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.
Basically speaking, my anime buddy and I agree on what we like to watch but there are inevitably some discrepancies. He's a huge fan of "Jojo no Kimyo na Boken"（ジョジョの奇妙な冒険...JoJo's Bizarre Adventure）; I was immediately turned off with the murder of the dog in Episode 1 and haven't been back since then. I was quite all right with the cute show with moments of hilarity, "New Game" from this year but after the first couple of episodes, he never mentioned or showed it again on the screen.
Then I also mentioned at another time about the anime "Love Lab"（恋愛ラボ）. I've been watching various excerpts of this 2013 show on YouTube and have just been having a fun time with all of the gags and parodies. Again, my friend kinda went "Meh" since he felt it was just too wacky. But then again, we've been enjoying the absolutely nuts "Kei-jo!!!!!!!" this season so I'm kinda wondering what gives. Still, I am starting to get very tempted to actually purchase the DVD set of this one.
The two stars are seiyuu Manami Numakura（沼倉愛美）and Chinatsu Akasaki（赤﨑千夏）as the short-tempered Riko and completely insane Natsuo respectively. I'm totally accustomed to seeing Numakura playing the stoic-to-cranky roles but Akasaki playing Natsuo was pretty revealing since I had been seeing her as the suffer-no-fools-gladly Nibutani from "Chūnibyō demo Koi ga Shitai!"（中二病でも恋がしたい!）. Natsuo is the type of girl that Nibutani would be more than happy to kick over a couple of mountains in frustration.
Among all of my amused viewings of the antics of the Fujisaki Girls Academy Student Council Executive known in Japanese as Fuji-jo Seitokai Shikkou-bu（藤女生徒会執行部）, I've also managed to find a perky little earworm as the ending theme for "Love Lab" called "Best FriendS" as sung by the entire executive via the seiyuu Numakura, Akasaki, Ayane Sakura（佐倉綾音）, Inori Minase（水瀬いのり）and Yo Taichi（大地葉）.
With lyrics by ENA☆ and music by Naoki Chiba（千葉"naotyu-"直樹）, it's the usual happy-go-lucky song but I think there's also a little hint of Shibuya-kei in there which pulled me in further. In any case, another temptation for me to pick up the set, if possible.
The aforementioned Sakura and Minase would get together for another popular anime and theme song the following year.
Yesterday, as I mentioned in one of my articles, I met up with my anime buddy for lunch at Kingyo, one of the many izakaya that now populate my hometown. It's also the only place that I know that serves up tonkatsu in the way that I remember it being served in Japan. The pork cutlet at one of my favourite Japanese restaurants doesn't look like a wiener schnitzel (not that I have anything against the famous dish) but looks like a proper breaded and deep-fried thick slab of tender pork with bottomless mounds of cabbage, miso soup and rice. And of course, it comes with sesame seeds, tonkatsu sauce and a dab of hot Japanese mustard. Lovely lunch, that. I'm delighted that I can still down it with aplomb.
A few years into my long stay in Japan, the nation was suddenly caught in a grip of what was called the tabehodai (all-you-can-eat) boom. Restaurants of all stripes were now providing goodies in the form of buffets or all-you-can-eat or all-you-can-drink specials. Curry, desserts, Korean BBQ...all was fair game. For about a decade, my friend and I used to haunt this place right on the border between Ginza and Shimbashi called The Farm Grill which was located underneath an expressway. Every weekend, they offered an all-you-can-eat thing for 3000 yen, and it was a true feast of Japanese and Western. Everything from roast chicken, beef, sushi and all sorts of other food were up for grabs under that price. You can imagine the valentines in my eyes during those heady days.
Well, after those 10 years, The Farm Grill called it a day. Still, the tabehodai boom basically became the tabehodai genre. Even though my favourite buffet place went out of business, there were plenty of other places for me to shovel down copious amounts of meat, vegetables and carbs under a set price within a set time.
With "Uta Kon" (うたコン) on hiatus until the New Year, NHK has been substituting specials in its time slot including the show "Osaka Melody" which was on a few weeks ago. Of course, when one is focusing on Osaka, food will inevitably pop up in the conversation even if it is a music show since the city is known as "the stomach of Japan". Sure enough, in one segment, enka chanteuse Sachiko Kobayashi（小林幸子）appeared out of the blue within a yakiniku restaurant with Hikomaro（彦摩呂）the fat and famous foodie tarento (I will be talking about that fellow on a future entry) to perform a ditty called "Yodel Tabehodai" (Yodeling All-You-Can-Eat).
