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.
Welcome to November 2023. It's definitely gotten seasonal here with the current temperature at 4 degrees Celsius. Hopefully, the chocolate bars and candies from last night's Halloween festivities have been tasty and won't end up as a coagulated semi-sentient mess in a year.
The video here is a decade old and comes from shin3mania TV and it shows someone grinding the sesame seeds which is known as gomasuri（ゴマすり）in Japanese. I've always done this whenever I go out to dine at any tonkatsu restaurant, and I do appreciate my ground sesame seeds on the tonkatsu itself or in the gloppy sauce.
Gomasuri is also a slang term to mean ass-kissing or toadying up to the boss. I always saw that sort of character in a J-comedy set in the corporate world. They would be trying to curry favour with the president or section chief while seeing the main character as a meddling presence in the way up to the top.
My intention to start off the penultimate month of the year was to find something from my birth year of 1965 and I encountered this song by the late entertainer Hitoshi Ueki（植木等）. His most famous persona (although the real person was very far from this personality type) was that of the unrepentantly lazy and irresponsible company worker as displayed through his trademark tune of "Suudara Bushi" (スーダラ節）from 1961.
The 1965 song, "Gomasuri Koushinkyoku" (The Sycophant March) is another Ueki jaunty kayo kyoku of sinful personality where it's good to be as obsequious as possible. Gotta polish those apples and brown those noses. The usual trio arrived to take care of this song with Ueki behind the mike while Hiroaki Hagiwara（萩原哲晶）came up with the snappy melody for the orchestra and Yukio Aoshima（青島幸男）was behind the lyrics.
Not surprisingly, there was a movie for Ueki with "Gomasuri Koushinkyoku" as the theme song: "Nippon Ichi no Gomasuri Otoko"（日本一のゴマすり男...Japan's No. 1 Sycophant） which hit the theatres in May 1965. One of the cast members was Mie Hama（浜美枝）who would later show up in the James Bond movie "You Only Live Twice" a couple of years later. That must have been quite the change from Ueki to Connery. In any case, you can see Ueki and Crazy Cats performing the song below and they're even doing the gesture for gomasuri.
A couple of years ago, I posted Ray Parker Jr.'s"Ghostbusters" as a Halloween Reminiscings of Youth piece, so I figured that it was time for this one as well. Now I am well aware that Halloween is not a statutory holiday but merely an observed fun tradition but I'm still going to continue our KKP tradition of coming up with something spooky on the 31st or thereabouts.
I've known Michael Jackson's"Thriller" more for the epic video of around 15 minutes in length than for the original single that was released in the United States in January 1984. Never bought the album "Thriller" in my youth so the video was my introduction to the song by Rod Temperton which was produced by Quincy Jones.
The video was released in early December 1983 and the hoopla surrounding it was incredible to say the least. Even now, I don't think music videos that are a quarter of an hour in length are all that plentiful so you can imagine how the excitement was like back forty years ago. After all, this was the King of Pop Michael Jackson doing a horror-based music video with all of the special effects trimmings under the direction of John Landis of "Animal House", "The Blues Brothers" and "An American in Werewolf in London" fame, and yep, some of "Thriller" was inspired by that final movie. Anyways, folks were really excited to see the world premiere of the video on MTV, and we here in Canada were able to view it as well, probably via MuchMusic.
Because of the plot line of the werewolf and MJ taking home Ola Ray being interwoven into the song and dance, I'd say that "Thriller" could have even been called a very specific mini-musical around one tune, and man, that was some choreography. Now if zombies ever dance again anywhere in media, they would have to follow Michael. Of course, I can't ever forget Vincent Price's appropriately ghoulish narration and his gleefully evil laughter at the end.
Once the single came out, I remember that "Thriller" kept getting onto the top of the request charts for weeks upon weeks. Putting aside all of the Halloween sound effects, Price, and even Temperton's lyrics, the song is just one funky disco song released years after disco was supposed to have been exorcised from pop culture. The musicians supporting the song were all top-notch: Jerry Hey, Gary Grant, Larry Williams, and Bill Reichenbach on horns (all who have played on Japanese pop albums, too), along with Temperton and Greg Phillinganes on keyboards.
In Canada, "Thriller" the single made it up to No. 3 while hitting No. 4 in America. The countries where it actually topped the charts were Belgium, France, Portugal and Spain.
Now, what was coming out as singles in December 1983?
Last night, I wrote about P-Model's avant-rock"Zombi" which I found out about due to a commenter steering me to the Japanese Halloween playlist from university radio station WMUC a few days back. I'd like to throw in a couple of more songs.
