And Then the 80s Happened...


So now several Japanese friends and acquaintances agree that popular music here used to be something more than a superficial parade of increasingly younger girls and boys who prostitute themselves on stage in order to make up for how horribly off key they all are. Japanese music used to have something to offer other than the six word vocabulary that seems so common these days.

Consensus seems to be that the cult of cute that emerged here in the 80s (which was largely ridiculed, mind you, when it first appeared) is largely responsible for transforming the aesthetic of popular music from something which was equally good and bad to something that is overall shallow. Off course the niche markets still put out some amazing groups; I'm thinking here of bands like PE'Z and the tragically named Soil and "Pimp" Sessions who have made the pop jazz scene something of a standout in terms of quality acts. Sure in the US we had our own vomit in the 80s but we eventually got over it (and later made it retro, as the disease of American culture has always been kitsch). Japan has been stuck in the 80s ever since.

Those who used to be popular are still around, though, still making music, like the enka singer Yashiro Aki (who figures prominently in an hilarious Boss coffee commercial with Tommy Lee Jones) or the folk singer Tomobe Masato (pictured above). His songs are occasionally cute, but at least they're amusing:

in the Shinkansen dining car
I ran into Cyndi Lauper
she wanted to order a mineral water
but the waitress didn't get her English
speak Japanese, Cyndi

The song is more than amusing, though, as it's largely in Japanese with the exception of the speak Japanese lines, and as the final line makes clear (Speak Japanese, Japanese), it's just as much for a native audience as it is for we barbaric Western types. The other substantial difference between Tomobe and Morning Musume is he can deliver the goods:

Morning Calls (asa no denwa)

ever since I heard you'd passed
morning calls give me the chills
in morning calls I find no comfort
in morning calls I find no comfort

12 days after you passed away
I got the news you had died
in fact it was a morning call
in fact it was a morning call

after you died
day and night the phone rang
those days I thought
one day you'd come back to me

shortly thereafter, day of the funeral,
you'd yet to come back to me
so I said my goodbyes
so I said my goodbyes

when the casket was loaded into the hearse
no one applauded
you are still there
you are still there