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.
Last night, I wrote an article on another one of Blue Peppers'（ブルー・ペパーズ）mellow tracks from their 2017 album"Retroactive", "Hachi-gatsu no Kageboushi"（八月の影法師）, and in fact, much earlier this year, I had written about the album itself.
One of the tracks that was tackled on the article for "Retroactive" itself was the innocent and warm "Cobalt Blue" as sung by former AKB48 member Michiru Hoshino（星野みちる）. Well, in the last few days, I found out that this particular track was actually a cover of the original version provided by Blue Peppers to Fukuoka-born singer Shiho Nanba（南波志帆）.
Nanba has been around as a performer since 2008 with her major debut beginning in 2010. "Cobalt Blue" is a track on her third album"meets sparkjoy" released in April 2016 (and reaching No. 45 on Oricon). With only a few differences in the arrangement (including some electric guitar at the end), and a slightly less whispery delivery by Nanba, the song is an ironically titled track. On first seeing the title, I would have thought that it was prefacing a cool-as-ice hard techno tune. Instead, it's referring to a girl's accessory on the ideal day to have that wonderful date in the park.
For as long as I've been writing on the blog, I've managed to find some more kayo where legendary band The Ventures have gotten involved.
Yumi Makiba's（牧葉ユミ）singing career didn't last too long, since it was just between 1971 and 1975. The Tokyo native somehow found herself behind the mike after a brief time as a staff worker at a company, and she made her debut with "Bouken"（冒険...Adventure）in July 1971. For the purposes of this article, allow me, though, to write about her third single, "Kaiten Mokuba" (Carousel) which came out in June 1972.
Kazuko Katagiri（片桐和子）wrote the lyrics about a young woman falling in love with a vagabond guitar player on some rock, although nothing about a carousel ever popped up from what I could find there. Still, Bob Bogle, a founding member of The Ventures, composed "Kaiten Mokuba". According to the YouTube description, the hint was that the song may have been a cover of a Ventures tune called "You and Me", but I couldn't find any thing of that tune by the band. In any case, I like Makiba's crisp and strong voice.
Makiba, whose real name is Yumiko Omura（大村由美子）, released a total of 11 singles and 1 original album. From what I read on her J-Wiki profile, a very young Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）had sung "Kaiten Mokuba" on the audition program "Star Tanjo"（スター誕生!...A Star Is Born!）back in December 1972 to pass through to the next stage in the competition. My compliments to the uploader MomoeKaitenMokuba in being able to create this video which was probably very difficult to pull off.
For all of the tango-like rhythms that I've associated with some of Akina Nakamori's（中森明菜）songs in recent years, I think there was a certain sound that characterized her music way back when she first started off as an aidoru in 1982.
I'm still in the midst of exploring Akina-chan's earlier material since until recently I had only known her singles and not the rest of her album-based tracks. So I went into YouTube and checked to see if any of her music from her 2nd album"Variation ~ Hensoukyoku"（変奏曲）was there.
Lucky enough, I did find "Aishuu Majutsu" (Sorcery of Sorrow), one of those tracks from that album released in October 1982. And indeed, it still does serve as an example of that early Akina sound. I think compared to Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）girlish innocence imbued into her music, Nakamori's songs had that certain urgency in an urban setting. The instruments that I often heard in her music including "Aishuu Majutsu" were those alternately sweeping/cutting strings signifying some sort of crisis matched up with some soft keyboards perhaps representing an innocence going lost in the young teen.
That's about as far as I can go as a musicologist, I'm afraid. As an Akina fan and overall Japanese music enthusiast for the 1980s, I simply enjoy the nostalgia of the music which was composed by Yasuo Kosugi（小杉保夫）. Speaking of which, "Aishuu Majutsu" has a pretty snazzy guitar solo as well. Yukinojo Mori（森雪之丞）took care of the lyrics which speak of the giddiness and pathos of a love affair as seen through the prism of a Hollywood romance.
As for "Variation", Akina's 2nd album did hit No. 1 on Oricon. Most likely, it will be a Xmas target for me...provided that Canada Post settles its labour problems by November. I also have a postscript in that another song that I've already written about about Akina is also from "Variation".
Yup, I'm talking about Yoko Nagayama's（長山洋子）"Suterarete"(Cast Away). It's a rather sad song about longing for that special somebody although the chances for success are low, but what I like about it is that melody and the way the singer sells it with her come-hither vocals. It's been classified as an enka song and Nagayama wears her kimono, but that arrangement has me thinking about some hostess club in the depths of Ginza or Akasaka. It's a pretty urbane song that Satoshi Hinokibara（桧原さとし）whipped up while Noriyo Suzuki（鈴木紀代）wrote the lyrics.
