Nissy (Takahiro Nishijima) -- Mada Kimi wa Shiranai MY PRETTIEST GIRL (まだ君は知らない MY PRETTIEST GIRL)

In terms of my foray into current day J-pop, AAA is generally my go to group for various reasons. One of it is actually the members. While I don't mind all of them, the few I tend to gravitate to are Naoya Urata (浦田直也) for his vocals and style, Shinjiro Atae (與真司郎) for the looks, and the fellow I'll be talking about here, Takahiro Nishijima (西島隆弘), better known as Nissy, for a combination of both. He's also got a cute charm that makes him difficult to ignore, so it wasn't too surprising that I'd have a look into his solo works apart from his contributions to AAA.

The first of Nissy's solo singles I encountered just a few weeks ago was "Mada Kimi wa Shiranai MY PRETTIEST GIRL". Watching the MV that co-stared actress Kasumi Arimura (有村架純), it brought to mind what J-Canuck listed at the start of his article for Gen Hoshino's (星野源) "Koi" (恋):

Catchy funk-pop?
Quirky choreography?
Dapper clothing on the singer?
Personal appeal by the singer in the middle of the music video?

The rhythmic beat in the sunny melody is indeed catchy, and the jolly manner in which Nissy lilts "Mada Kimi..." makes for a fun and cheerful song to listen to. Then we've got the adorable "Pinky Dance" that had everyone wagging their pinkies throughout most of the MV. Looks a lot less rigorous than the "Koi Dance", if you ask me, but both are as amusing to watch. As for the dapper clothes, what looks like the cool alter ego of the awkward young man (both played by Nissy himself) is decked in a dark blue casual suit and fedora - it's almost Bruno Mars-like, and his crew are pretty spiffy in black. As for personal appeal, while it's not in the MV itself he did make a separate video (below this paragraph) where he conveyed his thanks to fans and collaborators alike before performing the Christmas edition of the "Pinky Dance" with his own mascot - a thick pair of lips with eyes. I think have bingo!

"Mada Kimi..." was released on 24th August 2016 as Nissy's 6th single. While it's not shown how well it did on the Oricon site, I'd like to think it fared quite well. Writing it were Hiromi (宏実) for the lyrics, and HENRIK Nordenback, SIRIUS, and Sebastian Zelle for the music - no wonder it had a western pop vibe.

uta-net.com/song/211288/

This "alter ego" in a blue suit who sprinkles magic love dust seems like a recurring character in as I've seen "him" in a few other of Nissy's MVs.

The Works of Toru Funamura （船村徹）

As has been the case since I started "Kayo Kyoku Plus", whenever I hear of a death in the Japanese music world, it's always been in the morning, specifically through NHK's "Newswatch 9", and this morning was no different. Composer Toru Funamura（船村徹）passed away at the age of 84 the day before. According to J-Wiki, he may have created more than 5,000 songs in a career that lasted over 60 years.

Unfortunately, I can't really impart any deep insights off the top (although in writing this article, that may change) about his musical style but his genres were most definitely enka and the somewhat poppier kayo of a past age. Just from some of the hits that he was responsible for, though, Funamura's enka melodies ranged from the poignant to the proud with the common point being the rich Japanese-ness of it all.

Funamura was born Hiroo Fukuda（福田博郎）in Tochigi Prefecture in 1932 and studied piano at what is now the Tokyo College of Music. His university days were during the postwar period when US military forces were frequently seen on the streets, and so he participated and even led a band which toured the US bases. He also collaborated with another budding composer, Kimio Takano（高野公男）, to create music but tragically, Takano would pass away at the age of 26 in 1956.

The last time I saw Funamura on TV was on an episode of NHK's "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）early last year, I believe. And I think he also performed one song himself on stage. During the 1950s, he had his time behind the microphone, and according to his bio on J-Wiki, one of his four singles was "Shinjuku Jouwa"（新宿情話...Shinjuku Love Story）although I couldn't find out the exact year of its release. Composed by Funamura and written by Ryo Inomata（猪又良）, it was the melancholy story of a man trying to comfort a young woman in distress in the titular neighbourhood of Tokyo.

