Issue #5: Peaaaaaaaach!
Checking out the new Chara+YUKI album, an ugly part of Oricon history, and the ending credits song of idol-otaku anime Oshi Budo
Hello! Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter about Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here.
I recently began watching Oshi Ga Budoukan Ni Ittekuretara Shinu (If My Oshi Went to Budoukan, I Could Die), an anime about otaku Eripiyo and her undying love for Maina of the fictional idol group Cham Jam. The pilot episode introduced her mad obsession but also the lack of communication between the two characters: while Eripiyo is so vocal about her feelings about her favorite idol, Maina is too shy and overwhelmed by the gestures of her biggest fan to properly reciprocate. It doesn’t help the former puts the latter so high of a pedestal that she thinks she’s not worthy of her favorite’s attention.
That relationship makes “Momoiro Kataomoi such a great song to close out the episodes of Oshi Budo. Ai Fairouz, the voice actress of Eripiyo, sings the cover track originally by Aya Matsuura. While the 2002 original bounces with a classic idol-pop bubbliness, the Oshi Budo version slows it into more of a ballad arrangement. The protagonist’s world no longer glows brighter as she’s overwhelmed by her newfound feelings for someone else. She instead sounds burdened by her obsession as she sighs over the wistful music about her restless thoughts.
The Oshi Budo version also inserts a whole new dynamic to the song’s narrative. Fairouz as the performer brings Eripiyo’s personal issues to the track, turning the innocent crush song into one more about idol fans and their one-sided love (kataomoi) for their favorites. “I’m in love without even knowing,” she sighs in the chorus, and her heart skips a beat as their eyes accidentally meet. While her burning feelings towards her favorite idol can be expressed in a similar language as someone falling in love in a romantic sense, the melancholy arrangement reminds of the inconsolable distance between idol and fan that defines its own kind of relationship.
Now essentially re-written as a tribute to her oshi (her favorite or bias), Eripiyo’s cover of “Momoiro Kataomoi” touches on many relatable details about the idol-fan experience and how a random idol can suddenly become the center of your world. I, too, feel ridiculous obsessing over every little thing uploaded on social media by my oshi. But like Eripiyo, who works one grueling part-time shift after another just so she can meet Maina again for a few minutes, it’s sometimes exactly what I need so I can keep going.
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Speaking of idols, I recently published the first issue of Idol Watch, a companion to this newsletter that’s all about Japanese idols. I plan to post those every other month. There are no idols featured in this issue, but there’s a lot of wonderful pop from newcomers with exciting potential as well as legacy icons who’s still holding it down. And heads up: the Oricon feature for this issue covers the topic of blackface.
Album of the Week
Echo by Chara + YUKI [Sony]
Release date: February 14, 2020
Recommended track: “Tanoshii Kenobi” | Listen to the album on Spotify
Based on how Chara and Yuki explain the recording process behind their mini album, Echo, their recent reunion coinciding with the 20th anniversary of their initial team-up, the 1999 single “Ai No Hi Mittsu Orange,” is more of a neat excuse for the two friends to get together and make some music again. They prioritize having fun in the moment starting from the 2020 version of their collaborative single: Yuki breaks the formal mood toward the end as she goes off into a rap-inspired improvisation, shouting out random bio of herself like she’s standing in a B-boy stance.
Chara and Yuki waste no time ruminating the past as they ride out more of this exciting feeling of serendipity. After the re-recording of their first collaboration single, the record immediately fast-forwards to the present with the Seiho-produced house bop “You! You! You!” The two artists try out a buffet of pop styles throughout Echo, each of the seven tracks worthy of spearheading its own imaginary album. The mellow R&B of “Yoppite” goes into the starry stadium-rock of “Tori No Broch,” followed by “Night Track,” a hip-hop cut that sounds as if Yuki wanted to make her own “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem).”
If you’ve been following Chara and Yuki since the original “Ai No Hi Mittsu Orange,” perhaps it’s not as surprising to hear the two interact with such a diverse pool of styles. The delicate acoustic-guitar strumming of the title track as well as the sleek electro-funk of “Hitorikamonemu” take a piece from some parts of their long-spanning music career; the latter, for example, would fit comfortably alongside Chara’s latest album, 2018’s Baby Bump.