One is guitarist Tsuyoshi Kon's（今剛）"Monster Mash" which has nothing to do with Bobby Pickett's novelty Halloween hit from 1962. In fact, the song is right from Kon's July 1980 solo album"Studio Cat" which I've already referenced because of my posting of the track "THINK ABOUT THE GOOD TIMES". I would say that the monsters here are probably sporting silvery metal jackets and skinny ties according to Kon's rock-sided AOR.
Meanwhile on the other side of the decade, Chickenshack put out "Godzilla on My Pillow" as a track for "Chickenshack V" from 1989. Created by jazz and R&B guitarist Junshi Yamagishi（山岸潤史）, the big green lizard is strutting through Roppongi on a wave of nuclear-fired funk that reminds me a fair bit of The Dazz Band. Let's Wang Chung tonight!
Well, Happy Halloween everybody! Wherever the holiday is being celebrated, I hope folks have been enjoying or have enjoyed their apple bobbing, trick or treating and whatnot. As I'm typing this, it's still the afternoon of October 31st so the kids going from house to house is yet to happen but I figure that the show will go on although it'll be a little chilly tonight. Of course, when I think of Halloween, there are the movies "Beetlejuice" and "Ghostbusters", but I also remember the old TV shows "The Munsters" and "The Addams Family".
Ah, as for Halloween J-Pop...I automatically think of Kyary Pamyu Pamyu（きゃりーぱみゅぱみゅ）. With all of the outlandish costumes, she's a natural for Halloween and I did post her 2015 "Crazy Party Night ~ Pumpkin no Gyakushuu"（ぱんぷきんの逆襲）a few years ago. Well, I was reading a "Japan Times" article earlier today and the reporter referenced an even earlier Kyary Pamyu Pamyu song that he felt may have helped out in the annual Shibuya Halloween masses (which were supposedly smaller this year due to ward intervention, although watching the YouTube streams haven't convinced me).
I'm talking about KPP's 3rd single, "Fashion Monster", from October 2012. As has been the case all along, Yasutaka Nakata（中田ヤスタカ）took care of words, music and arrangement for a song about being free to express oneself. Translating an excerpt from a 2012 interview shortly before the single's release, the singer and fashion icon talked about the protagonist in the song: "At first, he's seen as a monster feared by everyone, but it's a story about him freely expressing his feelings which leads to him becoming popular".
The music video by Jun Tamukai（田向潤）is a Halloween dream (or nightmare) come true, and it stands out to me for the fact that Kyary was actually cracking a smile back then. Another fun bit of trivia that I got from J-Wiki is that part of the arrangement by Nakata was inspired by Juicy Fruits'"Jenny wa Gokigen Naname"（ジェニーはご機嫌ななめ）from 1980. "Fashion Monster" peaked at No. 5 on Oricon, going Platinum. And in terms of its download rankings on the iTunes Electronica list, it ranked No. 1 in Finland, Hong Kong and Taiwan, No. 2 in Belgium and Thailand, No. 3 in America and Canada, No. 7 in France, and in Japan on the iTunes overall list, it also hit No. 1.
"Fashion Monster" was used as the commercial song for the Japanese discount casual wear designer GU, as well as a jingle for a Nissin yakisoba ad.
Did you know that Ichiro Fujiyama splurged on fancy cars after being royally paid for his undercover part-time work at Colombia Records? I certainly didn't. But I got to know this and other wild shenanigans Mr. Fujiyama was up to back then at an event called"Utaeba Tengoku" some time ago.
Utaeba Tengoku was a record appreciation event that revolved around ryukoka's leading man Ichiro Fujiyama (藤山一郎) and comedic star Roppa Furukawa (古川ロッパ). Hosted by early Showa enthusiasts Tadaaki Kitakawa (北河忠昭) and Taira Ozawa (小沢たいら), records from their personal collection were played on a 97 year-old gramophone in a little cafe off the streets of Jimbocho. Facilitating the show was veteran emcee Yuichi Hayashida (林田雄一).
Outside of karaoke recitals, I never knew there were public record appreciation and talk events that showcased enka and early Showa kayo until I found that community on Twitter. You can imagine my surprise when I saw the Utaeba Tengoku promos a few months back. Ryukoka being blasted in a public space among ryukoka fans? That's like a dream come true! BUT gone were the days of dive-in-head-first-think-later Noelle and I hesitated. After all, I'd only just begun to appreciate Mr. Fujiyama's works and I barely knew who Roppa was. I also knew next to nothing about the intricacies of SP records and gramophones, had no idea what an event like that would be like, and that's not to mention being daunted by the language barrier. But I figured that it'd be a good step-off point to try immersing myself in the community I knew existed but never knew where to find it. Plus, can't be bad to learn more about Mr. Fujiyama and Roppa, right? And so, with much internal and external convincing, I reserved my spot and headed for Jimbocho on the afternoon of September 17th.
