Sumiko Toyohiro/Yoshie Kashiwabara -- Tawamure no Koi no Mama ni（たわむれの恋のままに）

Commenter Mike gave me a tip back in April this year via my article on Yoshie Kashiwabara's（柏原芳恵）21st single "Saiai"（最愛）about this obscure singer named Sumiko Toyohiro（豊広純子）and her December 1982 single, "Tawamure no Koi no Mama ni" (Tumbling Head Over Heels). Toyohiro provided the lyrics and later, Yoshie-chan would cover it herself in the album "Saiai" in 1984. Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）came up with the melody.

Well, it's here now...and please...let it be here for a good long while. "Tawamure no Koi no Mama ni" is a sizzling torch song (perhaps approaching Level: Acetylene) that can belong to the classy night bar side of City Pop. Kimihiko Shiraishi（白石公彦）composed the shibui melody which should be served with a tumbler of the bar's very best scotch. Perhaps it can even be considered to be a representative of Fashion Music. According to one Japanese blog, "Tawamure" was created as an entry for the 13th Annual World Popular Song Festival sponsored by the Yamaha Music Foundation in 1982.

Along with the shibui aspect that I like in the ballad, I also enjoy Toyohiro's voice since it reminds me a lot of the fine vocals of Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）. I can easily imagine Ohashi covering this one as well. Since Kashiwabara covered it, I also have to mention one other interesting aspect. At first, from listening to "Tawamure", the refrain had me thinking that this was the original version of a completely different Yoshie song since the refrain in that one sounds quite similar. In fact, the song that I had been thinking about was "Shinobi Ai"（し・の・び・愛）, actually created by a different singer-songwriter which I will have to write about very soon.

As for Toyohiro herself, aside from the blog that I mentioned in the last paragraph and what Mike had told me, I have yet to find anything else substantial about the singer-songwriter herself. She did release one album "Water Heart", but methinks that this is one album that would be a lost treasure to track down.

hi-posi -- You Are My Music

For all of those folks who are new and ravenous for Shibuya-kei, I think that I may have found just the album for you.

wikipedia.org

There was a compilation album released by Bungalow Records back in 1998 called "Sushi 4004" that is out as an LP and in CD format chock-filled with some of those samples of Shibuya-kei artists such as Fantastic Plastic Machine, Pizzicato Five and Takako Minekawa（嶺川貴子）.

To find out about the existence of "Sushi 4004" (which sounds like the final piece of fish on rice I had at a buffet years ago before I collapsed), I accidentally came across this song by duo hi-posi（ハイポジ）which happens to be on the album called "You Are My Music". Partnering some hip-wiggling Latin with a bit of technopop, it's also helped by Miho Moribayashi's（もりばやしみほ）characteristically sexy and whispery vocals for a sound experience that calls for a glass of caipirinha.

Now I figured that since "Sushi 4004" is a collection of Shibuya-kei songs, "You Are My Music" must have had a source in the hi-posi discography. And it appears that it had been released as a 12" single in July 1997 with the tracks being different remixes of the song whose title has incidentally been translated into Japanese: "Kimi no Koe wa Boku no Ongaku"（君の声は僕の音楽）.

Hiromi Iwasaki -- Conversation（カンバセーション）

Whenever I write up a Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）article on a song of hers that originates from the late 1970s and early 1980s, I get a tad pensive because then I start wondering whether the song would still be categorized as an aidoru tune or as a pop number. It's almost like trying to answer the question "When did kayo kyoku make the transition into J-Pop?" All of us Hiromi Iwasaki fans know that the subject of our admiration has been blessed with a talented set of vocal cords so that pretty much anything that she has sung since her debut in the mid-1970s was a cut above the usual aidoru tune. Generally though, for the purposes of this blog and overall sanity, I have generally made 1980 the borderline between the aidoru period of her discography and her pop period. Even with that line in the sand though, I know that the singer had performed some pretty mature-sounding music a few years before that.

https://music.apple.com/jp/album/%E3%83%91%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89%E3%83%A9%E3%81%AE%E5%B0%8F%E7%AE%B1/251301593

(brief excerpt only)

One well-worn running trope that I've mentioned throughout the history of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" is always look out for those non-single tracks on albums. There's a reason that I've also invested in original studio albums by great singers and not just relied on their BEST albums alone, and Iwasaki is another one of those great singers. For example, from "Pandora no Kobako"（パンドラの小箱...Pandora's Box）, her 7th album released in August 1978, comes a track titled simply "Conversation".

Keeping with stubborn KKP/Iwasaki tradition, this is within Iwasaki aidoru territory, but in all honesty, "Conversation" is hardly aidoru material to my ears. It starts off at a very leisurely pace and gently evolves into a soulful melody surrounding a city apartment and a dramatic situation between a man and a woman. The song is ironically titled since the point is that some things really need not be verbalized to get the message of love across.

The creators of "Conversation" is the veteran team of Jun Hashimoto and Kyohei Tsutsumi（橋本淳・筒美京平）who were together a decade back helping out the Group Sounds bands. Well, this is them driving into a more City Pop/AOR direction. As Tsutsumi melodically keeps the simmering fire of passion burning, Hashimoto weaves a story of a woman perhaps making amends with her somewhat conflicted beau at her door after it looks like he's been through a few rounds with some other young toughs. In a way, I also thought about Adrian and Rocky Balboa back in those times, although I would never consider thinking of replacing "Gotta Fly Now" even with this Iwasaki love song.

As for "Pandora no Kobako", it scored a peak of No. 11. The album also contains one of Iwasaki's greatest hits, the uptempo "Cinderella Honeymoon"（シンデレラ・ハネムーン）.

