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.
Another pleasant surprise from a singer that I hadn't heard of before, Mutsumi Inoue's（井上睦都実）"Nitamono Doushi" (Kindred Spirits) hails from her third and final full studio album"Shiawase na Denim"（幸せなデニム...Happy Denim） from July 1994. For some reason, the album has been categorized as an aidoru creation according to its J-Wiki article, and though I know that I'm just going with this one track, I don't know whether Inoue would be considered a teenybopper singer, at least for "Shiawase na Denim".
"Nitamono Doushi" is a pretty polished summer pop song in my opinion and Inoue shares some vocal qualities with Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）although I don't know whether the former has that boomer quality like the latter. There's also a hint of some West Coast AOR through the keyboards and the wailing electric guitar. "Nitamono Doushi" does have that contemporary 90s sheen but overall I believe that it could almost have been lifted straight from the decade before. Inoue herself wrote the lyrics and she was backed up some pretty solid songwriters as well with Akito Kitayose（片寄明人）from the band GREAT 3 handling the melody and Tatsuya Nishiwaki（西脇辰弥）from the amazing one-and-done group PAZZ being responsible for the smooth arrangement of this particular song as well as the rest of "Shiawase na Denim".
Inoue hails from Kumamoto Prefecture but was also raised in Fukuoka Prefecture, and along with her jobs of being a singer and a lyricist, she was also a model. In addition to those four studio albums, she released five singles between 1992 and 1994 and three mini-albums up to 2001. Finally, Inoue has provided lyrics for songs recorded by singers including Hitomi Shimatani（島谷ひとみ）, Hikaru Nishida（西田ひかる）and Satoshi Ikeda（池田聡）.
First off, I would love to know where that café is. Secondly, that must have been one laid-back video shoot. Capsule vocalist Toshiko Koshijima（こしじまとしこ）does her singing in that Pan Am flight attendant outfit with an orange fetish and then she can sit down for a bit of lunch with whom I assume is her partner and songwriter Yasutaka Nakata（中田ヤスタカ）. But then again, it was all about the breezy life in the early years of the duo, wasn't it?
The last time I wrote about capsule was about 2 1/ 2 months ago in mid-June with their most recent production "Hikari no Disco"（ひかりのディスコ）, a tribute to those 1980s and Vaporwave. Well, I'm heading back to February 2004, when capsule was more about the Shibuya-kei rather than the EDM. I have here their 7th single"Retro Memory".
Let's bring out those martini glasses, shall we? Naturally written and composed by Nakata, "Retro Memory" has all of that wonderfully swinging French jazz and Koshijima's kittenish vocals to take us on that nostalgia trip. The vocalist is giving her thanks and farewells to all those old lovely memories before heading back to the present. However, there doesn't seem to be anything maudlin here. Everyone had their fun time but all good things must come to an end and all that, and there are no regrets. Head back home with a skip.
"Retro Memory" hit No. 50 on Oricon and the song was also a part of capsule's first BEST album"Flash Best" which came out in August 2009. It hit No. 7 on the charts.
Sheepish J-Canuck here. Sheepish because up to now, the only article written up on eclectic singer-songwriter Mimori Yusa（遊佐未森）was February 2013 when nikala contributed Yusa's "Kureteyuku Sora wa" (暮れてゆく空は). Nikala herself mentioned in that article that "...Yusa only enjoyed mild popularity, since her music and lyrics were considered eccentric by mass audiences". And yet, there was a fairly sizable flood of fresh unusual acts coming out in the final few years of the 1980s when she debuted such as PSY-S, Tama and Jitterin' Jinn, and I've liked all those and more. So allow me to rectify.
At the end of her article, nikala also introduced "Chizu wo Kudasai" (地図をください...A Map, Please) which was Yusa's 3rd single from February 1989. Well, I have the coupling song from that single, "Hoshikuzu no Platz"(Stardust Bus Stop), and the pop melody by Takafumi Sotoma（外間隆史）was probably like a breath of fresh air for those listeners who were perhaps getting a tad tired of all of the heavy synthesizers and electric guitars at that time. Both Yusa's vocals and the arrangement are very organic and airy for a lack of better terms.
The lyrics by Junko Kudo（工藤順子）seem to relate the beginning of a fantastical trip to isekai through the usual route of an attic with a mysterious trunk...leading to a magical bus stop(?), and Yusa is trying to invite us all on the voyage. I gather that the video above of her performing "Hoshikuzu no Platz" was from the same NHK program that featured "Chizu wo Kudasai" as shown in nikala's video, and I think that the whole setup including Yusa's outfit is very reminiscent of PSY-S' presentation, although again anything electronic is very much subdued.
I figured that for a song with this title, Pikachu would fit the thumbnail bill.
Well, for a blistering Hump Day today, I think something like a relaxing 1970s New Music song would be appropriate to help in some cooling down. Therefore, why not go with "Fuwa Fuwa WOW WOW"(Fluffy Fluffy WOW WOW), a footloose and fancy-free tune from Seri Ishikawa（石川せり）via her January 1976 sophomore album, "Tokidoki Watashi wa..."（ときどき私は…Sometimes I...）?
With lyrics by Ranbo Minami（みなみらんぼう）, music by Yasuo Higuchi（樋口康雄）and jazzy arrangement by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）, "Fuwa Fuwa WOW WOW" is a truly short song at a little over 2 1/2 minutes, but considering how the protagonist simply desires a light and happy life, I gather that extending it any longer could have risked adding a little too much gravitas. There's some of that skippy piano, fleet-footed Latin guitar and a bluesy saxophone contributing to the fun. Still, the song, and the album for that matter, has quite the pedigree behind it in terms of musicians. Sugar Babe（シュガーベイブ）and Singers Three（ シンガーズ・スリー）are helping out on backing vocals, Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）is on bass, and then there are Akiko Yano（矢野顕子）and Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）on the keyboards. The album, which peaked at No. 34 on the Oricon chart, also has Ishikawa's "Hitori Shibai"（ひとり芝居）which I wrote about back in 2018.
A single version of "Fuwa Fuwa WOW WOW" was released a few months later in April and in place of the jazz, a bit of progressive rock seems to have seeped into the arrangement. It's still the same short length and has that lightness, but I prefer the original album track.
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.
