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.
Personally speaking, I can't say that I am a particularly good traveler. I never developed the wanderlust or the smarts or the financial supply to head on out to a different country to explore, so I do have the admiration for those (and they include some of my friends) who have taken that jet, ship or car to take the risk to go around that unknown country, meet new people and learn new things.
Kayo kyoku has plenty of examples where such folks have gone onto new pastures within and outside of Japan, but usually not on a mission of learning but one of forgetting, namely that romance that has dried up like autumn leaves in late November. The one example that comes immediately to mind is enka veteran Sayuri Ishikawa's（石川さゆり）trademark "Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyu Geshiki"（津軽海峡・冬景色）.
I found another example, and this time, it's a sad straight kayo titled "Sasurai" elegantly sung by Yukari Ito（伊東ゆかり）. According to Jisho.org, the term means "wandering alone in a strange country", and the lyrics by Ou Yoshida（吉田旺）clearly illustrates this as the protagonist walks around in a new town with no people she knows as she searches for someone to unload her story to. Perhaps that town might be located way out on the other side of Japan, but the melancholy melody by Shosuke Ichikawa（市川昭介）under his pseudonym of Akira Nishi（西あきら）indicates that the man or woman may have gone as far afield as France or Spain (mind you, the last minute of the song gets overlaid with some boppy 70s kayopercussion).
"Sasurai" was released as Ito's 21st single in October 1970...perfect timing in kayo terms since that is when the romance falls as much as those autumn leaves. In a way, although I think that Ito delivers this wonderfully, this is also a song that could fit the discographies of either Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）or Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）in her diva period.
All right, I'll have to confess. I do play the lottery once a month here in Toronto through things like Lotto Max and Lotto 649 although I have a very Vulcan attitude toward the whole concept since there is a certain illogic of thinking that one could win a lottery despite the millions to one odds. Yet, in a Captain Kirk moment, people still do win the millions of dollars.
The recent commercials for Lotto 649 have had a smooth-sounding announcer enticing folks to get their numbers since as he says "Somebody will win. It could be you", or something along those lines. Well, enjoying my snark like all cynics and based on what a University of Toronto statistician once chortled, I can add "Somebody will win. It WON'T be you".
But all that preamble ramble about my lottery experiences...and no, the most that I've won is $20...is because the title of this song is "It Could Happen to You" as performed by the late jazz pianist Ryo Fukui（福居良）. This was a track from his debut album"Scenery" from July 1976 and it's a winning number (no pun intended considering that ramble) because of that expression of bounciness and joy from his performance. When I first heard Fukui's version of "It Could Happen to You", I rather felt like Snoopy when he was dancing around while Schroeder was jamming away on the piano in "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Yup, any contemporary of Vince Guaraldi will be a contemporary of mine.
My previous article was on Saburo Kitajima's（北島三郎）"Kita no Daichi"（北の大地）and that was all about the wonder of Hokkaido nature. Well, Fukui hailed from Japan's northernmost prefecture and his career was based there, frequently playing at a club in Sapporo until his untimely passing in 2016. In addition to "Scenery", he put out three more albums up to 2015 and a couple of live releases. Below is Fukui's performance of the song at that club, Slowboat.
Composer Jimmy Van Heusen and lyricist Johnny Burke first created "It Could Happen to You" in 1943 and actress/singer Dorothy Lamour first sang it in the musical comedy "And the Angels Sing" in the following year.
The Wikipedia article behind the song shows a paragraph several lines deep of other singers and bands who have covered it over the decades, so it has definitely become a beloved jazz standard. One of those artists is Miles Davis who took it on in his 1958 "Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet".
I was watching NHK's "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新・BS日本のうた...Songs of Japanese Spirit） earlier this afternoon, and I saw enka singer Takeshi Kitayama（北山たけし）performing his father-in-law's New Year's Day 1991 single as a tribute to the late composer Toru Funamura（船村徹）.