In a way, Echo simply continues what both Chara and Yuki have always done with their respective solo works: pursuing the new with what seems like every release. Their eccentric voices remain one of a kind, curling and accentuating syllables in inimitable ways as they have since their start in the ‘90s. If anything, they get better as with age as new rising styles inspire the singers to use their voice in many evocative ways. Echo proves the two have yet to go out of steam after more than two decades in the industry as long as they keep each other company.
Singles Club
“Limit” by Chelmico [Warner Music Japan]
No time to rest for Chelmico. The same day the rap duo made their debut on Music Station to perform their current hit, “Easy Breezy” from the anime Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken, they dropped another tie-up single, “Limit,” this time for the fitness chain Joyfit. Rachel and Mamiko lock into a rapid-fire flow as though they are subject of an intense exercise themselves, and the wonky, bass-heavy beat hardly offers any opportunity for them to slow down. The two sound unfazed by the demanding music, however, mastering this steely approach as skillfully as their more jubilant pop songs.
Listen on Spotify.
“Sparkle” by Iri [Jvckenwood]
“That night you spent crying and walking/ so you’ll fondly reminisce upon it: drive,” Iri advises in the chorus of “Sparkle.” The singer offers comfort for those who can use an escape from their dark thoughts during the late hours—“what kind of night made you so sad?” she sings—and it’s easy to get swept up by her sincerity as much as her stoic cool: her husky voice paired with the funky R&B beat presents a personality above petty emotion. Sony is lucky to have such a heart-warming pep talk serve as a commercial tie-up to move a pair of its headphones.
Listen on Spotify.
“Seishun Nikki” by Ryukku To Soine Gohan [Rice]
Like the song title suggests, Ryukku To Soine Gohan memorialize the glory days of their adolescence—their seishun—by banging out rock music that’s as exuberant, raw and fleeting in sensation as their subject matter. “Seishun Nikki” certainly taps into both a sound and theme that’s hardly unique to Japanese indie rock, but the result has yet to grow any stale when done right. Besides, Ryukku To Soine Gohan are just singing about what they know: this three-piece band of high-school seniors are living that very moment in transition from youth to adulthood—“the days that can only be written by me right now,” indeed.
Seishun Nikki is out now. Listen to the mini album on Spotify.
This Week in 1981…
“Machikado Twilight” by The Chanels [Epic, 1981]
No. 1 during the weeks of March 9-23, 1981 | Listen on YouTube
Japanese pop history isn’t without its ugly moments. Take Rats & Star, a Japanese doo-wop group who perform blackface.
The group initially debuted as The Chanels in 1980. Their first single, “Runaway,” an Oricon number-one, is textbook doo-wop with its group harmonies and a slow-tempo R&B sound. “Machikado Twilight,” meanwhile, incorporates a more rock influence to better fit the contemporary pop sound charting on the Oricon around the same time. The rhythm section and the brass riff also predict the post-disco direction they’ll pursue as they change their name into the now-known Rats & Star.
Rats & Star had a novelty factor playing into their success from the get go. Their music inspired “what is doo-wop?” headlines, but the band also attracted attention by wearing blackface, their misguided attempt to reflect the looks of the genre’s main practitioners. The media entertained the heinous look by asking about the exact sources of their face paint. Though the band is far less active now than their heyday, they still maintain their image: they publicly wore blackface as recent as 2015 in an infamous collaboration with Momoiro Clover Z for a TV performance.
At best, the band’s early rise to the mainstream as The Chanels was the result of their commitment to their teen obsession with American pop, chugging along even though many people didn’t fully understand it. But over time, their relationship begins to look more exploitative of black music as merely a novelty aesthetic. Doo wop remains somewhat intact in “Machikado Twilight” with the harmonies still playing some part in the storytelling. However, the style soon becomes less essential to their music as they adapt it to suit prevailing chart trends. While the harmonies still crop as the group’s signature trope, it progressively becomes more of a shorthand as a reminder of what they once stood for.
For any other band rising in popularity, this outgrowth of style would be a natural process to observe. But Rats & Star is a group who literally wears their influence on their sleeve. Black musicians don’t have the privilege of taking the paint off, so to speak, and gracefully growing out of their roots once they gained the level of attention they hoped to get.
The ugliness unfortunately remains plain in sight. Other Japanese entertainers engaged in blackface as recently as 2017, and people still give the excuse of it as a service of entertainment or in the case of Rats & Star, an act of homage to black culture. But like many other horrible examples of appropriation, “Machikado Twilight” is disgracefully skin-deep when it comes to showing supposed appreciation.
Next issue is out March 18. You can read previous issues here.