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.
Among the many singers that I got to be introduced to via the radio program "Sounds of Japan" in the 1980s, one was singer-songwriter Mieko Nishijima（西島三重子）. She among the others were there to convince me in no uncertain terms that there was a large space that was pop in terms of music and not just enka, Mood Kayo, aidoru or technopop. I will always be indebted to her and them for that knowledge and their music.
"Bishonure Waltz" is a track on her 5th studio album"Silhouette"（シルエット）from 1979, and it was the usual combination of lyricist Kenji Kadoya（門谷憲二）and composer Nishijima behind this song which is definitely done in the style of a waltz. The direct translation is "Drenched Waltz" but that doesn't sound too appetizing or pretty so perhaps "Waltz in the Rain" is more romantic. Besides the arrangement is quite classy and overseas as a couple has their dance with one partner teasingly admonishing the other to keep on dancing for today since they may not be together the next day.
Oh, Nishi-Ginza Station (West Ginza Station)? Heck, I know that subway station...not too far away from the main intersection, eh?
Ahhh, no. Sorry, that wouldn't be correct since there is no station known as Nishi-Ginza Station on the Tokyo Metro. There is a Higashi-Ginza Station（東銀座駅...East Ginza Station） on the Toei Asakusa Line and the Hibiya Line that I've gotten off at, but putting in Nishi-Ginza Station into the search engines will only get you the title of an early film by the late Shohei Imamura（今村昌平）titled "Nishi-Ginza Eki Mae"(In Front of Nishi-Ginza Station) which was released in 1958.
Just from my observation, it seems as if the less-than-one-hour comedy has been given short shrift by about everybody including Imamura himself, according to this review at "Blueprint: Review". There's not even a J-Wiki article about the movie. Only the second movie that he directed, Imamura was apparently trying to go for some variant on "The Seven-Year Itch" (1955) by Billy Wilder and starring Marilyn Monroe.
The interesting thing is that Mood Kayo crooner Frank Nagai（フランク永井）seems to have a mystical role to play in the movie as not only the narrator but also a subway staffer and a lounge singer. Not surprisingly, he sings the titular theme song which is how I found out about the movie in the first place. Written by veterans Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）, it's a brassy jazz piece with a bit of rockabilly guitar mostly about one fellow's frequent visitations to the club in the Ginza neighbourhood in search of drink and dames. I was a bit struck by that line of "ABC...XYZ" which I thought would have been ideal in a "Sesame Street" tune or something by an aidoru much later in the century.
When I first heard of this song recorded by 80s aidoru/actress Tomoyo Harada（原田知世）as the first track for her first mini-album, the No. 2-ranking"Birthday Album"（バースデイ・アルバム）from November 1983 and realized that Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）was behind both words and music, my first thought that even for Ohnuki, that was one mighty ambitious title: "Chikatetsu no Zazie ~ Zazie dans le Métro".
As it turned out, the title translates into "Zazie on the Subway" and it was actually the title of a 1960 Louis Malle film based on the original 1959 Raymond Queneau novel. It all involves Zazie, a potty-mouthed pre-teen girl who gets dropped off in Paris suffering a transit strike and gets into a major farce of an adventure with various interesting characters throughout the movie. Looking at the poster at Wikipedia, I thought that if the movie had been remade in the 1990s, Natalie Portman would have been the ideal actress as Zazie.
But getting back to Harada's "Chikatetsu no Zazie", the Ohnuki creation was arranged by Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）with a slightly blippity-bloppity technopop sheen. It's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed although I can't imagine Harada playing naughty Zazie. Remembering what Ohnuki's melodies sounded like at the time, "Chikatetsu no Zazie" fits right in.
Ohnuki and Shimizu got together again a few years later when the former was recording her 10th studio album"Comin' Soon" for its March 1986 release. The two included Ohnuki's own cover of "Chikatetsu no Zazie" which wasn't all that different from Harada's original. "Comin' Soon" managed to reach No. 26 on the charts as an LP, while its CD version went even higher to No. 21.
