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.
One of singer-songwriter Ami Ozaki's（尾崎亜美）greatest songs has been "My Pure Lady", her 1976 single which is some blissfully relaxing bossa nova-inflected New Music. It instantly brings back some major nostalgia even though I wasn't even living in Japan back in the 1970s except for that one-month vacation in 1972.
Well, Ozaki's breakthrough hit obviously has a B-side and it's also a very nice winner. "Sunlight" sounds like a lady's very happy day and it was created by Ozaki under Masataka Matsutoya's（松任谷正隆）arrangement. However, instead of bossa nova, "Sunlight" feels like some soulful upbeat goodness, especially with that brief but lovely sax solo. Just want to coast down a seaside hill on a bicycle on a sunny day while listening to this one.
I was just taking some snapshots from that aidoru guide and so here is this showing 80s teenybopper singer Yuko Nito（仁藤優子）on the cover of her September 1987 2nd single"Aki kara no Summer Time" (Summer Time from Autumn). Thought it would make for a nice addition on KKP, after putting up her debut single"Okorinbo no Ningyo"（おこりんぼの人魚）a few years ago.
And indeed, considering the release month and the title, the song is a refreshing blast of summery weather, musically speaking, with a little bit of 50s in the chorus and some synthesizer spaciness in the instrumental bridge. Written by Keiko Aso（麻生圭子）and composed by Hideya Nakazaki（中崎英也）, "Aki kara no Summer Time" was Nito's most successful single by peaking at No. 10 on Oricon.
When the bulletin came in on NHK midway during the daily "Asaichi"（あさイチ）broadcast stating that Japanese baseball legend Shigeo Nagashima（長嶋茂雄）had passed away today at the age of 89, I knew that there would be a "Stop the presses!" moment in the country. And sure enough, the TV network dedicated a full third of its main news hour to the life and career of the man known as "Mr. Professional Baseball" and "Mr. Giants".
I've never been a huge baseball fan, but even I knew about the famous Nagashima. He had been to the Japanese as Shohei Ohtani（大谷翔平）currently is to the sports world all over Earth right now. Even in the half century following his retirement from active baseball play in 1974, he was never forgotten as a manager for his beloved Tokyo Giants where he wore Uniform No. 3, or as a TV commentator who came up with some rather odd expressions such as "Make drama!" which ended up becoming one of the buzzwords and catchphrases in Japan one year.
Nagashima had his brushes with other aspects of pop culture and that included music. Years ago on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I noted his warbling participation in the multi-band collaboration "Hateshinai Yume wo"（果てしない夢を）back in 1993. But apparently, there had also been plenty of songs created about him and his legend.
I had never heard of this one before, but it doesn't really surprise me that Japanese entertainment legend Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）met Nagashima. Basically, the Tough Guy encountered Mr. Giants! In 1959, Ishihara released a single titled "Otoko no Yuujou Sebangou San" (A Man's Friendship: No. 3), and it's a wholehearted tribute to the player with the full brass-and-string march arrangement that would usually accompany a kayo kyoku regarding baseball. The song was written by Hisao Ohtaka（大高ひさを）and composed by Kenroku Uehara（上原賢六）.
My condolences go to Nagashima's family, friends and fans.
Some of you may remember that Author's Picks article I did on some of those Camellia Diamonds commercial songs including Kahoru Kohiruimaki（小比類巻かほる）and Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）. They were some of the classier stuff that I've covered.
Well, I recently discovered that there was another song that deserved to be on the Camellia Diamonds list, and that was Tomoko Aran's（亜蘭知子）"Everything". A track on the singer-songwriter's 9th studio album"Sunny Side Memories" from April 1990, it was written by her and composed by Seiichiro Kuribayashi（栗林誠一郎）as this fairly dramatic number with a soupcon of Latin. Admittedly, it kinda hovers over the City Pop/pop borderline but I couldn't help but get some of those metropolitan music vibes from this one., and to be honest, I think "Everything" could have even become an ending theme for some romantic drama or cop show. But hey, diamonds are good, too!
Yesterday, I was speaking with KKP friend, JTM, and I noticed that there was a very Mariya Takeuchi-esque（竹内まりや）poster hanging on his wall. My curiosity piqued, I asked him what it was all about and he told me that he found it at this site called Displate which specializes in metal posters, and apparently there is a City Pop section so for all of you fans out there, you can check it out.
It was at the end of April when I first introduced the girl group Kit Cat as they recorded a collaborative effort alongside (M)otocompo titled "FLASHBACK 50".
As I mentioned in that article, Kit Cat had their run supposedly from 2013 to 2018 with the members being Jose, Asuka and Eve. One single that they released was "Hang Around" in 2015 which kinda has more of a surf rock vibe rather than the synthpop that they have been associated with. The music video has the lasses enjoying a slumber party at one of the ladies' houses.
For the record, I've never flown First Class on any airliner and can only imagine that I could only enter that august part of a passenger plane by giving up my firstborn and a handful of internal organs. The above video is showing merely Business Class in the 1970s on a Qantas flight. First Class must involve thrones.
Maybe it's that image of fine flying and dining that Fantastic Plastic Machine was harboring in his mind when he came up with "First Class '77". There is that immediate sensation of soaring into the air and dreams coming true ("Fantasy Island" was on the air back then, if I remember correctly). In fact, I think the entirety of the song illustrates what flying must have been perceived as back in the day of Pan Am: a LUXURY experience. There are even the horns which reminded me of a theme song of many an American TV drama, especially one where travel is involved.
Excerpts of "First Class '77" have been heard by me on Japanese variety shows as background music or transitional music between segments, something that has become a trope with FPM's songs. The song itself was included as a track on the man's debut album "The Fantastic Plastic Machine" from October 1997. "Please, Stop!", which was my previous FPM entry, is a track mate on the album.
Yes, I think I will have that Beef Wellington with a glass of the finest Cabernet Sauvignon. It would make for a nice change from the roast beast and Pleistocene epoch hard roll that I'm usually used to.
Welcome to June! Perhaps though I should sarcastically say something like "Welcome to November!" because the temperatures don't really reflect late spring or early summer. Yup, it's chilly out there.
A few years ago, I put up this article for the Les 5-4-3-2-1 cover of the immortal "Bond Street", originally created by Burt Bacharach in 1967, and it was a track on the 1996 compilation "Sushi 3003 - A Spectacular Collection Of Japanese Clubpop". I don't know much about what Japanese club pop is, but hey, Shibuya-kei is something I know a little about.
Regardless, the final track on "Sushi 3003" is a pretty hip-swiveling number called "Kiss" by now-retired actress/singer Chiharu Iwamoto（岩本千春）who was active in the geinokai between 1986 and 2015. In 1990, she released her one-and-only album "Kagami"（かがみ...Mirrors） and that's where "Kiss" originated. Written and composed by Pizzicato Five's Yasuharu Konishi（小西康陽）, "Kiss" is a martini-friendly lounge number with a nice dollop of Latin here and a spritzer of jazz trumpet there. Plus, Iwamoto provides the nearly de rigueur kittenish voice popular in Shibuya-kei. Also, what about those irresistible bongo drums at one point? It's almost enough to get me up to cut a rug.