To hear this comical little tune about the joys of all-you-can-eat done up as a Swiss yodel caught my attention. Mind you, seeing all that luscious meat hitting the grill during the song did the same thing, too.
Well, after doing a bit of digging, I found out that "Yodel Tabehodai" was the creation of a fellow by the name of Repeat Yamanaka（リピート山中）with the original performance by singer and rakugo artist Jakusaburo Katsura（桂雀三郎）with three fellow rakugo artists providing backup as the Manpuku Brothers（まんぷくブラザース...The Full Stomach Brothers）. The theme of "Yodel Tabehodai" was about the love for that all-you-can-eat yakiniku special as Katsura sang out all of the prime ingredients for a fine Korean BBQ dinner, something that I can totally relate with.
"Yodel Tabehodai" first made its presence known as a track on an album called "Yagura Koushinkyoku" (やぐら行進曲....Yagura Marches) that was released in February 1996. However several months later in November, the song was re-recorded with a small tweak in the lyrics and then released as a single. Initially, it didn't make all that much of an impact (and probably no one expected it to since it was just a comical song about yakiniku) with most of the sales happening in the Kansai area.
However a few years later in 2000, requests started to pour in faster than an order of kalbi on a weekend on a radio program which had been playing the song. The fuse was lit and this time even the Kanto area started to take notice of "Yodel Tabehodai", and gradually, the song sold 150,000 copies. I can only wonder whether there was a sudden boom in hitting the yakiniku restaurants.
I do have to leave this article with the confession of my favourite way to end up a hearty meal at a yakiniku restaurant and that is with a hot bowl of kalbi kuppa. It's this soup which basically summarizes my entire experience at the restaurant since it includes pretty much everything I had from the grill (meat, vegetables, rice and spices). It was definitely redundant and probably quite unhealthy but I was happy with my choice.
Merry Christmas from Toronto! It's still the night of Xmas Eve here but I know that half the world is celebrating Xmas Day including Japan so all of my best wishes.
Some weeks ago, diva Mariah Carey made a brief appearance downtown by a Hudson's Bay store in front of shivering thousands to perform some of her Xmas hits including the topic of this article today.
"All I Want For Christmas Is You" is probably one of the few Xmas songs in the last quarter of the 20th century that has become a bona fide classic. To quote the Wikipedia article on the song:
In the years since its original release, "All I Want for Christmas Is You" has been critically lauded and has become established as a Christmas standard; it was once called "one of the few worthy modern additions to the holiday canon" in The New Yorker, and continues to surge in popularity each holiday season. The song was commercially successful, topping the charts in Hungary while reaching number two in Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, and the United Kingdom, and the top 10 in several other countries. The Daily Telegraph hailed "All I Want for Christmas Is You" as the most popular and most played Christmas song of the decade in the United Kingdom. Rolling Stone ranked it fourth on its Greatest Rock and Roll Christmas Songs list, calling it a "holiday standard." In December 2015, the song peaked at 11 on the Billboard Hot 100, making it its highest peak since its original release.
Released in November 1994, as you can read from above, the song by Carey and Walter Afanasieff did very well worldwide. In the United States, it managed to peak at No. 6 on Billboard's Hot Adult Contemporary Chart. Still, I think it had an even bigger impact in Japan when it not only hit No. 2 on Oricon but was also used as the theme song for a Japanese comedy-drama.
"29-sai no Christmas"（29歳のクリスマス...My 29th Christmas）was a Fuji-TV production and so of course, it had all of the beautiful people as the cast including actress Tomoko Yamaguchi（山口智子）. I would have loved to have found a video with the opening credits with the song intact but it seems like it's been muted for the usual copyright reasons. The show started out on October 20th 1994 so it looks like fans in Japan may have gotten a sneak listen to "All I Want For Christmas Is You" a couple of weeks earlier than much of the planet.
I very barely remember the drama since it was already wrapping up its run by the time I actually had some free time at night to catch it (I was going through teacher training at NOVA at the time). However, I distinctly remember seeing the ending credits of the very last episode on December 22nd as Mariah sang away while those credits featured some of the key scenes over the past several weeks.