Of course, when that father-in-law is the legendary Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, there's a lot to live up to, but Kitayama did him proud today. "Kita no Daichi" (The Great Land in the North) has got that quintessential Sabu-chan sound: the grand and muscular enka stomp, the epic chorus and Kitajima's proud proclamation about his home prefecture of Hokkaido as this vast area of nature and goodness, thanks to the lyrics provided by Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）. It doesn't surprise me that the single was released right on New Year's Day since I could imagine if it had been a sunny day up there in Hokkaido on January 1st, the blue sky, the snow-capped mountains and the sea of white would have been spectacular.
Peaking at No. 33 on Oricon, "Kita no Daichi" won a Grand Prize at the Japan Record Awards that year and Kitajima made his appearance on the 1991 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen to perform the song. The paper snowflakes must have been in especially great supply during that performance.
I don't quite remember how I found out about this January 2004 2-disc album which features the Yokohama-themed kayo called "Yokohama Fantasy". All I know is that I just had to have it and I did get it as part of my shopping spree recently. Although of course, the album had been released years before I launched "Kayo Kyoku Plus", it still reminds me of that rather little Yokohama-based kayo article that I came up with early in the blog's history.
Ironically, neither Hiroshi Itsuki's（五木ひろし）"Yokohama Tasogare"（よこはま・たそがれ）nor Ayumi Ishida's（いしだあゆみ）"Blue Light Yokohama"（ブルーライト・ヨコハマ）shows up in this collection although both of them can be considered to be the crème de la crème of Yokohama kayo. Rocket Brown posited that copyrights may have come into play while I think perhaps that those two had been assumed to be just a bit too obvious (however, there's a very rearranged version of the latter song by singer-songwriter Tomoko Tane（種ともこ）on Disc 2).
One thing that I noticed was that the booklet inside the CD case seemed unusually thick, but as it turned out, the reason for that was the presence of a map of Yokohama centering upon the famous Yokohama Bay. That's rather magnanimous of Sony and especially now when international tourism is rather vital for Japan, it gives me some inspiration to definitely visit the Japanese port city again and maybe even spend a few days there on my next trip.
Without further ado then, I would like to feature a few tunes from Disc 1 today because I'd never heard them before. Still, it's quite evident that Yokohama kayohas made for a good part of KKP since I have already covered them in the past, although I've also noticed that there isn't any Mood Kayo on either disc. I gather then that Sony was going more for the pops part of the kayo. As for the tracks on Disc 1:
15 Beautiful Yokohama -- IN THE GROOVE (ビューティフル・ヨコハマ)
You may have noticed that there are two songs by 70s aidoru Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）in the mix but I'll be doing those as a twofer in the near future. For that matter, I'll be doing the same for the remaining tracks aside from the three that I'll be covering here today.
Let me start with Hiromi Ohta's（太田裕美）12th single "Doll" from July 1978. Created by the songwriting dream team of lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, Ohta sings this smooth if jaunty song of slightly melancholy intent in the setting of Yokohama.
If I've interpreted Matsumoto's lyrics correctly, the young lady here may be recovering from a broken romance while feeling somewhat out-of-sorts just like a doll without any strings or owner to love her. I was a little confused by the repeated statements of celluloid initially; was she referring to her life being like a film (melodrama is part and parcel of the kayo experience, after all)? However, I figured out that celluloid in katakana refers actually refers to a certain type of doll as pictured on J-Wiki.
"Doll" peaked at No. 21 on Oricon and has been included on Ohta's 8th studio album"Elegance" from August 1978 which went as high as No. 13. The singer also performed this particular tune on the Kohaku Utagassen at the end of the year.
From the brassy Miki Hirayama（平山三紀）, I have the just-as-brassy "Beautiful Yokohama", and this one is an especially auspicious tune because the song happened to be Hirayama's debut tune released in November 1970. Tsutsumi was once again the composer but back at that time, his lyrics-writing partner was Jun Hashimoto（橋本淳）, and as I recall from doing other articles, those two were quite the tandem, too.
