Ikuzo Yoshi -- Venezia Monogatari（ヴェネツィア物語）

 

As I mentioned in my previous article on Masako Oka's（岡雅子） "Yume Zaiku"（夢細工）, Japan has entered its annual Golden Week holidays and so has its television programming. So, this morning, instead of the usual hour-long NHK "News Watch 9", we only got an abbreviated version of the news for half an hour and then for the next hour, we were able to watch a new hour-long episode of "Sekai wa Hoshiimono ni Afureteru"（世界はほしいモノにあるふれてる...This World is Filled With Wants）, the program specializing on the voyages and adventures of Japanese buyers looking for innovative products to place in their stores back home. 

"Seka Hoshi" did have a regular spot on either Tuesday or Wednesday but it's now been coming out as the occasional special. I've enjoyed the series as something calming to watch so I was able to lap up the latest trip by co-host Ryota Suzuki（鈴木亮平）as he enjoyed the sights, sounds and food of Italy including the magical city of Venice. I confess that I've never had much of a desire to travel but after seeing the images of the shops, canals and restaurants in the Italian city, some spark of interest welled up within me about this particular place.

Well, I figured that there must be a kayo kyoku about Venice somewhere since Shinichi Mori（森進一）was able to get a hit out of his 1982 song "Fuyu no Riviera"（冬のリヴィエラ）. And sure enough, it didn't take much of a search to discover that another enka veteran, Ikuzo Yoshi（吉幾三）, came up with his own tribute to Venice, "Venezia Monogatari" (Venice Story). A track from his February 2015 album "Ai Arigato"（愛・ありがとう...Love, Thank You）, Yoshi wrote and composed this love-drenched tale of romance within the City of Canals. With the instrumentation and rhythm involved, I have categorized it as a New Adult Music piece (somewhere between enka and pop) but there was still something...probably Yoshi's vocals...that still pulled the song strongly back to the enka side.

Masako Oka -- Yume Zaiku（夢細工）/Masako Oka & Noriko Ishiwatari -- Mako to Nonko no Gokigen Ikaga 1-2-3（マコとノンコのごきげんいかが1・2・3）

 

Happy Monday! It's just the start of another regular work week here in the Greater Toronto Area although we will be getting our first major holiday weekend for the summer season in a few weeks with Victoria Day. It is the beginning of the Golden Week holidays in Japan, though, and as a result, it feels that way in my household, partially because Jme has gone onto holiday programming with the regular shows going on GW hiatus.

Well, whichever side of the International Date Line you are on, let's proceed with this week's crop of kayo kyoku/J-Pop delights with a fairly unusual single. Masako Oka（岡雅子）doesn't have a particularly long J-Wiki file but she is a seiyuu, singer and radio personality although there is no discography listed there for her music. However, there is at least one of her singles up on YouTube titled "Yume Zaiku" (Dream Work) which was released in August 1981. Written by Man Kuroki（くろき漫）, composed by Koji Shiba（柴公二）and arranged by Tadashige Matsui（松井忠重）, it's a very polished piece of down-home City Pop with a touch of bossa nova, reminiscent of Keiko Maruyama's（丸山圭子）classic "Douzo Kono Mama" (どうぞこのまま）from several years back, and the cover of the single revealing an intentionally foggy photo of the singer giving that thousand-yard gaze seals the deal. 

Now, the unusual part happens with a flip of the 45". The B-side is "Mako to Nonko no Gokigen Ikaga 1-2-3" (Mako and Nonko's How Are You 1-2-3) is a wholly different animal as Oka and Noriko Ishiwatari（石渡のり子）, another radio personality, make their tongue-in-cheek debut as rappers, some months following Blondie's "Rapture". Listening to it, I can't really take this song too seriously compared to the straightforward "Yume Zaiku". But it was indeed Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）of Yellow Magic Orchestra at the time behind its composition with Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and the comedy group Snakeman Show behind the weird lyrics. In fact, I'd say that the melody and at least some of the words sound rather familiar to me as I suspect that Snakeman Show may have done a cover of their own work.