It didn't take long for me to grab the single in Japan under its title of "Koibito tachi no Christmas"（恋人たちのクリスマス...Lovers' Christmas）. Supremely upbeat, I kept thinking of the old Motown sound as I listened to it the first number of times. For a guy who was accustomed to hearing the usual soft ballads of the Yuletide, Mariah's classic was good ol' orange juice...or orange mimosa since that seems to be the popular cocktail on the 25th. But the important thing is that the song has become the standard tune to play on the department store speakers, radios and coffee shop stereos all over Japan at this time.
Well, I hadn't thought about doing it until after breakfast this morning but I decided it was time. I had already been scheduled to meet up with my anime buddy one more time for lunch before he took off for another excursion to Japan from next week. However since he was just gonna head home after our final meal together for the year, I decided to catch the latest "Star Wars" entry, "Rogue One" later in the afternoon on my own. It's been out for a week now and it's been getting some great reviews across the board which is something I hadn't seen even for "The Force Awakens" (and even I wasn't a great fan of that one). And sure enough, watching it today actually gave me hope for the future of the franchise, and that was basically the theme of the movie. Plus, I got to see some of the best space battle scenes in decades.
Now, after having such a rich cinematic treat today (and "Rogue One" came after a tonkatsu lunch), I thought it would be nice to have something nice and sweet and light...or at least write about a song on the blog in that manner. Happily, I was able to find one such happy song by happenstance during my usual browsings of YouTube.
This happens to be Maiko Okamoto's（岡本舞子）"Aitte Ringo desu ka?" (Is This Thing Called Love An Apple?). You readers may be having a few questions immediately as did I when I came across it last night. One would be "Who the heck is she?" and the other may be "What is up with that title?".
Well, as for Question 1, I had no idea who Okamoto was either until 24 hours ago. But according to J-Wiki, she was an aidoru and actress from Tokyo who started out in child roles and then grew into duties on variety shows as a teen. Then former singer and music producer Hisahiko Iida（飯田久彦）saw some promise in the lass as a pop singer but she went through the cute teenybopping aidoru route from which she debuted in 1984.
"Aitte Ringo desu ka?" is her 2nd single from April 1985 which brings up that second question. Well, I can only assume from the lyrics that Okamoto is asking whether this whole thing called love can be savored as something sweet like a Golden Delicious or could she experience that odd stomach-killing crabapple once in a while? And the interesting thing is that those words were provided by none other than the Irving Berlin of kayo, the late Yu Aku（阿久悠）with Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）coming up with the melody.
Aku was someone that I had always associated with the music of the 1970s and 1980s but not particularly in the 1980s aidoru genre. But there he is. However, since I've always been more of a melody guy rather than a lyrics fellow, I've been getting more interested in the works of Yamakawa since she could also apparently come up with the typically sweet aidoru melody as well as the City Pop music that I first knew her from. I mean, it is just so sweet and innocent and solid (like a nice ripe apple) that Okamoto is almost obliged to wear a cotton gingham dress to sing "Aitte Ringo desu ka?" Yamakawa nailed down the Mariya Takeuchi（竹内まりや）style like a pro. Moreover, the aidoru's delivery is reminiscent of Yukiko Okada（岡田有希子）with a face similar to that of Narumi Yasuda（安田成美）. The topper is that just judging from this song alone, I think Okamoto did have some above-average talent although I'm not totally surprised that the powers-that-be decided to try her out in the aidoru vein for a while.
The song only got as high as No. 67 on Oricon. As it were, Okamoto released just 7 singles between 1984 and 1987 and 2 albums. She actually won a number of Newcomer awards and was continuing her presence through musicals and the like but after 1987, she decided to call it a celebrity career and retired. A collection of her hits was released in 2004 "Okamoto Maiko Collection"（岡本舞子コレクション）.
It's been a pretty banner day in terms of this blog and in my overall enjoyment of Japanese music. There's been my discovery via Marcos' entry of his Special Selection 2016 of Perfume's "Cosmic Explorer" which has a beefed-up improvement of the trio's sound.
Then I ran into Junko Yagami's（八神純子）"Jealous" tonight. A track from her 1983 album"Lonely Girl", it's about as smooth as some of the nicest Brown Cow cocktails (all that Kahlua and cream) I've had in my time in Japan. I would say cognac but since I've never sipped on the stuff, I couldn't really use that analogy.
