Issue #75: A Familiar Empire
The first issue of the new year covers the new yonige album, Yoko Oginome's "Dancing Hero" and one of my favorite TikToks of 2023
Hi! Welcome to This Side of Japan, a newsletter on Japanese music, new and old. You can check out previous issues here.
A more miscellaneous thing from the year, one of my favorite pieces of media from 2023 was the TikTok clip dubbed the “Sasurai Neki.” During last October, a high-school TikToker posted her doing this very loosely committed, almost ironic dance that resembled more a morning yoga stretch routine set to the chorus of Tamio Okuda’s 1998 hit “Sasurai.” Her dance quickly went viral as a meme, eventually getting Okuda to be highlighted as December’s monthly featured artist on BuzzTracker, a collaborative PR program hosted by TikTok and Spotify Japan.
According to other people online contemplating why on Earth did this TikTok go viral, the clip now known as Sasurai Neki is one of the many parodies of this post of an old Chinese man, now also known as Sasurai Ojisan after this meme, performing a traditional dance that someone else synced with Okuda’s hit. Why this particular post by user Oden racked up the most views over the countless others, I can’t tell.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
The “Sasurai” dance, or Sasurai Neki, above.
It’s at least a bit easier to deduce why other ‘90s J-pop hits circulated on TikTok, its users also reigniting an interest for the attached songs. Not only is Black Biscuit’s flashy nu-disco “Timing” more dance-oriented, the song also has easy choreography for amateurs to learn on the fly. While PUFFY’s British Invasion-meets-’60s-girls-group sing-along “Ai No Shirushi” doesn’t immediately scream “dance music,” the duo’s iconic arm-swing moves are just as appealing to mimic. Even if you’ve never heard the songs, the dances just look fun to learn and perform.
Conversely, the Sasurai Neki is so low effort, it barely scans as an activity. As a standalone record, “Sasurai” is also a rock ‘n’ roller tune strictly for the uncles. From Okuda’s woolly electric-guitar riff that feels straight from the glammy ‘70s to his own hollering vocals, the single has always reminded me of Noel Gallagher’s music. It’s far a choice from what I imagine to be in a typical high-school girl’s daily music rotation. If the record does have a peer from its respective decade in J-pop, it is something like PORNOGRAFFITI’s “Saudade” that also made the rounds on TikTok during late 2022 seemingly through nothing other than the pure will of the users on the platform.
Without knowing about the Sasurai Neki meme, and its origins as a meme of a meme, the resurgence of Okuda’s single in the mainstream seems rather outside of current trends. But it’s this randomness behind Sasurai Neki and its subsequent commercial effect on its attached song that really fascinates me. Compared to “Timing” or “Ai No Shirushi,” Sasurai Neki also doesn’t seem to be driven by a particular air of nostalgia in the slightest: The song’s boomer-revival music is the polar opposite of what’s being reappraised these days from Heisei-era pop culture, like what’s picked up in this highlight reel of McDonald’s’s homage to the era’s flashy youth culture.
This tweet where I originally encountered the TikTok succintly sums up my thoughts: “somehow this video of a JK casually dancing to Tamio Okuda’s ‘Sasurai’ instantly got 4 million views.” And despite not even being born when the song came out, this teenager’s attempt to remedy her boredom by doing this dance got everyone engaging again with a 25-year-old record. She didn’t give the song a second life as much as she gave it a whole new identity: the girls of her age likely know the song better now as a TikTok song, and you can increasingly see this overwriting of context in other revival hits like the aforementioned PUFFY and “Ai No Shirushi.” Turning songs anew through one viral clip, the power of Joshi Kouseis cannot be underestimated.
Welcome back to This Side of Japan! And those who are new here, welcome to the first issue of the newsletter for 2024! We are already starting the year with a fabulous new album by a band whose album actually has been covered before in one of our early issues. Time flies! And I’m pretty excited to present today’s entry for the Oricon column after stumbling upon some interesting findings from my research on the song. And as always, 3 new songs to kick off the new year in music.
Happy listening!
Album of the Week
Empire by yonige [Horipro]
*Recommended track: “Aishatte” | Listen to it on Spotify
From what’s heard in “DRIVE,” one of the few advance tracks for the band’s latest record, Empire, yonige seemed to have found some solid sense of direction after a few projects steeped in jadedness. The heavy fuzz bomb of a guitar riff showed from the band a regained vigor, especially following the hushed, knotty strums of their previous release, Kenzen Na Shakai. If chief songwriter Arisa Ushimaru reached for a rather obvious metaphor to speak her mind about leaving the past all behind, it emphasized her want to just get to the heart of the matter, eschewing any roundabout language in the process.
This renewed confidence from yonige flows throughout the robust indie-rock of Empire and its forward-drive momentum. The immediacy of the power riffs gestures a revitalized drive partly from how they suggest a return to form, back to the buzzing rock of 2018’s HOUSE EP, but now it shakes off the once-weary tone from Ushimaru’s lyrics. “I’m just showing off out loud the things that I don’t want to commit to,” she hollers in “School Caste” a self-deprecating lyric that could’ve made for a pointed dig at herself perhaps in the past. The lithe, sturdy groove coaxes an impression of stability, allowing her to comment on the unseriousness of her own creative discipline with a casual, humorous touch.
