Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama

From what I have been able to gather - which unfortunately isn’t much - Tetsuya Ryu wrote the song “Okuhida Bakujyo” (”Longing For Okuhida”) on his own (lyrics and music) and found himself having what is apparently his only hit single, selling over 130,000 copies. In a culture (the Japanese pop world) where the stars are supposed to look as good as they sound, Tetsuya Ryu looks like the Japanese edition of Joe Average: the kind of person that works his butt off as a salaryman during the week and then goes out on the weekends to grab the mic at his favorite karaoke house and belt out a few tunes. In short, a seemingly unlikely pop star.

Both “Okuhida Bakujyo” and its B-side, “Su Su Ragi No Yado” (”Inn Of Babble”), are typical, pretty, male-led enka ballads, heavy on the emotional vocal. In 1980, the year this song came out, he was named Best New Artist on Besuto hitto kay?sai, earning him some Japanese TV appearances like this one:

The song seems to show up only on compilations, but of late there are three other CD singles that this gentleman has released in recent years on independent labels, including a remake of “Okuhida Bakujyo”. Apparently this remake appears on the soundtrack to the film The Cats Of Mirikitani, which aired recently on PBS.

While Ryu hasn’t been able to duplicate the success of his 28-year-old hit, it’s apparently still a karaoke favorite in Japan:

If anyone knows anything else about this guy, I’d like to know.

The scan of the picture sleeve is courtesy of Snow Records Japan..
Please read the disclaimer if downloading the mp3 files.

I just got a stack of 45s in the mail today.

Fifty of them.

All Japanese. and dating between 1968 and 1990.

I’ll explain quickly: A couple of weeks ago, I won an eBay auction for a lot of fifty Japanese 45s. The seller, very helpfully, provided post-it notes on each single with the artist and titles written in romaji, which is a big help to this gaijin who is practically illiterate in the language that fascinates him so. I spent the past 90 minutes or so cataloging all 50 of these singles into an Excel database file.

Now the real fun part begins.

As often as I can, I’m going to write about each of these 45s - both sides, what I think of the songs, and whatever I can find out about the artists. I’ll even share vinyl rips of these recordings. For anyone interested in earlier Japanese pop/enka/kayokyoku, this should be a treat. It sure is already one for me as a collector of records and a fan of Japanese music and culture.

The new singles from Miki Fujimoto and Viyuden arrived in my PO Box today, just in time for their release date back in Japan - Miki’s first solo single since leaving Morning Musume and Viyuden’s last single ever. (Stupidly, I forgot to pre-order C-ute’s single, otherwise I would have gotten that today as well. Alas, I rectified that situation, but too late for me to get the version with the DVD.)

Miki’s new single, “Okitegami”, is two cuts of music in the kayokyoku style (according to Tokyograph’s article on Mikitty’s comeback). Googling for the term “kayokyoku” turns up this article in Wikipedia:

Kayokyoku is a genre of Japanese music. Kayokyoku is usually translated as “popular music” and first appeared in Japan after World War II. ‘Kayo’ literally means ‘balladry’.

Music in this genre is extremely varied, but in its broadest meaning kayokyoku refers to popular music with lyrics, excluding folk songs and children’s songs. Kayokyoku in the narrower and more practical sense, however, also excludes J-Pop and enka.

At the same time, Wikipedia’s article on enka states that kayokyoku is basically enka music developed during the Showa period of Japanese history. Kayokyoku and enka seem to turn up the same artists when browsing both iTunes US and iTunes Japan (and Pink Lady turns up in the kayokyoku category in iTunes Japan). I was tempted to say they were enka right away when I first wrote this blog article since Mikitty’s new single was released by Rice Music, the UFW subsidiary distributed by King that also has Yuki Maeda on the roster. iTunes (both here and in Japan) lists the song as being under the kayokyoku category.

Anyway, the single and its enka/kayokyoku style is an interesting diversion stylistically from her MoMusu and GAM material. I have been interested in enka/kayokyoku for awhile (long before Jero showed up - some Japanese vinyl albums I’ve gotten in recent weeks via eBay are apparently kayokyoku/enka) but locating information on that particular genre is a bit difficult.

On the cover, Miki looks dead fucking serious. A year away from Morning Musume, she looks as if she is ready to prove herself in a different musical arena. Both songs, “Okitegami” and “Tooi Koibito”, are beautiful ballads and Mikitty handles them very well. You would have to hear the songs to really do them justice.

What I really found interesting about the single was that enclosed in the single was a sheet of glossy paper containing the vocal sheet music for one’s karaoke pleasure, along with the lyrics written out in the traditional right-to-left, up-to-down style. “Okitegami” is in B-flat minor and “Tooi Koibito” is in C-sharp minor. (I would have scanned at least one of the sides of the sheet as an example, but in the interest of not wanting to spend wedding, food, and record money on legal bills stemming from a copyright fight - not to mention energy I could be using finishing my novel or fucking my fiancee - I declined.) I am presuming that this is standard operating procedure for enka and kayokyoku recordings - one is more than welcome to tell me otherwise.

Ultimately, this single makes me want to find more enka and kayokyoku music. I just wish I knew where to really start. Yuko Nakazawa’s early solo work and Yuki Maeda’s singles have had me interested in enka and kayokyoku for some time, and Jero’s fine work so far (yeah, I know, just one single… but what a single!) has started to increase that interest. Miki Fujimoto’s new single is just more welcome fuel for the fire.