I couldn't find an original copy of Funamura actually singing "Shinjuku Jouwa" but according to YouTube, it has been covered by a number of singers including Eisaku Ohkawa（大川栄策）, one of his apprentices who would become one of the premier enka singers. That lone guitar expresses the tenderness of the situation and it would be one of those fine ballads to be sung by that traveling balladeer who used to walk the side streets of Shinjuku.

Officially, though, his debut as a composer came in 1953 when he made "Tasogare no Ano no Hito"（たそがれのあの人...That Man At Sunset）, although I couldn't find out who the original singer was.

His first bona fide hit though came a couple of years later in 1955 when he composed "Wakare no Ippon Sugi"（別れの一本杉）for Hachiro Kasuga（春日八郎）. The video above has Funamura himself singing the song about longing for home. Noelle has already fashioned an article about it right here.

I wrote about a Funamura-penned song just a couple of weeks ago called "Odorou Boku to"（踊ろうぼくと）from 1963 with all-Japanese guy Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）. Revisiting this one and listening to some of the other hits, I've been getting the impression that Funamura enjoyed expressing aspects of the Japanese man's heart although he also made songs for female singers. This one was a bit less enka but there was that streak of gallantry in there.

In 1961, he composed one of Hideo Murata's（村田英雄）symbolic tunes, "Osho"（王将）, a muscular enka that made the game of shogi into an epic battle. 

Another one of his manly-man songs was his 1982 hit for Ichiro Toba（鳥羽一郎）, another one of his apprentices, the ode to a couple of fishermen brothers battling the elements, "Kyodai Bune"（兄弟船）. No matter if it's a single piercing trumpet or a whole orchestra, the song packs a wallop of an impression. I can smell the sea salt from here.

Then a year later, "Yagiri no Watashi"（矢切の渡し）became one of the biggest hits for 1983 for Takashi Hosokawa（細川たかし）although it had first been sung by Naomi Chiaki（ちあきなおみ）as a B-side back in 1976. For me, it's one of the most recognizable enka.

Another kayo legend that Funamura created songs for was the one and only Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）. In 1962, she released "Hibari no Sado Jouwa"（ひばりの佐渡情話...Hibari's Sado Love Story）. As far as I know, Misora may be the only singer who had kayo titles with her name on them. Although the lyrics by Sou Nishizawa（西沢爽）may have had Misora femininely lamenting a lost love, Funamura's melody still reflected a strength of character that was part and parcel of the Misora mystique...the same mystique that was rumoured to have often terrified her fellow singers at any of the Kohaku that the Queen of Kayo appeared on. And yes, she also performed this song on the NHK New Year's Eve special.

Speaking of another famous singer from the old days, Funamura created a Mood Kayo for Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）as her 40th single in February 1987, "Shinjuku Banka"（新宿挽歌...Shinjuku Elegy）. And it sounded like the composer crafted the ballad perfectly for his client: that late-night bluesy music paired with Rei Nakanishi's（なかにし礼）lyrics of shattered dreams that had exemplified Fuji's songs from the very beginning.

As I said at the top, Funamura composed over 5,000 songs since 1953. So if my descriptions here are a bit chintzy, I'm sure the articles that have already been written for some of his hits will be more illuminating and there will definitely be more Funamura-penned songs coming up in the future. I might even end up writing up on "Shinjuku Jouwa", "Shinjuku Banka" and the Misora ballad since they have yet to get their own articles as of this writing (but Noelle, if you want to give them a shot, please be my guest).

To finish, I managed to find one interesting story from the J-Wiki bio of Funamura. The original source is a Japanese webpage showing a conversation between him and fellow songwriter Eiichi Ohtaki（大瀧詠一）. In 1959, an animated movie for which Funamura was responsible for the score had won a grand prize at a London-based movie festival, and the composer somehow was able to attend an audition for bands. After seeing the whole lot, he was then asked which groups were good. Funamura answered, "That slovenly group of four was the most interesting."

