#the girls are always saying that Tsunku really understood their feelings

[bluemoonrabbit]

I suddenly wanted to listen to this song for the first time in ages, and it took on a whole new meaning for me. The members and I were 12-14 when the song came out, and in our teens/twenties last I listened to it. So much has happened for all of us between now and then. They've moved on to individual careers and lives– half are married, several are mothers, and I've moved to Japan and back. I'm struck yet again by just how amazing it was to have grown up together with Berryz. In honor of that, here's a translation.

I saw a movie

That made me think

I guess I'll start a diary

Somehow or other

I've kept it up for two years

It's unexpectedly

Pretty fun

I've decided

I won't reread it

At least until I graduate

I wonder if someday

When I'm grown up

I'll reread it

And cry?

I wanna have a youth

That I won't regret

But also

I won't write any lies

It's fine if it's a mess

As long as it's honest

I got a fountain pen

So I wanna try

Being a little

More grown up

But I guess

It's not like what I write

Will grow up just like that

The new kid in class

Seems kinda like a bad boy

I'm interested

But that doesn't mean I like him

One morning when I'm a grown up

I'll drink strong coffee

In one gulp

I'm never gonna stop

Laughing happily

And I wanna hang out

With my amazing friends

I'll write it in my diary

The name of the person I like

I'm never gonna stop

Laughing happily

And I wanna hang out

With my amazing friends

I'll write it in my diary

The name of the person I like

[sneek-m]

Top 10 J artists to get into j music?

I was going to answer this with a more definitive list that includes your Utada Hikarus and your Shiina Ringos, but I thought it would be more fun for the both of us if I talked about Japanese names that I wish to see more writing on. It was hard for me to think of 10, so here are 6.

The Komuro Family* (Ryoko Shinohara, Tomomi Kahara, hitomi, Ami Suzuki, globe)

I would preface this by saying Tetsuya Komuro is far from a decent human being. But apart from that fact, I also think people gloss over his work because he’s so embedded in the narrative of what was happening in Japanese pop music during the ‘90s to the point his ubiquity can seem like a banal concern. Sure, it admittedly sounds very of-the-time as his go-to styles of Eurobeat and rave music get more and more outdated. (TRF and Marc Panther of Globe do not age well in the slightest.) The singers are amateur by nature as well. But all that said, most of his singles endure as many tell melancholy stories of the city that reflect the bitterness of that decade. I would love to see a more in-depth observations of the recurring themes of TK singles because I think there a lot worth exploring.

Start with: “Itoshisato Setsunasato Kokorozuyosato” (Ryoko Shinohara, 1995); “I’m Proud” (Tomomi Kahara, 1996); “Departures” (globe, 1996); “Sexy” (hitomi, 1996); “All Night Long” (Ami Suzuki, 1998)

*Namie Amuro is part of the Komuro Family as the producer worked on all her music released during that decade, such as “Body Feels Exit” and “Can You Celebrate?” But a quick Google search of “best J-pop” should bring you to her name as well as countless fans, including me, open to share just how much she meant to J-pop and Japanese culture, so I didn’t mention her.

SPEED

I wouldn’t exactly say SPEED is an idol group, more a pop unit, but the girl group definitely reached the masses like one. The four debuted when they were in middle school, inspiring children and teens of the late ‘90s to idolize them: members of Perfume once recounted a time in Actor’s School, Hiroshima’s version of the Okinawa school where SPEED came from, when classmates would pretend to be SPEED and fight over who would be the group’s main star Hiro, or Hiroko Shimabukuro. Their youth really inspires the music too, a gutsy, R&B-influenced pop music that got by a lot on the girls’ energy.

Start with: “Body and Soul” (1996)

Aya Matsuura

For a long time, I thought Aya Matsuura, or Ayaya for those who grew up with her music, was in Morning Musume. But after watching her TV appearances, it was obvious she was far more made to be a solo star. Debuted when she was 15, the Hello Project idol carried herself with this charming ditziness but also a solid awareness of her as a star. Hello Pro’s main producer Tsunku would draw that quality out of her with every release, and it only became more blown-out as the years went by.

