Welcome to Tetsuya Komuro Week!
An intro to a series of five essays on the singles that defined the hit-maker in the ‘90s
Hi! Welcome to Tetsuya Komuro Week at This Side of Japan, a newsletter about Japanese music, new and old. We are dedicating this week on a series of essays discussing the producer’s essential acts and singles. You can check out previous issues of the newsletter here.
The retrospectives of producer Tetsuya Komuro often highlight these main accomplishments. He brought new sounds and rhythms imported from European dance music into Japan’s pop vocabulary. He helped launch several key careers in J-pop by writing for them dozens of decade-defining singles. Even if the media didn’t retroactively refer to this period as “the TK boom,” the ubiquity of his releases ensured the records to become nostalgic fixtures to the young adulthood of Japan’s Gen-Xers.
This week, I’m sharing a series of five essays on the singles that defined Komuro as a hit-maker and a songwriter in the ‘90s. But I won’t be going too much in depth with the history or the successes of his various acts because Komuro’s commercial impact on J-pop has been talked about endlessly. The essays instead will focus more on the recurring narratives present in the producer’s ‘90s output as a personal attempt to assess a key element of his work that I don’t find explored too often in discussion of his music.
The popularity of Komuro’s records makes the songs hard to ignore, but it also makes it easy to overlook the songs for what they are. Like a lot of pop giants, the singles seem so commonplace in the public consciousness that they don’t yield a need for in-depth coverage in a critical lens. His highlights also draws a lot of attention to the surface of the records. His takes on Eurodance in particular has not helped his singles to age very well, potentially obscuring its appeal for those who want to check out his music mainly for style and aesthetics.
What initially motivated me to start brainstorming this essay series was seeing the producer’s output ignored as subjects of critical analysis when discussing Japanese music in the ‘90s. These essays initially argued that Komuro’s songs follow the long lineage of Japanese music examining city life as also observed in the more appraised scenes such as city pop or Shibuya-kei. So you may read me referring to the producer’s works as “city songs.”
I still hold that position to a degree. Komuro’s city songs depend upon the same handed-down narrative as city pop proper. The background understanding is that the big city is a symbolic destination where people fulfill their dreams and live out an ideal lifestyle. But he often pulls the curtains from the fantasy to reveal a reality full of misery and loneliness. This was the ’90s when the economic bubble burst after all: the city no longer provided the lavish living of the past decade, standing instead in his songs as a ghost of its former self.
These essays, however, aren’t exactly arguments that Komuro’s music is better than city pop or Shibuya-kei. The five pieces compiled in this series are my attempts to critically engage in Komuro’s works deeper than their surface aesthetic associations with Western music, such as European rave. Through the lens of five acts associated with the producer, these essays will explore how Komuro expanded such concepts of city life into epic pop dramas propelled by thrilling beats and rhythms. I will talk about how each single fits in his catalog while exploring how the producer’s songs for other singers work as texts, specifically as reflections on city life.
Here are the five essays of this series. The first entry will be available tomorrow, January 10.
Day 1: Survival Dance: How TRF Turned Eurobeat into the Pop Sound of Japanese City Nightlife
Day 2: Body Feels Exit: How Namie Amuro Embodied the City Life as an Idol
Day 3: Sweet Pain and Departures: How Globe Defined the Mood of Komuro’s City Pop
Day 4: I’m Proud: How Tomomi Kahara Found Freedom from the City
Day 5: Alone in My Room: How Ami Suzuki Twisted the Plot in Komuro’s City Songs
Never End: Parting Words for Tetsuya Komuro Week
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You can check out previous issues of the newsletter here.
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