What floored Ohtaki was who that group was. Funamura may have thought the four were slovenly...and interesting, but the world kinda found out later that they were actually quite fab!

April 4th 2017: On the above paragraphs concerning Funamura's alleged encounter with The Beatles, I received word from a commenter below that he couldn't find any information about this online so I decided to do a bit of research myself. His comments and my response are below. As such, I am providing this disclaimer but not erasing the paragraphs since Funamura did indeed give those comments in that webpage interview. However, if there is anyone out there who can offer further clarity to this matter, I would appreciate it.

X -- Kurenai/20th Century Boy（紅）

The 2016 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen had its ups and downs. But the one thing that kinda went sideways in a weird way for me was X Japan's performance of one of their epic classics "Kurenai" (Crimson). Not that the performance was bad or anything but just the so-called reason for having it played on stage. According to one of the hosts of the show, Shin-Godzilla was getting rather antsy on the metropolis of Tokyo once again, and help was needed to drive him off.

Well, cue in X Japan to provide the sonic weapon necessary to soothe the savage breast of the huge beastie. It was almost as if X Japan was actually the X-Men...or a team of Ultramen! Not sure whether Yoshiki and company rolled their eyes on stage.

As Wikipedia and J-Wiki will report, "Kurenai" has quite the history behind it. It had been performed at concerts for years since about 1985 before it actually was released as their official debut single under a major label (their 3rd overall). And the Yoshiki-penned song apparently had undergone different variations to the point that it was starting to be considered a lost cause.

However, it did get its official release in September 1989 when the band was still called just X, and I think the above video is that version (if I am wrong, please correct me...I'm not an expert on the band at all). Listening to the song for the first time in its entirety, I was surprised about that orchestral intro and the lonely guitar before all that hell-raising metal came bursting in. Then, there were the English lyrics sung by Toshi to start:

I could not look back, you'd gone away from me
I felt my heart ache
I was afraid of following you
When I had looked at the shadows on the wall
I started running into the night to find the truth in me

Years ago, when I first saw X on television, I was frankly terrified by them. I mean, KISS and a plethora of other hair metal bands had been invading the tube for years and years back in the West. However, this was Japan...home of the prim, proper and neat, I had thought naively. But things were changing in the music industry in the late 1980s, and X was just as much an agent of that change as acts such as Dreams Come True and LA-PPISCH.

And despite all of the makeup, the screeching guitars and the ground-shaking drumming, "Kurenai" was basically a love song, although Yoshiki himself countered that it was actually more of a struggle in one person's heart. The strange thing about hearing about it now, over a quarter of a century since its release, is that it doesn't sound all that radical. I've been hearing similarly arranged pieces used in anime for years.

It's still a huge song for all of the fans and I can't even imagine it not being played at an X Japan concert. That single, by the way, peaked at No. 5 on Oricon and became the 74th-ranked song for 1989. A year later, it rose in the rankings to No. 67. "Kurenai" was also a track on their 1989 album "Blue Blood" which had come out earlier in April. That album got as high as No. 6 but it earned even more profuse praise in 2007 when the Japanese version of "Rolling Stone" placed "Blue Blood" as the 15th-ranked release in its list of Top 100 Japanese Rock Recordings.

The B-side/coupling song to "Kurenai" just happened to be the old T. Rex classic "20th Century Boy". X's version had even more octane added.

Heck, we even had one of our own Canadian bands do its cover of the song, Chalk Circle. I think it's awfully hard to screw up this tune.

Mami Ayukawa -- Kaze no No Reply （風のノー・リプライ）

A cloth to wipe my glasses since
after all only Mazinger Z can accomplish this.

When it comes to 1980s anime, I have to say that the only show that I saw with any dedication was "Macross", and that was basically because of its American adaptation "Robotech". Aside from that one, it was simply seeing snatches of this anime and hearing things about that anime.

So, yes, even I did hear about this show called "Juusenki L-Gaim"（重戦機エルガイム...Heavy Metal L-Gaim）which was another in a long series of mecha-based anime but never saw an episode.