Maybe one clue as to how Oka and Ishiwatari got together was the observation that both of them had their time as hosts on different nights for the April 1976-September 1977 TBS radio late-night show "Five Sweet Cats"（5スイート・キャッツ）. 

Wakako Maruyama -- Kokoro no Niji（心の虹）

Good Free Photos

 

At first, when I heard this July 1932 record, "Kokoro no Niji" (The Rainbow of My Heart) by singer Wakako Maruyama（丸山和歌子）, I thought it was the legendary Masao Koga（古賀政男）behind its composition. My impression came by because of that particular guitar plucking in the intro, but the music was actually created by Shigeru Tamura（田村しげる）with lyrics by Koichi Hamano（浜野耕一）.

Maruyama, who was born in the Kanda district of Tokyo in 1905, was known for her especially high soprano, and that's certainly made clear in "Kokoro no Niji", a song about a woman pining for that special someone one night under the moon glowing through her bedroom window. Also because of that Koga reference, I was also left wondering whether "Kokoro no Niji" could be seen as an enka tune although the traditional genre only began retroactively from the 1950s and 1960s, but I can gather that at the time, it was more than likely treated as a kayo kyoku.

The singer started her career on the stage in 1931, but then moved to the recording booth before moving back to the stage again in 1937. According to a music writer's accounts from Maruyama's family, she was killed during the Tokyo air bombings in 1945. However, some 74 years later in 2019, a CD collection of 23 of her songs was released titled "Naicha Ikenai Maruyama Wakako no Heya 1931-1936"（泣いちゃいけない 丸山和歌子の部屋 1931-1936...You Mustn't Cry ~ Wakako Maruyama's Room）.

The Sherrys -- Omoide no Sherry（想い出のシェリー）

 

Earlier this morning, Scott from "Holly Jolly X'masu" cottoned me onto this very short-lived Group Sounds band known as The Sherries（ザ・シェリーズ）. Not surprisingly, because of the brevity of their existence, there isn't any J-Wiki page devoted to them but I was able to find one site which did feature them. Apparently, the band was formed from the remnants of another short-lived folk rock group called The Black Stones（ブラック・ストーンズ）which came out with one lone single.

Well, bassist Yutaka Miyagawa（宮川豊）and drummer Michihiro Tani（谷迪弘）formerly of The Black Stones got some new band members, including vocalist Tatsuo Kimura（木村達男）, to form The Sherries and as with their previous incarnation, they were able to put out just one single called "Omoide no Sherry" (Sherry, Come Back) in November 1967. Written and composed by the band with Kunihiko Suzuki（鈴木邦彦）arranging everything in what must have been one of his earliest assignments, it's very much along the lines of a GS tune but I also think it sounds fairly rough as if the five members were still in the act of gelling. Well, as it turned out, they never did gel due to some internal strife and that one single was all she wrote. The Sherries never did come back (thank you, I'll just see myself out).😁

One piece of trivia that I did find from the above site is that The Sherries, while they were still getting along, decided (or their manager decided) to perform the A and B sides from "Omoide no Sherry" continuously on stage somewhere for 32 straight hours. The gimmick paid off in the single becoming a minor hit.

Miki Yamazaki -- Namida no Ato ni Kuchizuke wo（涙のあとに接吻を）

 

One of the people I follow on Twitter put this 1986 song up a few weeks ago and wondered why it didn't get much more in the way of respect or rankings. To be honest, after listening to it myself, I'm also left in askance. Unfortunately, I've forgotten which person it was who made the initial call so let me know so I can give credit where credit is due.

I am talking about actress Miki Yamazaki's（山崎美貴）"Namida no Ato ni Kuchizuke wo" (Kiss After the Rain), and I note that the above profession is the only one listed for Yamazaki right off the bat and that her career origin year has been put down as 1988. However, looking further into J-Wiki, I found out that the Yokohama native who had won the White Cinderella contest while in high school in the early 1980s and then scouted in Harajuku got into show business as a magazine model. Then, she joined the late-night TV show "All-Night Fuji"（オールナイトフジ）and ended up joining two other girls to form the short-lived aidoru trio Okawari Sisters（おかわりシスターズ）in 1984 with four singles and one studio album going up to early 1985.

