A This Side of Japan Playlist: Oricon #1s, 1980-1989

A Spotify playlist of songs that made it to the top of the Oricon during the '80s plus a brief commentary on the decade according to the charts

It’s been a minute since the last newsletter. The next issue is still in early production, but I wanted to send out a little something to make up for a lack of content from me. Here is a Spotify playlist of the Oricon number-ones from 1980–1989, sequenced in chronological order as they first appeared on the charts. I’d say about 25% of it was not available on Spotify.

The decade on the charts begins pretty quick, with the arrival of Seiko Matsuda as well as Masahiko Kondo, a.k.a. Matchy, signaling things to come. A few years after Seiko scores her first number-one with “Kaze Wa Aki Iro,” idols start to occupy the number-one spot nearly every week. Matsuda, Akina Nakamori, and Kyoko Koizumi practically alternate the top position in 1984; Matchy sees competition in Checkers that same year. Onyanko Club introduces an even bigger idol saturation to the Oricon, particularly in 1986, whose chart is covered by releases from its members such as Eri Nitta, Sonoko Kawai and Sayuri Kokusho. The band boom gives the last year of the Oricon a gasp of fresh air, but it still sees an act like Otokogumi of idols grasping at the band image.

The omission of Johnny’s music is perhaps expected in this playlist, and it’s a great loss not being able to represent Shonentai, Hikaru Genji, or, yes, Matchy. Though, later decades suffers more from the company’s absence — try telling the story of 2000s J-pop without KAT-TUN, NEWS or Tackey & Tsubasa. Shonentai and Hikaru Genji provides a break from the female idols populating the 1988 charts, like Shizuka Kudo, Yoko Minamino and Yui Asaka, but they are nevertheless another set of acts participating in the idol saturation of its decade.

One of the more interesting entry comes from a non-Japanese single — the last of its kind until 1995 with Celine Dion. The success of Irene Cara’s “Flashdance… What a Feeling” in 1983 seems prescient in what would come to define the sounds of Japanese pop later in the ’80s and beyond. While it didn’t quite usher in Eurobeat all on its own — you’d have ABBA to thank for laying down the path before Cara — the song marks an early preview of the sensibilities present in ’80s Europop that draw in Japanese audiences. Just imagine J-pop without the hi-NRG of Stock Aiken Waterman and their ilk: it’s a shame Yoko Oginome’s “Dancing Hero (Eat You Up)” didn’t make it to the top, though you still have Akemi Ishii’s cover of Italo disco hit “CHA CHA CHA” or Wink adopting Kylie Minogue’s “Turn It into Love” for their number-one.

It feels just right that the 80s chart formally end with Tatsuro Yamashita’s “Christmas Eve.” The revival of Yamashita’s 1983 single seems like the mainstream catching up with its alternative scenes, especially of one of the figures who has come to represent the decade as a kind of golden age, but it’s more a look ahead into the future forces that help generate a hit: originally only performing to #44 on the Oricon, the single got a second life in 1989 through the now-classic commercial for JR Central. Ad placement has been the story of J-pop success since at least the late ’70s, and commercial tie-ins continues to be intertwined with the performance of hits well after “Christmas Eve”: 1991 for example features two big J-drama song giants, Kazumasa Oda’s “Love Story Wa Totsuzenni” and CHAGE and ASKA’s “SAY YES.”

Obviously, the charts only tell one part of the whole story of Japanese music in the 1980s, but enjoy the most popular sounds available during the decade.

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