This was Nagayama's 7th single as an enka singer, and her 24th single if we include all of her previous aidoru songs in the 1980s, which was released in March 1995. "Suterarete" was a pretty big hit for her as far as enka songs at the end of the century were concerned since it peaked at No. 32 on Oricon and it stayed within the Top 100 chart for virtually a year, selling around 325,000 copies. I mentioned about that "Demo ne" which started things off; apparently the gesture that Nagayama used when saying that also became a selling point.
"Suterarete" was nominated for Best Song at the Japan Record Awards for that year, and Hinokibara won the Best Composer award. Nagayama would appear on the 1995 Kohaku Utagassen for the second time to perform the song.
Welcome to another end of a work week. Hopefully, most of you will be enjoying a full weekend. Met up with an old friend for lunch earlier today and he and his wife will be heading out to Japan for a couple of weeks of vacation. Lucky dog!
Anyways I want to get back to that "Retroactive" album by AOR band Blue Peppers（ブルー・ペパーズ）that I introduced in March this year. There are a few more tracks that I have yet to cover from the November 2017 release, so here is "Hachi-gatsu no Kageboushi" (August Silhouette).
This was the first track from "Retroactive", and as its title intimates, it's a bouncy summer tune that would be nice to listen to at this time of year. Blue Peppers took care of the melody while Masato Inami（伊波真人）provided the lyrics about dreaming of that wonderful girl. I can hear just a bit of Steely Dan and some more of Tomita Lab（富田ラボ）in there. Some really happy soul with "Hachi-gatsu no Kageboushi".
Among some of the more intriguing corners of YouTube I've come across has been the one for chiropractic sessions. Dr. Gregory Johnson's channel has been one I've visited a few times since he's used the term "crack addicts" to refer to his viewers who love it when the good doctor goes down to town cracking on those backs and necks.
Well, tonight, perhaps I can entice those "bass addicts" in City Pop land with this one called "Latin Night" by Hatsumi Shibata（しばたはつみ）. The singer had a long career and my last article on her was when she first started out under her first stage name of Kanna Hatsumi（はつみかんな）back in the late 1960s with her brand of 60s go-go boot-friendly pop.
Now moving ahead by around 15 years, she embraced the City Pop aesthetic with "Latin Night" from her June 1985 album"Voices". That boppy bass welcomes listeners to the big city night of fun and luxury, and Ms. Shibata is your congenial host. I couldn't track down who wrote and composed the song, but I was able to find out Joe Hisaishi（久石譲）, the fellow behind all those Studio Ghibli tunes, arranged this one for her. Still, it would be kind of hard to imagine Totoro and Kiki getting down on the dance floor in Roppongi.
Yes...the Japanese high school. A critical institution for adolescents and the molder of young minds and bodies, but apparently in the anime world, it also seems to be the figurative pressure cooker for future lunatics.
Last anime season, we got to see all sorts of hilarity on "Asobi Asobase"（あそびあそばせ）involving the hijinks of three high school girls, and I mentioned in the article for that show's theme songs that there have been similar school-based crazy anime comedies in the past.
Well, I was watching a video showing some of the vocal acrobatics by the anime force of nature that walks like a man, seiyuu Tomokazu Sugita（杉田智和）, and saw a couple of scenes featuring him as crazed high school kid Hidenori（ヒデノリ）in 2012's "Danshi Kokosei no Nichijo"（男子高校生の日常...Daily Lives of High School Boys）. Hidenori's scenes of identifying himself as "JYAAACK!" are the stuff of legend as far as I am concerned.
So way back when apparently, it wasn't just the girls who were having the nutso times at school. I witnessed some more of the hilarity on "Danshi Kokosei no Nichijo" and then I encountered this series of vignettes featuring Hidenori and Yassan The Literature Girl. Watching this repeated parody on the trope of high school boy meets high school girl on the bank of a river for some deep talk on love reminded me of some of the running gags on American comedy-variety shows such as "Laugh-In".
The parody lays it on real thick leading to the nutty hilarity partially because of the musical accompaniment that comes on each time. In fact, the wistfully sad piano ditty is even titled after the lass herself, "Bungaku Shojo" (Literature Girl), and as a number of commenters on YouTube have said, this would normally have presaged a very bittersweet sequence involving a terminally ill student or the death of the family dog. Instead, it probably has garnered some knowing snickers and laughter due to all of the deadpan slapstick.
Ena sang this with Yasunobu Yamauchi（山内泰延）, the original author of the manga,coming up with the lyrics while Audio Highs composed the Kleenex-worthy melody.
I would like to welcome veteran seiyuu Yoko Hikasa（日笠陽子）to "Kayo Kyoku Plus". From some of her roles and her live appearances, I've gotten the impression that she may be just as loopy as Sugita. Hikasa is the Literature Girl, who actually doesn't say too much but she doesn't need to. To be honest, I can't really distinguish her voice with Ena's when she sings her own theme song. But hey, it's a nice ballad.