Hiromi Go -- Wakasa no Catharsis（若さのカタルシス）

ca·thar·sis /kəˈTHärsəs/
noun
1. the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions.
(from Google)

Yup, this is a word that I learned from my high school English class way back when. It was one of the several terms that had been taught to us in class to assist us in explaining various things when we tackled the literary classics. However, being a Trekkie, it was best used when I saw Spock or any other Vulcan atypically go nuts on "Star Trek".

True, catharsis isn't exactly a word that would be bandied about in regular conversation, although maybe its adjectival form, cathartic, has a bit more mileage. So it's even more unusual to see the verbatim word actually used in a title for a Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）song. Even the J-Wiki article for Go's 36th single, "Wakasa no Catharsis" (Catharsis of Youth), had to provide some clarity for the word, and from the article itself, I learned that when the song was featured on "The Best 10", the definition was placed on screen since most likely viewers and everyone else at the studio had question marks hovering their heads.

Anyways, I've fully spent half the article more or less on catharsis. Let us get into the song itself. "Wakasa no Cartharsis" was released in November 1980 which was incidentally an ideal time for it to come out since, as I've said all along, autumn is the time when romances come to die. Yoko Aki's（阿木燿子）lyrics indeed touch upon the very topic although I'm not sure whether the emotion involved is all that strong. However, Shunichi Tokura's（都倉俊一）melody is plenty bouncy in somewhat of a European way. In fact, I think that there is a road trip across the countryside in that music.

In addition, I have to say that Go was really rocking that hairstyle on the record cover. You go, Go! The song hit No. 15 on Oricon and ended up on his 16th album "How Many Ii Kao?" (How Many いい顔）which came out on New Year's Day in 1981.

Saki Kubota -- Shanghai no Nostalgie（上海ノスタルジー）

Well, it's been a few years, so welcome back, Saki Kubota（久保田早紀）!

Famous for her big hit, "Ihojin"（異邦人）from 1979, the singer-songwriter represented that brief and interesting part of kayo kyoku in the late 1970s and early 1980s in which listeners were taken on a musical journey of exotic lands without needing Gravol or travel insurance. Kubota apparently kept that exotic theme in mind for the first few albums in her career, at least as far as her 4th album, "Air Mail Special" from May 1981.

One of the tracks from "Air Mail Special" is "Shanghai no Nostalgie" (Shanghai Nostalgia) which keeps that feeling of travel but combines it with some of that snazzy City Pop bombast. The song is armed with a battery of horns, some bouncy bass, and even a sparkling guitar. Kubota composed it while Tamaki Kawata（川田多摩喜）provided the lyrics about two lovers divided by geographical distance but still united by emotion. Shanghai or Tokyo...it's still the bright lights and big city of the 1980s!

Taeko Ohnuki -- Dare no Tame ni（誰のために）

This is just the song to listen to on a Wednesday afternoon. There was a genre that was bandied about in Japan called healing music which I think is a part of easy listening music over here in the West, and although this song is actually over 41 years old, it can easily fulfill a role as an audio salve of sorts.

Absence indeed does make the heart (and ears) grow fonder, and it was with a pleasant "surprise" that I've come across Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）"Dare no Tame ni" (For Who?). This is a track from Ohnuki's 2nd solo album "Sunshower" that I've covered through two articles, but I've not had a chance to cover this particular number (oh yeah?).

"Dare no Tame ni" is a gloriously mellow song by Ohnuki that straddles jazz and AOR, and even had me thinking of the late Vince Guaraldi in parts. The keyboardist could either have been Ryuichi Sakamoto（坂本龍一）or Yuh Imai（今井裕）, but whoever it was, the song is also a showcase for him as he trips the light fantastic on the keys.

This melodic swaddling blanket also conceals some iron resolution from someone who's determined to press on with what he/she wants to do in life despite the opposition. In fact, I will let Ms. Ohnuki give her own thoughts on what she was thinking about when she came up with "Dare no Tame ni" via translation through a 1983 article in the journal "Music Steady" according to the J-Wiki article for "Sunshower":

I feel that this is surely a cry from the disadvantaged. There are cases in which the world will truly not accept you unless you have status or prestige, and there are points there that I want to complain about. It's very difficult to press forward with what you want to do, so you tend to want to flee sometimes, but you don't know whether you will become happy or satisfied if you do so, so it's an extremely unstable time. This is the sort of song which illustrates how far you will push ahead stubbornly with what you are protecting.

As I said at the top, this can be a form of healing music.

Aimyon -- Marigold（マリーゴールド）

As expected, last week, the participants in this year's Kohaku Utagassen on NHK were announced, and by my token, it looks like the enka part of the annual show has decreased somewhat more which is kinda too bad. But there are some new faces to see as well in 5 weeks including this young lady named Aimyon（あいみょん）.

Born in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture, Aimyon is a singer-songwriter who has listed among her inspirations Shogo Hamada（浜田省吾）, Flipper's Guitar（フリッパーズ・ギター）and Ken Hirai（平井堅）, although in an interview for her 5th single on the pop culture news site, Natalie, she has mentioned that she has yet to settle on what her sound is.

That 5th single is "Marigold" from August 2018 and I've been enjoying the song for that very sound which is reminiscent of some of the guitar pop that I used to hear back in the 1990s. It wouldn't be too bad if some of that pop/rock music returned again for another go-round. I had also been wondering where the music video was filmed; as it turns out, it's Shanghai according to the rockin'on.com site. "Marigold" peaked at No. 26 on Oricon. Aimyon has also just released her 6th single in the last week, "Konya Kono Mama"（今夜このまま...Tonight Like This）.

Here's hoping that she does well on New Year's Eve.🍸