Many years later, Harada released her first self-cover album in July 2017 titled "Ongaku to Watashi"（音楽と私...Music and Me） which was arranged by Goro Ito（伊藤ゴロー）. In it is a more grown-up take on "Chikatetsu no Zazie" as if Zazie herself has shed her rough edges to become a more refined, less spiky and more accommodating young lady of The City of Lights. The album peaked at No. 11 on Oricon.
Singer-songwriter Shinji Tanimura passed away on October 8th 2023 at the age of 74. Most of us had only heard about his death late on the 15th or early on the 16th, and according to NHK and Wikipedia, though at this point, the cause of death hasn't been announced, Tanimura had been suffering from enteritis earlier this year.
Born in December 1948, he was the son of a couple who ran a hot spring in Nagano Town in Metropolitan Osaka. In 1965 while in high school, he along with Chizuko Shimazu（島津ちづ子）and Mineyuki Yamamoto（山本峰行）formed the folk trio The Rock Candies（ザ・ロック・キャンディーズ）, a group in the style of Peter Paul and Mary. Several years later in 1971, Tanimura and Takao Horiuchi（堀内孝雄）created the folk group Alice（アリス）which had a more folksy rock style and begat hits such as "Fuyu no Inazuma"（冬の稲妻）.
While with Alice, Tanimura was also providing songs for other singers, notably "Ii Hi Tabidachi"(いい日旅立ち) for Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, one of her last big hits in 1978. Tanimura would cover the song in an even more genteel manner in 1986.
As I mentioned in the original article, Tanimura and his partner Horiuchi would come up with the hit "Kimi no Hitomi wa Ichi-man Boruto"（君のひとみは10000ボルト）in 1978, and though I had thought it was an Alice song, it was officially a single pegged to Horiuchi.
Alice may have been known for its good time rock n' roll folk but Tanimura's solo work could be described as elegant. At one point, I was wondering whether the singer had actually opted to become an enka singer but his material wasn't quite that traditional-sounding. Instead, I would categorize it as that middle ground between kayo kyoku and enka known as New Adult Music. It was often classy, epic, orchestral and dignified. His 1980 "Subaru"（昴）was the first Tanimura song that I'd heard as a soloist at my old karaoke joint Kuri, and I can imagine that on hearing of his passing, a lot of karaoke singers gave their tribute to him by tackling this one.
Another ballad that had some shivers going up my spine when I first heard the intro was his 1983 "Nijuuni Sai"（22歳）. It had the folksy beat from his past and the epic dignity of his present (at the time).
Through Noelle Tham's article in 2014, I found out that Tanimura along with fellow songwriter and singer Yuzo Kayama（加山雄三）had been the ones behind "Sarai"（サライ）, another epic ballad of inspiration and reassurance. I had assumed that the song was a lot older than its 1992 birthdate considering that it's been used for a certain NTV telethon year after year just like how "Auld Lang Syne" has been used to signal the end of every edition of the Kohaku Utagassen on NHK.
The final song that I'll leave here in this tribute to Tanimura is a new one on KKP. "Gunshou"（群青...Ultramarine） was his 4th single released in July 1981 and it was the theme song to the August 1981 Toei Studios movie "Rengo Kantai"（連合艦隊...Imperial Navy） which described the downfall of the Japanese Navy in World War II. According to the J-Wiki article on the song itself, Tanimura had initially turned down the request by the movie's director Shūe Matsubayashi（松林宗恵）to create a theme song for "Rengo Kantai" because of the subject matter. However, Matsubayashi was finally able to persuade him by relaying his approach and opinions, and "Gunshou" was the result. The late Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久）arranged both "Gunshou" and "Subaru", and when Hattori passed away in 2020, Tanimura himself gave great praise on Hattori's arrangements.
Tanimura leaves behind three children including singer-songwriter Shiori Tanimura（谷村詩織）. I offer my condolences to his family, friends and fans.