Composed by Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）and co-written by Yamakawa and Yagami herself, the singer goes a bit more coquettish on this one compared to some of her past hits which have had her exercising that sonic boom of a voice. And then Yamakawa weaves some cool City Pop that sounds quite a lot like some of my favourite R&B-pop tunes by Lionel Richie and James Ingram. In fact, I've already heard it twice and listening to it tonight, I thought that this particular outing by Yagami bridges the City Pop at the early part of the 1980s with the keyboard arrangement and the champagne City Pop performed by other female singers in the later part of the decade especially with the backup vocal arrangement.
Now, I'm kinda wondering about grabbing "Lonely Girl" as well. There are a couple of other good tracks: the title track and "Love Supreme", her entry into the "Space Cruiser Yamato" franchise.
Recently, JTM was kind enough to send me a recording of a radio broadcast that comes on regularly in which a couple of professionals in the music industry discuss about Japanese music whether it be kayo kyoku or J-Pop through various themes. The theme for this episode was on the lyricist Chinfa Kan（康珍化）. Now anyone who knows a lot about Japanese pop music from the 1980s should know about this fellow since he notably wrote songs for Anri（杏里）. And I was actually surprised to find out from the broadcast that his first laying down of the words came on Ann Lewis'"Shampoo" which I had only written about late last month. And that song was all the way back in 1979.
Well, Kan was still laying down the words into the 21st century. He provided the lyrics for Korean singer BoA's "MeriKuri" (Merry Christmas), a gentle ballad composed by Kazuhiro Hara（原一博）almost as a country-pop song. Highlighting the Japanese attitude toward Xmas as a 2nd Valentine's Day, BoA sings about a couple falling in love as the snowflakes come down. There's some of this song which reminds me about another Xmas song that I had written about earlier this month, Hikaru Utada's（宇多田ヒカル）"Can't Wait Til Christmas".
Released in December 2004, this was BoA's 15th single which was also a track on her "BEST OF SOUL", a BEST album released in February 2005. The album hit the top of the charts and became the 9th-ranked album of the year. Meanwhile "MeriKuri" itself peaked at No. 5 while becoming the 74th-ranked single for 2005.
Should try to get some more of BoA since this is just the 2nd article I've attributed to her so far on the blog. For her other entry, take a look here.
The picture has nothing to do with the post itself, being just one of the random photos I took while walking around in Rio de Janeiro at night (I'm not a good photographer, though).
This year, my Author’s Pick list is comprised solely by songs released
in the past 12 months. They’re all new entries, so I’m not repeating songs I
covered through the year. Also, most of them were a big part of my year, just
to make obvious how personal this list is in the first place. I can only hope
you guys like some of the songs I’ve chosen.
10)
AKB48 -- High Tension (ハイテンション)
This one was a last-second addition – by the way, dethroning a
Dempagumi.inc (でんぱ組.inc) single –, and I
feel somewhat guilty for liking it so much right now... but AKB48’s“High
Tension” conquered its spot in this list fair and square. Probably due to the
fact I started watching the drama it’s related to with my best friend very
recently (it’s the theme song for AKB48’s drama “Cabasuka Gakuen” [キャバすか学園]), the song’s catchy factor just impregnated in
my mind – the chorus, albeit full of silly repetition, is engaging, and the
brass section in the background just helps it standout. In the end, even though
it’s AKB48 in safe mode – they recorded similar disco songs in the form of “Koi
Suru Fortune Cookie” (恋するフォーチュンクッキー) in 2013 and
“Halloween Night” (ハロウィン・ナイト) in 2015 –, I liked
its straightforward approach very much. Easily the funniest AKB48 single this
year, hands down!
NAOMiRUSTY’s “La Niña Night” (released in January) is that type of exciting
hyper processed Hi-NRG song that was so common in mainstream pop music during
the late 80s. I don’t know why she chose to record this straightorward
80s-sounding thing – with all the "cheese factor" involved – in 2016, but it
easily works for me. Also, kudos to the amazing instrumental breakdown with the
screeching synth playing alongside the relentless bass line right before the
final chorus. In some way, it reminded me of Tommy February6’s songs, and
that’s not a bad thing at all.
Okay! By now, after almost 25 years of watching Namie Amuro’s (安室奈美恵) evolution in the J-Pop landscape, it’s obvious
that she’s only worried about following Western trends and recording unashamedly
in-your-face pop hits. Is there a problem with it? No, not at all. Especially
when Amuro really commits to it, and this catchy dance number called “Fighter”
(released in October), while far from being something revolutionary – and that
was never her proposal, after all –, showcases very well how she can still
mantain her relevance in the industry after so many years.
