One of the best things about visiting Japan is the opportunity to experience (and bring back a chunk of) the country’s vast universe of indigenous pop culture. One of the strongest and most self-sustaining entertainment industries in the world, and one whose obvious linguistic and geographic distance from the Western hemisphere ensures that it remains largely untapped by the English-speaking world, this of course represents a kind of endless heaven of discovery for someone as unhealthily obsessed with such things as I am, and of course I chose to set about my investigations in the only way I know how – by spending an inordinate amount of time skulking about in second hand record shops, looking for cheap stuff with cool cover art.

And so, with the happy discovery that my spare turntable has a USB socket, now seems a good time to do this blog’s bit for the cause of cross-cultural understanding, as we present Japanese Record of the Month, wherein I will work through the small mountain of 7” singles I brought back with me, presenting them to you one by one along with whatever scraps of background information and fatuous, ill-informed opinions I can muster.

Within my stack of 45s, I’ve got ‘60s Group Sounds releases, heart-rending Enka ballads, a few examples of contemporary punk & hardcore that deserve a bit of wider attention, some film & TV tie-ins - but the overall emphasis is on miscellaneous solo artist pop, of a ‘60s/’70s vintage.

We’ll be entering into this endeavour in a spirit of total randomness, so hey, look what I pulled off the top of the pile today! To be honest, I know very little (read: nothing) about Chiyo Okumura, but gee whiz, what a cover! Thankfully, the music within turns out to be pretty good too… well, I mean, I like the A-side a lot, at least.

Opening with a slinky, conga-heavy rhythm and a genius little electric piano riff, adding chicken-scratch guitar on the verses, and keeping the strings n’ horns at a tasteful distance from the vocals and primary instruments, ‘Koi Dorobo’ (translation: ‘Love Thief’?) seems to hit that particular sweet spot where the drama of enka meets the upbeat, “struttin’ down the street” pulse of early ‘70s, post-Shaft/Superfly film scores. It is a very good place to be. Okumura’s vocal delivery isn’t particularly charismatic, but it’s nice and brassy and does just fine.

Whoever produced this record also clearly really, really liked that funny percussion thing that makes that particular sorta…. well I don’t know how to describe the sound really, but you’ll know it when you hear it. (What the hell is the thing that makes that noise called, anyway? As someone who routinely tries to describe music, it would be a useful thing to know. I kind of know the name, deep in the back of my mind somewhere, but, ah, it’s gone again…. you know, that 'sounds a bit like a wind-up wooden toy spinning around very quickly' thing. Please help me before senility sets in, readers.)

Anyway, ‘Koi Dorobo’ could so easily have played over the opening credits of some Toei Girl-Boss flick, and it’s certainly got more guts to it that some of the weaker numbers that began to occupy such moments as the budgets & production schedules of the movies plummeted through ‘70s. Definitely a keeper!

B-side ‘Kitagunino Haruwa Mijikai’ (meaning something like 'Spring in the North is Short’, perhaps?) is more of a ballad, or, I suppose, a kind of prototype power-ballad? It’s an ok enka-ish number, but Okumura’s vocal delivery goes a bit over the top in places I think and generally feels a bit blunt, whilst the melody seems a bit ‘standard’ and the production is a tad overripe too, meaning that the song never really connects on the kind of emotional level such material demands. Oh well - sometimes you play a B-side, you get a B-side, y’know. It’s ok. Highlight is the nice instrumental bit where a muted horn plays the main melody.

Labels: Chiyo Okumura, Japanese Record of the Month