Hirayama was all of 21 with that husky voice of hers when she recorded it as this worldly young woman who made Yokohama her oyster and her men her pets tightly wound around her finger (two of the many men's names that she mentions happen to be the songwriters' sons). According to the J-Wiki article on this song, Hirayama had been attending the Takarajima Music Office for singing lessons at the Hotel New Japan. It just so happened that both Hashimoto and Tsutsumi had founded the organization and offered her "Beautiful Yokohama" as her first original tune. The cover of the single was also photographed with Hirayama at Yamashita Park right by Yokohama Bay. Ranking at No. 64 on the singles chart, the song was placed in her debut album"Beautiful Album"（ビューティフル・アルバム）from November 1971.
My final example is Machiko Watanabe's（渡辺真知子）"Minato Scope"(Port Telescope). When I saw that katakana for the second word in the title, I'd first thought that it was the translation for "scoop" which didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. But then on reading Akira Ito's（伊藤アキラ）lyrics, I realized that Watanabe's protagonist was looking through a telescope on a cruise ship entering the harbour in Yokohama to see if she could improbably spot her old flame and probably her memories with the guy. Watanabe came up with the City Pop melody punctuated by the buzzy electric guitar.
It certainly comes across as another fresh City Pop discovery and Watanabe's vocals sound as wonderfully resonant as ever. "Minato Scope" was the B-side to her 12th single from February 1982, "Suki to Itte"（好きと言って...Tell Me You Love Me）. Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）arranged everything.
As mentioned, I'll take a look at some of the other tracks in individual articles in the coming weeks and months, but otherwise, I'll see if I can get Disc 2 up here in March.
It's been a while since we've had City Pop chanteuse Hitomi Tohyama（当山ひとみ）with us, so it's nice to bring her in to finish up tonight's usual urban contemporary tasting plate.
And interestingly enough, this is one song that's further down her discography timeline since it hails from her November 1989 album"After 5:00 Story". Usually up to this point, I had usually been tackling Penny's songs from the early to the mid 1980s. The track is "Namida no Night Game" (Night Game of Tears) which was written by Mari Kayano*（萱野真理）and composed by Shingo Kobayashi（小林信吾）as this slick and groovy City Pop or soul tune of the late 1980s going into the 1990s. Maybe it's even a J-Quiet Storm number as well. There is also some essence of a sophisticated pop arrangement in there, so of course I'm far from complaining.
*The kanji for the lyricist's family name has several readings according to my usual source, so I'm not sure what the proper one is. If anyone can let me know what the proper reading is, I would be eternally grateful.
Tetsuo Sakurai（櫻井哲夫）was the first bassist for the fusion band Casiopea（カシオペア）and his time ran from 1976 to around 1989, and one of the songs that I remember from Sakurai and the guys was their 1979 cover of "I Love New York".
I gather then that Sakurai kept his New York state of mind when he came up with his first solo album, "Dewdrops" (1986). It's quite a nature-sounding title but the cover has that sky-high view of Manhattan with a dapper Sakurai running out to meet us. Back in those days when it came to having an album with an urban contemporary theme in Japan, I guess, having the Big Apple in the background was never a bad thing. Have a look at Tadao Inoue's（井上忠夫）"Nijuu-ni Shoku no Shuumatsu"（22色の週末）, for instance.
Anyways, "Prophet Voyager" was the last track on "Dewdrops", and I just kinda went "This was the last track?!"; I could only imagine what the rest of the album is like. Usually I expect a slow ballad or a mid-tempo tune to finish an album off, but "Prophet Voyager" (sounds like a military operation) is more than six minutes of high-energy jamming starting with Sakurai's beefy bass and then having some horns and an electric guitar getting in on the action.
According to the Tower Records blurb on "Dewdrops", guitarist and singer Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）was involved in the album, so it could have been him. Sakurai was also joined by other City Pop lights such as Yuji Toriyama（鳥山雄司）, Akira Inoue（井上鑑）and Cindy, so there is some temptation to find out what the rest of "Dewdrops" sounds like.