Released in November, “In The City” is Monari Wakita’s (脇田もなり) solo debut after parting ways with aidoru
group Especia earlier this year. The song, while a little bit more mature and
far from the quirky sounds charmingly explored by Especia during their prime
days, is still close to the overall 80s-inspired City Pop sound from the group.
In the end, even though I was sad when I read the news about her departure from
the group, it’s great to follow both the renewed group’s trajectory and Monari Wakita's solo efforts as well. After all, it’s more modern City Pop and 80s fun to us.
This year, Especia lost some members and changed their sound a little
bit, trying to be more mature and laidback. With this in mind, I must say that “Danger”
(released in December) and its great combination of groovy bass line with
Philly strings is Especia’s best song in a while (last year’s “Aviator” turned
out to be my favorite Especia song), even if the choice to sing in English may
sound a little bit odd at first.
When I received my copy of Perfume’s latest album “COSMIC EXPLORER” from
the post office and put in the stereo, my father quickly asked if the Perfume
girls’ were now recording Progressive Rock-inspired songs... and I couldn’t answer
him properly at the time. However, Yasutaka Nakata (中田ヤスタカ)
undeniably embraced past sounds while creating “COSMIC EXPLORER”, and even a
whole mentality of retrofuturism that was so alive around the 70s and 80s. In
the end, even though the album itself was below the expectations (it’s nice and
fun, but not as good as past works), the title track alone – with its
futuristic arrangement coupled by Perfume’s airy yet sad vocals, or even the
mishmash of influences that ranges from Italo Disco to the aforementioned
Progressive Rock – stands out as a very strong song that showcases a more
mature group still capable of interesting things in the Technopop soundscape.
It’s a pity Nakata didn’t stick with this sound for the whole album, but I
understand he had some commercial obligations to fulfil...
Few things are more escapist than dreaming about Tokyo in the 80s/90s.
Based on that, indie producer Boogie Idol’s aptly named “Kinmyaku Rettou” is a
true ode to that space and time – with a video full of footages of urban life
in one of the world’s biggest metropolis. However, if the video wasn’t enough,
there’s also the exciting Eurobeat-esque piece of retro electronic music, which
makes for a full futuristic yet nostalgic trip.
Veteran anison singer Minami Kuribayashi (栗林みな実)
returned to the spotlight last August after two years of absence (she put the
career on hold for a little bit because of her pregnancy) with a strong number
called “Patria”. The song is not that different from what she’s been doing for
some years now – a mishmash of hyper-speed rock and electronic music with classical touches –, but the celtic (I think it can be called that way)
flourishes were very nice additions. Also, the vocals are strong as ever, even
if her pitch is still a little bit high (it’s an old characterist of her,
though). The only difference is that, right now, she’s just called Minami, as,
somehow, the Kuribayashi “surname” got lost in the way (I think it has
something to do with record labels, but I’m not sure). Anyway, it's good to see her back.
02)
Rena Matsui with SHARAN-PO-RANTAN – Shabon (シャボン)
Ex-SKE48 Rena Matsui (松井玲奈) teamed up with
cabaret-styled duo CHARAN-PO-RANTAN (チャラン・ポ・ランタン) for this little
number called “Shabon”, which was released in March. Even though I find it hard
to classify, I assume it brought some inspiration from Showa Era Kayo Kyoku –
but with some quirky twists here and there. The arrangement is quite rich with
all the accordion – courtesy from Koharu, one of the CHARAN-PO-RANTAN sisters
–, but Rena Matsui was able to shine on her own as well. It was nice to see the
famous aidoru out of her confort zone for a bit – releasing music with one of
the wackiest acts of nowadays –, and I hope she continue to do so in the near
future.
My number one position goes to a collaboration between AKB48 and
Nogizaka46 (乃木坂46), called Nogizaka
AKB (乃木坂AKB). A very unusual
song for AKB, but maybe not so much for Nogizaka, “Mazariau Mono’s” power
relies in how beautiful the melody in the chorus is. Also, it’s not a hot dance
number, not a proper ballad, but I like how classy it sounds – even if the
video seems a little odd. For me, it’s one of the rare moments when one – or
two, in this case – of the infamous “48 family” groups truly shines.
