Jun Togawa (戸川純) - 極東慰安唱歌 Vinyl, LP, Album, 45 rpm, Japan, 1985 (Yen Records)

I first discovered Jun Togawa in the small town of Moji-Ku on the big island of Kyushu in Japan.  I was living there for the entire four-seasons, and I came across her albums with the help of my wife Lun*na Menoh.   With a great deal of cultural guilt, I never took on the Japanese pop music scene in Japan in a big way.  I greatly admired Hosono Harumi and other members of YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra) but a lot of it sounded flat to me due to the production standards of record production of the 1980s. Very digital, and it struck me that Japanese pop music was very much like Kabuki theater where everything is laid out on the stage in an equal manner.   My eyes didn't focus on one character or actor, but I look at the stage as if it was a giant poster.  My eyes kept moving around, and I feel the same with Japanese pop music of the 1980s.   Jun Togawa was different from the rest of the Showa era entertainers or artists.  Listening to her work I got a huge painting, but I can focus on parts of that aural painting due to its clarity and at the same time, it's eccentricity. 

 極東慰安唱歌 is a superb Togawa album or should say, The Jun Togawa Unit, which is the official artist listing for this project.   Here she makes music with Yoichiro Yoshikawa, Takago Higae,  and uses traditional Okinawa music as well as the composer Giacomo Puccini and the great Haruomi Hosono.  The first impression is that this is very much a techno-pop music but with touches of the old (Puccini and Okinawaian music), but the glue that holds all of this is Togawa's magnificent vocal talents.  She's a great singer.   

On one level she reminds me a bit of Kate Bush, but totally not British and very Japanese.  I once read or heard a Togawa quote that she knew nothing of Western music except for classical and Prince.  I believe her.   There are traces of psychedelic pop in her method and sound.  Listening and collecting Togawa is for sure falling into the rabbit's hole, and how one can crawl out of that space is very questionable.  Still, her recordings are consistently being reissued on the CD format, as well as in various compilations.  It's worth the adventure to check her music out.  She's great.   

TAMA - しおしお CD, Album, 1989 (ナゴムカンパニー)

Well, here I was in Japan and living in a very small town that was part of Kitakyushu.  An old port town that saw better days before the war.   I couldn't speak a word of Japanese when I lived there, and my main entertainment was watching this late night TV show called "Ika 10" or something like that.  It started off at Midnight and it seemed to stop around 4 in the morning.  It was an old fashion battle of the bands type of show, where the best band do a song, get judged, and then get invited again next week, and then they keep going to the top of the pyramid.  The great thing about this show is that they basically ignored the boy or girl band J-Pop sound, and focused on eccentricity.  In other words, a true group of indie rock bands, but kind of weird for the mainstream at the time. Yet, the show became a hit of sorts, and all the bands made records, etc.

One of my favorite bands from this TV show was a group called TAMA.  I didn't only like them, I was crazy about TAMA.   The Tokyo fab four's line up was acoustic guitar, minimal drum set, electric bass, and accordion and some keyboards.   The music was pre-world war two Japanese pop but twisted.  Their clothing they wore on stage was also from the era of the late 1940s.  A very strange band. 

I bought their CD with great anticipation, and I wasn't disappointed.  As mentioned the music is very acoustic based, I guess in a sense Japanese folk music, but with a lo-fi aesthetic and very catchy.  To me, and being a foreigner, I thought for sure if I can bring them to the U.S., it would be TAMA mania.  Four good-looking guys, who play (really) original sounds.  It was an ah-ha moment for me.  Alas, I didn't have the means or perhaps talent to be a manager.   As far as I know this is their first album, and they continue to make albums for the next five or six years.  I think they are brilliant.