Yamazaki had an even shorter career as a solo singer with two singles and one album under her belt beginning in 1985. Her second single was the aforementioned "Namida no Ato ni Kuchizuke wo" which was released in March 1986. To me, it's the quintessential aidoru tune of the latter half of the 1980s with the singer surrounded by a creamy yet bopping keyboard arrangement thanks to composer Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）that has always been catnip for my Japanese pop-loving ears. Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）was the lyricist, and with those two behind its creation, I can say that it was most likely put in as aidoru material.

The song did moderately OK by scoring a No. 56 ranking on Oricon and that was the end of her singing career apparently, although I think her vocals were quite pleasant and pure. But perhaps with so many aidoru songs taking on that certain arrangement, the competition was probably a little too crowded and fierce for Yamazaki the singer to make much headway, so into acting she went a few years later.

Original Love -- Love Vista

 

Hopefully, you viewers out there are enjoying a far better and sunnier weekend than what we're getting right now in Toronto. It's pretty dreary out there and we just got the news that Southeast Asian hammerhead worms with acidic skin have invaded our province of Ontario which ought to make playing outside with the kids that much more exciting.

It was just a week ago when Takao Tajima（田島貴男）, aka Original Love, made his special appearance on NHK's morning show "Asaichi"（あさイチ）alongside the Friday episode guests Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra so that they could together give a rousing performance of "Mekureta Orange" (めくれたオレンジ). I bet any viewers were no longer groggy after that, especially fans of both acts.

Well, coincidentally, a few days ago, I came across this early Original Love song from their July 1991 debut album "LOVE! LOVE! & LOVE!" when the band was more than Tajima and had a few more members. The first thing I noticed about "Love Vista" is that it's over twelve minutes long! Not that I haven't encountered songs with epic times before...Chaz Jankel's original "Ai no Corrida" is around the 10-minute mark and one of his other tunes on his first album times in at around 15 minutes, but I think "Love Vista" may be the first Japanese pop song that I've heard that has gone into the double digits in terms of time.

But, hey, it's Tajima, so I gotta dive in. Right from the beginning, I get that beatnik psychedelic private underground party feeling from the mantra-like scatting by Tajima and the hypnotic rhythm including the percussion. The cover for "LOVE! LOVE! & LOVE!" seems just perfect for the song since I could imagine the vocalist and his guys sitting cross-legged with the ladies as they all zone out to "Love Vista".

A lot of the song is instrumental but the lyrics that Tajima provides weaves a story of some guy's intention to love a girl cell by cell. Looks like things are going to get really hot and bothered tonight. However, the music by the band is just as sultry and sexy and smooth as it mixes in jazz, soul and maybe some of the more placid take on psychedelic rock. I was kinda wondering about Shibuya-kei as well but that genre is more of a very extroverted sunny-side type of music out in the cafés and parks, and as I mentioned above, "Love Vista" has more of a secret basement vibe with lots of smoke from cigarettes and other paraphernalia and not a lot of light. And besides, I do remember the rumour of Tajima yelling at one concert, "I AM NOT SHIBUYA-KEI!".  

Listening to "Love Vista" with all of those influences, I'm reminded of another song that invited in a few genres to its party with great success: Boz Scaggs' "Lowdown".

Yutaka Kimura Speaks ~ Japanese City Pop Masterpieces 100: Mikiko Noda -- Travelin' Heart

 

Number: 055

Lyricist: Mikiko Noda

Composer: Tomofumi Suzuki

From Noda's 1990 album: "Vacances est Vacances"

Listening to "Travelin' Heart", I thought of this as a resort tune reminiscent of the Fifth Dimension's "Up Up and Away" when right in the middle of the song, the chorus of "Up Up and Away" popped up! Through Tomofumi Suzuki's（鈴木智文）meticulous production and Noda's（野田幹子）classy vocals, this is a refreshing song to the ears and it's reminiscent of the resort pop at the time of her debut which had a fresh impression even in the 1990s.

The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).