But then in the last few days, I heard this wonderful 1980s tune that just happened to be the second opening theme song for "L-Gaim". On hearing "Kaze no No Reply" (No Reply From The Wind), my impression was that this was quite a cheery urban contemporary piece for a show about battling robots.

And this was the debut of one Mami Ayukawa（鮎川麻弥）from Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward. That still for the video above (which has since been taken down) may have Ayukawa looking like a typical aidoru but, truth be told, she was already about 22 years old when "Kaze no No Reply" was released in July 1984. The song may start out its first few bars sounding as if it were an American AOR song on helium but then when Ayukawa starts singing, it settles down nicely into a soaring anison with those beloved strings and snazzy horns. It just seems to go on like a piece of gum that doesn't lose its flavour. In addition, it doesn't hurt that Ayukawa's voice is more than game with Kyohei Tsutsumi's（筒美京平）music and Masao Urino's（売野雅勇）lyrics. I especially love it when she shoots out "No Reply".

This song has me comparing Ayukawa to fellow singers such as Anri（杏里）and Meiko Nakahara（中原めいこ）who were no slouches themselves when it came to 80s anison. "Kaze no No Reply" peaked at No. 17 on Oricon. She would release 12 more singles going mostly into the early 1990s although her most recent release came out in 2007.

Hikaru GENJI -- Waratte yo (笑ってよ)

Hikaru GENJI’s (光GENJI) “Waratte yo” is a song I know since late 2010, when I first watched one of Music Station’s Special episodes (ミュージックステーション), this one from December 1990. In the aforementioned show, the Hikaru GENJI boys, which were the only male performers of the night (if we exclude the fact that B.B.QUEENS was a mixed band) in a vast sea of famous and ‘A game’ 80s female aidoru singers (names like Chisato Moritaka [森高千里], Wink, Seiko Matsuda [松田聖子], Akina Nakamori [中森明菜], Shizuka Kudo [工藤静香] and Miho Nakayama [中山美穂]), performed a medley of hit single “STAR LIGHT” and the newly released “Waratte yo”.

In general, it’s not hard to have a problem with Hikaru GENJI, since they’re pretty cheesy and the vocals really bad, even for Johnny’s standards. We can only think about listening to them nowadays for two reasons: one, of course, is nostalgia, while the other is production value, since their songs were not always that bad in the compositon/arrangement areas. “STAR LIGHT”, for example, is a good late 80s pop song, even if the group itself is lackluster. That said, my favorite from them has always been “Waratte yo”, a somewhat forgotten Latin-tinged gem from the group’s catalogue. I especially like the instrumental breakdown, but also wish it were longer.

To finish, here's the performance from "Music Station" I was talking about before.

Released in November 1990, “Waratte yo” was another hit single for the group, reaching #1 on the Oricon chart. Lyrics were written by Yoshiko Miura (三浦徳子), while music and arrangement were composed by Kouji Makaino (馬飼野康二).

Saori Minami -- Tomodachi (ともだち)

Took the night off last night since I was extremely tired from some large chunks of translation work that have been landing on me during this month. In fact, I'm still working but I made it a policy to stop at 7pm for sanity's sake. However I'm very grateful to Noelle and Marcos for putting up their respective articles on Wednesday. After reading the two of them, I'm awfully tempted to listen to one album again and buy the other.

Also, just to get my mind off work, I go to one of my hobbies which happens to be this blog.

First off, let me tell you something I do first thing in the morning. No...it doesn't always involve flushing. Actually when I wake up, I often find the TV already on with the channel set to TV Japan, and before NHK's "Newswatch 9", there is an English conversation study program titled "Shigoto no Kiso Eigo"（しごとの基礎英語...Standard English for Work）. It always involves the learning of some business English phrases in the setting of a fictional corporation based in Japan with the mixture of sitcom-friendly native English speakers and Japanese staffers who are fairly fluent in their second language themselves.