Start with: “Momoiro Kataomoi” (2002)

BoA

BoA is still killing it. Just check out her recent K-pop stuff. But as K-pop grows, it’s always worth anyone’s time to go back and check out the icons of the past generations. (Something I should do more myself as well.) Now, I’m way more familiar with her Japanese releases when it comes to old BoA. Her first five albums are all great; the first two, Listen to My Heart and Valenti, may be of-the-time, but if you can get through that quirk, they each got some hits. The difference between her Japanese releases and Korean ones are more obvious with her releases last year, Watashi Konomamade Iinokana and Woman, the former record an A&R mess that really disappointed me. But from 2002 to 2007 at least, she made a lot of simply cool Japanese R&B.

Start with: “Listen to My Heart” (2002)

Dempagumi, Inc.

I’ve only recently got into Dempagumi, Inc. and it admittedly was bit of a deliberate choice not to engage with them for so long. My first impression of Dempa felt similar to seeing Kyary Pamyu Pamyu when she first went viral, which is to say not fun at all. Imagine all the icky stereotypes of Japan, the nonsense sourced from the kawaii and otaku subcultures, just blatantly splattered as pop art. Best believe it didn’t suit well for a Japanese person who wanted foreigners to see their culture as something much deeper than those associations.

But the more and more I familiarized myself to modern J-pop, it intrigued me to see that Japanese pop culture has been so booming and well established to the point that it can produce media and art with an intense self-awareness to some of that very identity. I eventually got into Kyary Pamyu Pamyu by embracing her projected weirdness as cultural pride, and the punkish energy that Dempa puts forth to their creation feels infectious in a similar way that can also feel subversive.

Dempa’s music, especially their early ones, that double down on its idiosyncrasies can feel deliriously meta: the group’s second album, 2015’s WWDD, felt somewhat uncomfortable for me knowing just how much Dempa understood the relationship between idol and otaku. But it presents such a fascinating line of conversation, with idols speaking on idol culture. Outsiders like to observe the weird surface when there’s something much more complex happening beneath it, and I wish other people would elaborate more on it.

Start with: “Chururi Chururira” (2014)

Aimyon

There’s so much buzz around Aimyon right now, you’d be hard-pressed not to hear her name mentioned in J-pop news. But again, the mainstream can be glossed over in favor of the underground or at least lesser known music acts and movements. Which is a completely fine phenomenon! Solely relying on the Oricon as a source of Japanese music would not yield many interesting results. That said, I always remain loud about people glossing over the mainstream because Japanese pop deserves to be represented as it is, middle-of-the-road as it is cool and fascinating.

Japanese pop is not just one sound or movement. The acoustic-pop earnestness of Aimyon sounds uniquely Japanese as a bunch of vocaloid tunes or Enon Kawatani’s finger-twiddling jazz-rock side projects or the backpacker-rap tradition of Sushiboys or the genre-mashing whisper-rap of DAOKO or any typical anime theme song. All I’m saying is I want a media coverage culture that puts critical attention to all of these equally, not one over the other. And I think if you’re gonna praise Perfume, or whomever, there should be an equally approached article on Aimyon, a name who is quickly becoming popular music for the Japanese youth.

Anyway, I like Aimyon. It’s such nice pop-rock for people who frequently dream about being loved with their entire conception of romance built upon what they see in pop media like teen rom-coms and love songs such as Aimyon’s. Her lyrics reach for something more poetic, which adds a sense of cool and maturity that the kids can look up to. Her public persona definitely reflects that, though she reveals herself to be a funny, ditzy weirdo pretty quick. Yeah, she doesn’t play with a very novel sound, but does it always have to be novel to be so moving?

Start with: “Marigold” (2018)