Japanese Music!!

Another way to waste time on You Tube, it turns out, is to look up old Japanese pop music of the 60s and 70s.

I've mentioned on this blog several times that while I was in Japan I really got into Japanese oldies. But up until now I haven't discovered a way to share these treasures with you my blogging audience. Now thanks to the magic of "You Tube", I hope you can enjoy some of these treasures with me.

***One quick disclaimer--I suppose it goes without saying that with "You Tube", you don't necessarily get everything you want. Instead you take what you can find. Many of my favorite songs I couldn't track down, others had been removed due to copyright violations. (It appears NHK--Japan's National broadcast system--has been cracking down on copyright violations on "You Tube" recently). But I hope the following can at least give you a taste

First up is "Ue o muete Aruko" by Sakamoto Kyu, better known in the US as "The Sukiyaki Song". If this song sounds familiar, it is because it was the only Japanese song to chart on the US Pop charts. Not only that, it made it all the way to #1 in 1960, pushing out "It's my Party and I'll cry if I want to." (There was also a really lame English cover of this song in the 1980s by the American group 4PM-which might also be why the tune sounds familiar).

Next is "The Peanuts" (whom I mentioned in this post back here.) They're most famous in the USA for their role as the twin priestess fairies in the 1960s Mothra movies. Here's a video of the "Mothra song" from one of those movies. It's interesting to note that the lyrics aren't Japanese but rather Japanese approximations of the Malay language (Mothra, you'll recall, was from an exotic far away Island, so I guess singing in Japanese wouldn't have given the song the exotic flavour).
In Japan, however, "The Peanuts" were had a famous singing career outside of these movies. They can be seen singing their greatest hit: "Koi no Vacance" here.
[Update: And it looks like You Tube pulled the Mothra video already. Copyright violations. What can I say folks, the dangers of trying to link to You Tube. At the moment I can't find another copy of the original Peanuts, but here is the Mothra song by Pair Bambi, who took over after the Peanuts retired from the role in the late 60s. And the updated modern techno version.)also someone has posted a whole Mothra movie on line. This one (section 8) features the original Peanuts singing a secondary Mothra song. It's not the most famous summoning song, but I'm sure that one is somewhere on this movie if you want to look through it.

Next up is "The Candies", a Japanese girl group from the early 70s. Not serious music, but a lot of fun. They have a lot of videos on the web, so I'll just pick and choose some. Here is the video of "Toshishita no otoko no ko" or "We Love Younger Boys". (Shoko is 9 months older than me so I often tease her about this song.)
Also by the Candies: "Anata ni Yumechu", "Uchiki na aitsu" "Heart no ace wa detekonai"

Unfortunately I couldn't find The Candies's biggest hit: "Haruichiban". It appears NHK is really cracking down on that one. At least I couldn't find the original version by the original artists. Instead I found a rather bluesy cover of it here. As in the US, it is popular for alternative Japanese bands to do satiric covers of old pop hits. In a lot of ways this cover is actually cooler than the original, although it would have been nice to show you the original first for comparisons sake.

There's also a lot of "Pink Lady" on the web. "Pink Lady" is a girl duo from the late 70s. Since I like the old stuff the best, the late 70s is pushing the boundary for me. However "Pink Lady" is very popular among Japanese women in their mid 30s who remember it from their childhood. Whenever I talked about Japanese music with my Japanese teacher, she would always bring up "Pink Lady." And their music was always a popular karaoke favorite for the 30 somethings at our office parties.
Anyway: Pink Lady's biggest hit, UFO, can be seen here. Also good fun are Monster and South Paw and Pepper Keibu. Again none of these are great music from an objective standpoint, but they're bouncy and a bit cheesy and a lot of fun. If nothing else you can just watch the girls dance around in their cute outfits. And if you want to increase the cheesiness factor, here's their cover of "Stop in the Name of Love"

And if you want to combine your fun even more, here's a sing off between "The Candies" and "Pink Lady." (Actually, this does contain parts of "Haruichiban" by the original Candies, so it is probably worth watching just for that). And their combined powers on the Pink Lady Song "Pepper Keibu" here.

Okay, now that I've gotten the silly stuff out of the way:
My favorite Japanese artist is Yoshida Takuro, who was big in the Japanese folk-rock scene in the late 60s/ early 70s. He's been described as the "Japanese Bob Dylan", but I think his stuff is melodic enough that it's closer to the electric folk sounds of Simon and Garfunkel.
Again, unfortunately it looks like NHK has been cracking down on this a bit, and its hard to find videos of his big hits, at least during the time they were popular (there are some videos of the older Yoshida Takuro singing his great hits in concert). That being said, hopeful this will suffice for a brief introduction:
Rakuyo, one of his more famous songs, although it looks like this video is the older Yoshida Takuro. Still, a decent rendition, even if they did add some awful 80s type harmonizing.

Kandegawa, another of his famous older songs being performed by the older Yoshida. And again, the original is better. In this concert version, it sounds a bit like old guy elevator music with the added harmonizing, but still probably worth checking out.

Now this video is the reverse of the other two. It's the younger Yoshida when he was still in his prime and his music had an edge to it, but unfortunately it isn't one of his better known songs.

Kazuki Tomokawa is another great folk singer from the early 70s. His stuff is more acid folk, and he does a lot of shouting when he sings, so it might seem a bit weird at first but give it a chance. Here is ikiterutteittemiro and issaigassaiyomosueda.

Here is archival footage of Student protesters in Japan fighting police against the backdrop of Japanese folk rock music. (For more info on the Japanese student movement, reference my old paper here)

Last up is "Group Sounds", which is the name for all the Japanese garage bands in the late 60s that were influenced by the British invasion (mainly the Beatles and Monkeys) . And once again I have to qualify this by saying I couldn't find a lot of the songs I was looking for, but this will have to suffice for an introduction.
This is a melody of different songs by different artists. When I was first learning Japanese, I used a lot of these songs to practice at the Karaoke, much to the annoyance of my other ex-patriot friends who finally banned me from putting any more Japanese songs into the Karaoke machine.

The most famous group from this era was "The Tigers". I can't find their big hits, but here is the Tiger's song "Yellow Cats". I used to have this song on rotation in my music tapes in my car. When he was riding with me once and this song came on, Chris from Usa commented that my music tastes had hit a new low. From then on just mentioning "Yellow Cats" would be his short hand for describing my eccentric musical tastes.

Some of the later "Group Sounds" were more psychedelic, such as this one by "The Mops". And "The Blue Comets" with "Blue Eyes" and "Blue Chateau".

Okay, I'll stop there. There are a lot more groups and songs I'd love to introduce, but this is all I can find for now, and no point doing too much at once anyway. I hope you'll check out at least some of this music. Remember it's always good to broaden your musical horizons.

Given that this whole post was just a bunch of links, I'll forgo my usual links at the end. You can rejoice or weep as you find appropriate.