Now, the program, and its other cousins, have been on for a few years now at 7:55 am, and with "Shigoto no Kiso Eigo", the star of the show happens to be this fellow named Aki who's not quite as fluent as his comrades in the company. Well, a few days ago, my mother asked me if I knew who he was. As I said, I have been very familiar with Aki since he not only stars in this English conversation show but also appears sometimes as a reporter on the other NHK program "Asaichi"（あさイチ）. So I figured that Mom had some trivia for me.

Well, I got out of my groggy state fairly quickly that morning when she told me that Aki happens to be actor/tarento Akinobu Shinoyama（篠山輝信）. He is the son of famed photographer Kishin Shinoyama（篠山紀信）and former aidoru Saori Minami（南沙織）....yep, the same one who had gotten her fame right from the get-go with "Juu-nana Sai"（１７才）all those decades ago.

So on that note, perhaps it's time to put in a Minami song tonight. Here is "Tomodachi" (Friends), a nice and breezy tune about that familiar pop cultural trope of a girl in love with a guy but, gosh darn it, can't string the words together to tell him how she feels.

Written by Mieko Arima（有馬三恵子）and composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, "Tomodachi" has that typical early 70s sound of happy-go-lucky. However, those strings sound almost downright disco at times. Gives the song some extra juice, and the horns provide a bit of a comical touch to the proceedings. Although I don't think Minami's 3rd single from February 1972 was ever used as such, it could have become a theme for a family comedy-drama.

A few nights ago, I wrote an article about Chiyoko Shimakura（島倉千代子）and how her song came about due to something that was connected with her personally. Well, the same thing was true about Saori Minami and "Tomodachi". At the time of her stardom, Minami had been living out of hotels and confessed to her staff around her that it was difficult to make close friends. From that spark, "Tomodachi" got its genesis. The song managed to get as high as No. 7 on the weekly charts and would eventually be ranked No. 55 for 1972. It was also included on her 3rd studio album "Junketsu/Tomodachi"（純潔/ともだち...Purity/Friends）which was released later in June. That album peaked at No. 2.

One wonders if Aki's Mom will make a surprise cameo on that English conversation program and show him up!

w-inds. -- LOVE IS THE GREATEST THING

Since I started listening to Japanese Pop more than ten years ago, I’ve never cared for w-inds. However, as I was watching the 2007’s edition of NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen (NHK紅白歌合戦) a couple of weeks ago, w-inds. came up and performed a pretty fun disco-pop song called “Beautiful Life” that made me want to listen to some of their other stuff.

Trying to be somewhat smart, I thought to myself: if I liked “Beautiful Life”, I just have to listen to the single before or after this release, because it’ll probably have a similar sound. And that’s how I came across “LOVE IS THE GREATEST THING”, which was originally released four months before “Beautiful Life”.

Released in July 2007, “LOVE IS THE GREATEST THING” is also a contemporary pop song with some disco elements in the arrangement. I could see the background music being a little louder (it sounds a little too far away at some points), but I liked how they enhanced the old disco mix of brass and strings putting some nice sound effects on it… you know, trying to make it sound like a 21st Century production. In all honesty, though, the funniest thing about the song is how lead singer Keita Tachibana (橘慶太) reaches some high, wacky and over the top notes through the catchy chorus. It’s so, so wrong, but also very fun. In the end, I like Keita’s vocals, so I think he’s a very talented guy.

At first, I thought w-inds. only did boring hip-hop/urban songs, and I wasn’t totally wrong. However, they also had some pretty fun pop songs like these two I’ve mentioned so far, but also “IT’S IN THE STARS”, which was released in 2006. It’s just ironic how, thanks to some sort of prejudice, I didn’t check their songs before… but like the old saying, it’s better late than never.

“LOVE IS THE GREATEST THING” reached #4 on the Oricon chart, selling 34,416 copies. Lyrics were written by shungo., while music was composed by Henrik Korpi, Jens Bergmark and Lisa Millett. As for the arrangement, Koma2 Kaz was the responsible.

Source: generasia.com