But while the band’s re-charged music helps lighten the mood, ambivalence has yet to fully escape Ushimaru’s lyrics. Before Empire materialized, the frontwoman let out quiet ventings of her directionless frustrations in her otherwise breezy rock songs, like the disillusioned “Kenzan Na Asa.” A lack of resolution continues to permeate in her songs, often coloring stories about stubborn people searching for clarity or proper closure in aspects of their relationships. The first track shared by the band in 2022 from the eventual album, “Deus Ex Machina” inherits the most weight from those former records dragged down by ennui. “We ended like we were never going to end / that wasn’t how it was supposed to be / we age because we keep obsessing over / things like this,” Ushimaru sings about going in circles over a slow-burning rock that swells into a poigant breakdown.
As laments about what could’ve been appear throughout, the profound growth from Ushimaru in Empire is in how she can afford to be at ease about coming to terms with issues remaining messy and unresolved. Or that’s the impression she gives anyway, from how effortlessly she spins turmoil like episodes of relationship in-fights into lyrical matter of sprightly pop-rock tunes. While she writes triumphant songs that marry images of starting anew with a rock riff that rings just as optimistic, she sounds at peace as she does wise when she ponders about a longer haul. “I want to love while closing my eyes / I want to keep calling truce while forgiving each other,” the frontwoman sings in the chorus of “Aishiatte.” Her frustrations from the past begins to feel smaller in Empire as Ushimaru prepares for the many more road blocks to come ahead.
Singles Club
“456” by muque [A.S.A.B.]
Muque continue to slip in between musical styles in Design, their latest EP and second since forming in 2022. And the omnivorous band locks into a slick beat in “456,” the EP’s opening song that locates a sweet nexus of their intersecting tastes of power pop, funk and dance music. From its lulling guitar loop to its quantized drum beat swinging between hip hop and garage, the production initially resembles more a dance track yet it proceeds to move with a nimble groove that sheds away the mechanical feel. Their resistance against easy definition also colors the chorus that yearns to break free from the humdrum rhythms: “Pinky promise, we’ll / grab our dreams by its sleeves / step out into the world and / anytime, we’ll go anywhere.”
Design EP is out now. Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “CHARM” by Mitsuki Aoyama; “between” by NOA
“Dolls” by Neo Iceyyy [CNG Squad]
In last year’s brisk Haunted Killer EP, Neo Iceyyy slipped into menacing trap beats laced with Carpenter-esque pianos and gritty synths as naturally as the others in the CNG Squad like Lil Ash Zange and rirugiliyangugili. Yet the rapper sounds the most evocative when he inhabits the brooding landscape set in “Dolls.” The sludgy grunge production deflates his raps into one lethargic flow, and the song starts to resemble nu-metal as much as rap. While it may be gauche to say he sounds at home when he yearns to break free from mental anguish in the verses, his songs in the vein of “Dolls” is certainly impactful.
Listen to it on Spotify.
See also: “me, myself & I.” by CVLTE; “Shinigami” by Sad Kid Yaz
“Dareka No Koe” by switchblade [further platonic]
Weathered yet still propulsive, the pop-punk riffs that drive “Dareka No Koe” captures the tone carried by switchblade throughout the Yokohama-based band’s second album, Obscure Heart. “It’s alright to fall / it’ll be fine even if you get dirty,” goes the shouted chorus. The music revs up in response as though it, too, gained the motivation to get back up and try again, ultimately rolling into a dazzling emo-rock instrumental by the middle eight. As they wind down, switchblade continues to move along rather humbly, out to face some more storms that might lie ahead.
Obscure Heart is out now. Listen to it on Spotify/Bandcamp.
See also: “caravan” by Girl and Shipwreck; “All You Got” by Hollow Suns
This Week in 1986…
This section is usually dedicated to the Oricon number ones throughout the chart’s history, but for this issue, I’ll write about a hit that did not make it to the very top.
“Dancing Hero (Eat You Up)” by Yoko Oginome [Victor, 1985]
Highest position at #5 during the week of Jan. 27, 1986 | Listen to it on YouTube/Spotify
The modern memory of Yoko Oginome’s “Dancing Hero (Eat You Up)” will be inseparable from the Bubbly Dance phenomenon of 2017 for quite some time. Never mind that a few years prior to the viral meme, the idol re-released a self-cover of the single in promotion for her 30th anniversary album, Dear Pop Singer, with a “dance version” music video showing off some new group choreography set to the Eurobeat-esque beat. Tomioka Dance Club’s YouTube performance of “Dancing Hero (Eat You Up),” now known in short as the Bubbly Dance, blew Oginome’s video from 2014 out of the water, racking in enough attention to shoot the single back to the charts after more than 30 year since it first hit the top 10 of Oricon.