I'd say that, in all, it turned out to be a great experience... Y'know, besides my brain blanking out at first and forgetting to do a self-introduction when the spiffily dressed hosts welcomed me into the cafe (Sorry, guys :')). That aside, the provided pamphlets were already quite something. There was the event's program, listing Fujiyama and Roppa's hits and hidden gems, then there was a reference materials booklet, filled with never-before-seen photos, news articles, and record lyric sheet scans from both artists. I think what floored me the most were the tables showcasing Mr. Fujiyama's record releases down to the minute detail. While I had seen event prep sneak-peeks over on Kitakawa's socials, I could not have imagined that it amounted to the said pamphlets in my hands. The amount of work put in was impressive.
"Utaeba Tengoku"
The main thing that puzzled me since seeing the poster was why this event revolved around Mr. Fujiyama and Roppa. Besides them being the respective favourites of Kitakawa and Ozawa, I couldn't see any connection between the singer and comedian. But, as it turns out, both artists crossed paths on multiple occasions: both were in the same record company (Victor) for a period of time and collaborated on various projects, from songs to films. One such collaboration included a song this very event was named after, "Utaeba Tengoku" (歌えば天国... Singing paradise) a light jazz ditty from 1941 that was sung with Akiko Futaba (二葉あき子) and was the theme song to the movie of the same name.
As for the show itself, the best way I could describe the show is that it was part record show-and-tell, part lecture, part natsumelo TV program "Natsukashi no Utagoe" (なつかしの歌声) or "Osakabe-Takehei Showa no Utagoe" (刑部たけ平昭和の歌声) podcast episode. I reckon other events like Utaeba Tengoku are of a similar style, but it did make for a rather bizzare experience for me in a good way - three things I tune in to separately converging into one. So Mr. Fujiyama's and Roppa's tunes were played in alternating fashion and according to year of release, each preluded by a brief (sort of) introduction and anecdotes the hosts dug up from the various books and resources.
"Oka wo Koete"
Hayashida's emceeing was the icing on top of the cake, his humour melting the ice and encouraging the nervous hosts. Occasionally, he even indulged us by rattling off the classic natsumelo program song intros to a few tunes. One such occasion was right at the beginning as "Oka wo Koete" (丘を越えて... Over the hill) blared from the gramophone and reverberated through the quaint, antique-filled cafe. This classic from 1931 is one of my favourites by Mr. Fujiyama, hearing it first with Hayashida's intro gave me that same feeling of excitement as when a tune you'd been hoping to hear starts playing on a TV program. Plus, it is the song to get the ball rolling for any program with its bright and chirpy melody. Considering this evergreen tune is an ode to the joys of youth, I felt that it aptly encapsulated the vibe of the event: 2 young folks eagerly sharing about the music and artists they love.
"Otoko no Junjo"
Many of the Mr. Fujiyama and Roppa anecdotes relayed were insane, but the most insane of them all (to me) was the former getting into a physical altercation with a taxi driver on the way to a music recording in 1936. When Fujiyama turned up at the studio, his head was covered in blood and he had to get patched up in the infirmary. What song was he to record at that time? "Otoko no Junjou" (男の純情... A man's pure heart/dedication) ... There is a twisted sense of irony in there and I'm here for it. That afternoon, my long-held impression that Mr. Fujiyama was the primmest and most proper singer out there flew out the window like my ability to follow social rules.
"Sensuikan no Daidokoro"
Let's not forget Roppa. This comedy legend, on par with Eno-Ken, was loved for his slap-stick comedy just as much as his witty song parodies and showcased his hearty vocals in many a tune during his career. This event served as my gateway to Roppa's amusing discography that happens to be steeped in social commentary. The Roppa ditty I enjoyed quite a bit was "Sensuikan no Daidokoro" (潜水艦の台所... Submarine Kitchen Song) from 1944. Roppa singing with such gusto made what would likely have been a dank and dreary place with food barely passing as edible sound like a homey shokudo.
After close to three hours (this was with Hayashida speeding things up), the show came to a close. It began with one of thenatsumelo intros, so it wouldn't be right to not end things off on one of thenatsumelo outros: "Aoi Sanmyaku" (青い山脈... Blue Mountain Range).
