Spider-Man) has that heroic and disco tokusatsu esthetic complete with syn-drums galore. The singer behind it is Yuuki Hide（ヒデ夕木）, someone that I have known for his joint recording with Kotaro Asa（朝コータロー）and Singers Three（シンガーズ・スリー）of the folk singalong and commercial jingle "Hitachi no Ki"（日立の樹）back in 1973. This time, though, Hide is putting more of his growliness into the theme. Chuumei Watanabe（渡辺宙明）was behind the music with Tohru Hirayama（平山亨）on words under the name of Saburo Yatsude（八手三郎）, a collective pseudonym used by a number of Toei producers.
To bring things full circle, Diandra Ross, in a November 2019article for the "Screen Rant" website, stated that Yamashiro and Leopardon will make their debut in the Marvel universe when the sequel to "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" (2018) comes out late next year. Who knows? Maybe they'll even work side-by-side with Holland, Garfield and Maguire. Multiverses are just that unpredictable.
April 28, 2022: I've written about the ending theme!
It was just last week that I encountered this compilation of Neo-City Pop tunes from uploader Tone by Gridge, and the first song simply grabbed me. The track is titled "Staying in the Groove" and the band is ALI. Man, does it contain a number of styles including funk, jazz, soul and hip-hop, and the whole effect reminds me of what Jamiroquai was doing back in the late 1990s.
Wow! It's just like there's a party on my screen and everyone's invited. "Staying in the Groove" was the third digital download single by Shibuya-born outfit ALI from April 2019, and it sounds like the ideal theme song for a night out in the Youth Mecca of Japan itself. It's cool and supremely busy as if it's intentionally pushing you to run all over the neighbourhood from the famous Shibuya Crossing, up and down Spain-zaka, to the Shibuya 109 building...and enjoy it. Good golly...I think that I can even pick up on a little Stevie Wonder in there as well.
I do love that video, too. The band is basically serenading some young women who aren't sure what to do for their evening, but then gradually get drawn into ALI's dance party. Sounds like a typical Friday night in Shibuya. Plus, some of those dancing scenes remind me of that Gap commercial from over twenty years ago.
To give some background on ALI, the name is an acronym which stands for ALIEN LIBERTY INTERNATIONAL. Apparently, it took over a year for the band to come up with that name, but when a couple of members saw the tribute to Muhammad Ali after his passing on television one day in 2016, the decision was finally made. Up to this May, ALI consisted of vocalist Leo, guitarist Cesar, bassist Luthfi, saxophonist Yu, keyboardist Jin and percussionist Alex. The band has dabbled into the genres of hip-hop, house, blues rock, soul, reggae and jazz-funk according to their J-Wiki profile.
I also found out that ALI is also on indefinite hiatus as of May 2021, since one of their currently very former members, drummer Kahadio was indicted on fraud charges along with some accomplices. Supposedly also in penance, the band has taken down all of their songs from YouTube and other platforms, but their fans are still holding the torch for them by bringing back some of those songs. Certainly, I would be interested in seeing them come back someday. Until then, I will be happy to check out some more of their past work.
Not quite a month ago, I put up an article talking about J-AOR crooner Junichi Inagaki's（稲垣潤一）6th BEST compilation album from December 1990, "TRANSIT". Because of the two discs containing oodles of his past hits, I decided then to focus on the first disc for that article, and as such, today we'll be taking a look at some of his stuff from Disc 2. As was the case with Disc 1, there are a few tracks here that I've covered in individual articles and I'll probably be leaving a few more here for their own articles in the future.
To be honest, when I first listened to "Ai no Super Magic" (Love is the Super Magic), I was caught a bit off-guard by that opening salvo of the title but when I got used to that particular greeting, I found the song pretty comfortable with that hint of Caribbean and Bacharach. The songwriting team of lyricist Kazumi Yasui（安井かずみ）and composer Kazuhiko Kato（加藤和彦）was responsible for this non-single track that was originally included in Inagaki's 6th studio album"Realistic" from March 1986. The album was a No. 1 hit for the singer and ended up as the No. 16 album of the year.
Inagaki's 7th album was also another No. 1 hit, "Mind Note" from March 1987 and it begat the reassuring love ballad "Toki wo Koete" (Beyond Time). Copywriter Yoshiaki Sagara（さがらよしあき）along with Hiroshi Shigemi（重実博）provided the lyrics about being there for someone during the hard times although I get the impression that there is a one-sided love thing about it all. Actress-turned-singer/songwriter MAYUMI came up with the perfectly AOR romantic melody which fits Inagaki to a tee.
Gotta be with my girl! That's the message from Inagaki's "Kimi ni Aitai Gogo" (The Afternoon I Want to See You), a track from his April 1989 9th album"Heart & Soul". Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）wrote the words about a fellow who's barely enduring the weekdays that he has to go through before being able to see the girlfriend for a weekend of dining, driving and loving. Once again, MAYUMI was behind the music here which has the tropical feeling but also has that unmistakable sense of either Steely Dan or the Doobie Brothers.
I chose "Stay With Me" just to see how many Miki Matsubara（松原みき）fans would perk up, but although Inagaki indeed covered the Matsubara classic years later, this first "Stay With Me" is a wholly different animal. As another track on "Heart & Soul", this was once again written by the aforementioned Akimoto and composed by Junichi Kawauchi（河内淳一）, and though this song won't have anyone forgetting that other "Stay With Me", this Inagaki original is pleasant enough with some hints of Motown. I probably would have preferred some horns over the synthesizers, though.
My final song for the article is Inagaki's 18th single"Shine On Me", a very uptempo and bright-sounding tune released in March 1990. Y'know, I'd always thought that the singer had the demeanor of a button-down mid-level manager in a huge corporation, and maybe the person who came up with the music video for "Shine On Me" thought the same as well. Inagaki looks perfect as a corporate kacho in that open-format office, but of course, he's also fine behind the mike to perform the song which was written and composed by songwriter Tatsuto Kuwamura（桑村達人）. The song was also placed in Inagaki's April 1990 album"Self Portrait".
Following the listen to Disc 2, my general impression is that Inagaki gradually shed some of that Japanese City Pop as the 80s came to and end, and went into a more West Coast pop direction although I don't think that he strayed far from his AOR roots. He will always be my Mr. Relaxation of J-Pop!