The resurgence of “Dancing Hero (Eat You Up)” via the Bubbly Dance gestures to the strength of YouTube as shown on the single’s performance on the more digital-friendly Billboard Japan, where it peaked at number two on its weekly charts. But it also uncovers a growing cultural nostalgia for Showa pop and in particular the perceived affluence during that imperial era’s last decade. The highly curated visual motifs are what places the Bubbly Dance well above in quality from Oginome’s own new “dance version” after all: the glittered OL costumes alone evoke the Bubble-era disco scene that pumped out the kind of flashy dance-pop music backing up the singer in her biggest hit.
All that said, while it looks back at the era fondly, the Bubbly Dance doesn’t quite recall history accurately. Even without a nifty line graph to tell you that “Dancing Hero (Eat You Up)” became popular actually a bit before Japan entered the period of economic peak known as the Bubble era, one just has to look into the source record that inspired Oginome’s “Dancing Hero”: Angie Gold’s 1985 single “Eat You Up.” When “Eat You Up” sat multiple weeks atop Oricon’s International Songs chart, Eurobeat was yet to be properly defined into the form of the electro-disco music so ingrained now with the musical memory of the Bubble era. The style had yet to grow out its infancy, still known then as its predecessor of hi-NRG, but that subgenre had already caught the attention of Japan’s music industry, who re-titled Gold’s single in Japan to “Suteki Na High Energy Boy.”
“Hey, BOYS AND GIRLS at the clubs in fresh sweat right now, let me introduce to you a stylish high-energy sound that’s gonna be big this summer,” went the liner notes of “Suteki Na High Energy Boy” written by a DJ at the club Shinjuku Super Disco G.B. Rabbits1. “Many high-energy sounds like Lorraine McKane’s ‘Kanashimi No Memory’ and Hazell Dean’s ‘Kibun Wa High Energy’ are a BIG HIT in Japan’s disco scene right now, but what arrived to turn the scene around again is this record I’m sharing today.”
Oginome rode on the success of Gold’s “Eat You Up” by covering the hi-NRG hit, exporting a piece of club culture into the wider mainstream in the process. And the galloping electro production from the original record provided a jolt to the singer’s usual flowery kayokyoku. But whereas Gold exuded a devil-may-cry ferocity against the equally aggressive beat, Oginome sings of a rather forlorn story of the disco. If Gold was too occupied fighting off foolish men, Oginome sounds desperate to be desired by someone, anyone at the club. “Even if just for tonight / Cinderella boy / do you wanna dance tonight?,” the Japanese idol sings. That giddy-sounding chorus reminds me of Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” in how the glowing music and performance overlooks the loneliness in the lyrics that inspire her to go out to the disco.
Oginome’s single might have stalled at number 5 on Oricon Weekly in 1986, but “Dancing Hero” helped bring the singer to the stage of Kohaku Utagassen that same year. As clubs began to phase into tracks with harder rhythms, with hi-NRG growing fully into the Eurobeat as known today, you can observe the club-export strategy behind “Dancing Hero” utilized by other chart-topping singles from the mid ‘80s into the early ‘90s. A single that immediately comes to mind is Wink’s “Ai Ga Tomoranai ~Turn It into Love~,” a cover of Kylie Minogue’s single2 of the same name, but there’s also the early J-pop records from Avex Trax, a leading force in pushing Eurobeat into the Japanese mainstream: Namie Amuro and Super Monkeys covering a Lolita track resemble the exporting of “Dancing Hero” for the post-Bubble ‘90s. If “Dancing Hero” retroactively earned its status as a song representing the dance-pop music of the Bubble era, its status is a product less of historical revisionism than the record’s own prescience on the rising club culture then on the horizon.
You can listen to all of the songs covered so far in this section in this playlist here.
This Side of Japan has a Ko-Fi as a tip jar if you want to show appreciation. A subscription to This Side of Japan is free, and you don’t have to pay money to access any published content. I appreciate any form of support, but if you want to, you can buy a Coffee to show thanks.
Next issue of This Side of Japan is out in December. You can check out previous issues of the newsletter here.
Need to contact? You can find me on Twitter or reach me at thissideofjapan@gmail.com
A part I unfortunately had to cut out due to space is the history of those clubs in Tokyo playing hi-NRG and Eurobeat during the rise of the economic bubble. This quote comes from the liner notes provided in the disc guide compiling all of the records played at Shinjuku’s Toa Kaikan, a development building housing several clubs on their floors, during the ‘80s. By 1985, an ordinance had forced the discos to close at midnight, but in response, they opened their doors at noon, attracting more teenagers to come out to the establishments. A blog post suggested that those same teens eventually aged out of those venues in search of other places, flocking to more of the new clubs playing Eurobeat, and those venues are where the cultural staples—the OL blazers, the fans—as well as the music of the Bubble Era immortalized in the Bubbly Dance was born. Hi-NRG, then, is the predecessor not only musically but culturally as well to this period in time.
There’s probably an entire other essay you can write on Stock Aitken Waterman and their influence on Japanese pop. Yes, SAW is behind this Kylie single but also acts like, of course, Bananarama and Dead or Alive, whose records were on regular rotation at those disco clubs pumping out hi-NRG and other strains of electro that would influence the formation of Eurobeat.