Oh - SS rare Mr. Fujiyama
"Aoi Sanmyaku"
Similar to our intro, "Aoi Sanmyaku" can be seen as an ode to youth, but it also spoke of forgetting the past and starting anew with everyone together, hand-in-hand. A very uplifting tune for its time and it seemed to have a firm position in the postwar collective consciousness as it was ranked 1st by viewer vote on NHK's "Showa no Uta Kokoro ni Nokoru Best 200 Kyoku" (昭和の歌 心に残るベスト200曲) back in 1989. Another feature of "Aoi Sanmyaku" and its role as the natsumelo program shime (ending) is that all the singers present have to be on stage and sing it chorus style. And so, to keep in tradition, we all sang "Aoi Sanmyaku" with Mr. Fujiyama and Mitsue Nara (奈良光枝). A fitting way to end a ryukoka-filled afternoon.
Overall, I enjoyed my time at Utaeba Tengoku and I think our young presenters and Hayashida put up a good show. I have to take my hat off to them. An event like this, though small in scale, helps to bring the spotlight on to a part of Showa era music that's quickly becoming sidelined in the current public and media discourse on "Showa Kayo" and "Showa Nostalgia." It's also admirable to have folks so passionate about what they love that they'd do extensive research and organize an event like this. I could never - wait a minute...
I also feel like I learned a lot not just about wild Fujiyama and gourmet Roppa, but also about what these record events are like. This has certainly given me more confidence to attend other like events should they pop up on my radar. Learning opportunities in all sense of the word aside, I wouldn't want to miss a chance to "see" some of the artists I enjoy come back to life for just an afternoon either.
I'm not really into zombie horror movies but I remember watching "Shaun of the Dead" at my friend's apartment in Jiyugaoka years ago and enjoying it. I give my thanks to Simon Pegg and Nick Frost.
Continuing from the playlist of the University of Maryland radio station WMUC's Japanese Halloween-themed episode that one commenter cottoned me onto a few days ago which begat my first post of Tulip's（チューリップ）"Koi no Dracula"（恋のドラキュラ）, I'm picking out another song. This time, it's eclectic electronic rock band P-Model's"Zombi" from their March 1982 4th album"Perspective".
Having only relatively recently found out about P-Model as one of the Techno Gosanke（テクノ御三家）, I was fully expecting to hear something synthy with "Zombi". Actually though, aside from the Art of Noise-like pounding drums, the song comes across more as a strutting minimalist rocker than technopop while vocalist and songwriter Susumu Hirasawa（平沢進）sounds like a grown-up version of Milhouse Van Houten from "The Simpsons". As the Wikipedia article on "Perspective" states, the album has been categorized as post-punk, industrial rock and no-wave, and I think "Zombi" fulfills that third genre although I can also agree with J-Wiki's description of the album as an experimental rock project.
Reading the Wikipedia article, I discovered that Hirasawa had recorded all of the drum parts in the recording studio stairwell for that natural reverb. Apparently he had quite the battle with the recording engineer but Hirasawa won in the end. Good for Hirasawa. Incidentally, kinda like yesterday's Yuming's（ユーミン）"Corvett 1954", P-Model opted to go for a mistaken spelling of the title. Whether or not Hirasawa had been aware of the proper spelling of zombie in the first place I'm not sure but I'll just go with what has been officially written down on the album.
The above is a photo of the classy Mito Station Hotel in Mito City. I stayed there for one night during my 2017 trip to Japan since I was returning from a brief anime pilgrimage in Oarai where "Girls und Panzer" was set. Hopefully, the management there didn't look too down upon me for showing any otaku tendencies.
Well, this song did give me some classy hotel vibes from long ago. This is "Koibito-tachi"(The Lovers) which was one of the few original songs on Hiromi Iwasaki's（岩崎宏美）first album of cover tunes from March 1979, itself titled "Koibito-tachi". Leading the album off, the title track is a silky-smooth melancholy song that has had me thinking about not only life in the city but the sophisticated aspects of the upper tax bracket lifestyle. In the song, a lady is pining for the love of her life but he's all the way off on the other side of the Pacific Ocean in Los Angeles. Maybe she's sighing breath prints on the window of an expensive hotel bar while sipping a cocktail in Tokyo. According to J-Wiki, the slogan for the album was "A romantic Europe for you...". OK, well, maybe it can also be a cruise liner in the Mediterranean.
The title track was written by Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）, composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and arranged by Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）. Even by this point, Iwasaki was still being listed as an aidoru but dang, this is a pretty mature-sounding song. I had actually first heard "Koibito-tachi" on a 1984 compilation audiotape of her hits so I assumed that it was a more recent song.
In August 2019, Iwasaki released a self-cover album titled "Dear Friends VIII" which was a tribute to the songs of Tsutsumi who would pass away a little more than a year later. "Koibito-tachi" was also given a new contemplative bossa nova arrangement thanks to Hiroshi Uesugi（上杉洋史）.