One of the YouTubers that I'm currently subscribed to, Kuga's Travel, has just put up a new video featuring a new luxury train, the Tobu Railway Spacia X (no, I don't think Elon Musk has anything to do with this one), which runs between Asakusa in Tokyo to Nikko in Tochigi Prefecture. Considering the distance between the two points, it's definitely not an overnighter unless it's running at the speed I was doing my half-marathons when I was a junior high school kid, but hey, it looks really posh. I'm just afraid of the price.
P.S. 3,740 JPY/25 USD total for a 2-hour ride?!
That preamble ramble is to introduce "Summer Night Train" by Rats & Star（ラッツ&スター）featuring the golden tones of Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）. Not being a Masters student when it comes to the discography of The Chanels before they made the name change to Rats & Star in the mid-1980s, my bet is that the group may have also made a slight stylistic change going from doo-wop onto a more contemporary soulful path, although they didn't leave their roots totally behind.
The Chanels/Rats & Star have popped up in the last little while via the ROY articles and special features, so the last time they actually popped in a KKP byline was all the way back in June 2014 when I posted their popping April 1983 hit "Me Gumi no Hito"（め組のひと）. "Summer Night Train" is a much mellower animal from their November 1984 album"See Through". The opening verse sounds like a slower version of "Plastic Love" but otherwise it's a groovy soul tune, ideal as an accompaniment for a night ride on the aforementioned Tobu Railway Spacia X (scotch not included). I also like how the rest of the Rats as backup chorus sounds like a train whistle off in the distance.
Masao Urino（売野雅勇）was responsible for words while Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）provided the music. Goto, along with Suzuki, also produced the entirety of "See Through" which peaked at No. 26 on Oricon.
I'm kinda gobsmacked right now on realizing that although I've had singer-songwriter Yui Nishiwaki（西脇唯）represented on the blog since 2016, she's always been included as just the songwriter for other artists. For instance, she composed Hiroko Moriguchi's（森口博子）"ETERNAL WIND~Hohoemi wa Hikaru Kaze no Naka~"（ほほえみは光る風の中）in 1991 which helped earn the singer-TV personality the title of Gundam Oneesan. As well, I have to admit that I actually have Nishiwaki's 1998 Xmas album "Noel〜yui's winter collection〜" but the songs never quite clicked with me for the most part. I'll have to give them another go after so many years.
Well, allow me some redemption then. It's interesting all of the songs that I have posted thus far which were composed by Nishiwaki had all been released before the lady herself actually put out her own official debut single in May 1993 under her kanji name. "Shichi-gatsu no Ame nara" (July Rain) is a dramatic pop song about impending doom over a romantic relationship that was used as one of the many ending themes for the late-night information variety program "Tonight" on TV Asahi, although I think that it could also have sufficed as a theme song for a J-Drama. Arranged by Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）, "Shichi-gatsu no Ame nara" went as high as No. 25 on Oricon.
Nishiwaki released most of her own discography in the 1990s and of course, she's provided many songs for other singers over the years.
A few times in my childhood up to my time in university, I was able to head to some of the maple syrup farms north of Toronto to witness the annual sugaring off. We could see the extraction of the sap from the trees and the buckets would be transported to the sugar shacks to be melted down to the various grades of maple syrup. The flapjacks that got made there were always the best I've ever had especially with the fresh butter and syrup on top.🥞
I was reminded of those times when I saw the title of this song "Maple Syrup Factory" under the YouTube video. This was by Hiroshi Yoshimura（吉村弘）, a Yokohama musician-composer who went beyond those labels to become an artist in sound design and graphic design before his untimely death in 2003 at the age of 63.
"Maple Syrup Factory" was a track on Yoshimura's posthumous album"Flora 1987" from 2006 and consisted of pieces that had been recorded in 1987 but never released. There's something very innocent and quietly joyful with this song as if it were Santa's special but more reserved maple syrup branch working hard in comparison with its far more boisterous North Pole main factory. At the same time, there's a certain instrument in the back working its magic to the effect that I think it could have been included in the "Loki" soundtrack.
Diego Olivas of FOND/SOUND gave his own review of the album and "Maple Syrup Factory" in particular back in 2017 that you can take a gander at right here.
