Hatsumi Shibata (1952-2010)

Hatsumi Shibata
しばたはつみ

April 11th, 1952 - March 28th, 2010

Yesterday, I discovered that singer Hatsumi Shibata died of a heart attack Saturday at her home in Shizuoka-ken. She was 57.

Remarkably, Shibata began her singing career as a child, performing for American servicemen at the age of 9. Born Hatsumi Hosoai (細合はつみ), she was raised in Tokyo by musically gifted parents who quickly spotted her talent as a vocalist; by 15 she had already begun recording music for television commercials.

The following year, under the stage name Hatsumi Kanna (はつみかんな), she released her first single, "Koi To Umi To Taiyō To", (恋と海と太陽と), a frenetic little number showcasing the singer's surprising strength for a 16 year-old girl.

During the early 70s she traveled to the U.S. in hopes of finding work in show business. But after limited touring, she returned to Japan and in 1974 released her first single as Hatsumi Shibata, the funky, forlorn ballad "Aikagi" (合鍵), or "duplicate key". Shortly thereafter, Shibata seized the opportunity to open for both Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. during the pair's performances in Tokyo.

Despite a rather impressive resume for someone her age, it was ultimately the 1977 hit "My Luxury Night" (マイ・ラグジュアリー・ナイト) — penned by brother and sister duo Takao and Etsuko Kisugi — which solidified Shibata's success as an entertainer, granting her a coveted spot on NHK's New Year's Eve special Kōhaku Uta Gassen (紅白歌合戦).

However, to me, the singer's most interesting material is to be found in her earlier collaborations with composer and pianist Yuji Ōno (大野雄二), that of which is both esteemed and desired by small, devoted circles of mainly Japanese record collectors.

So then, to celebrate the jazzier side of Shibata's oeuvre, consider this Ōno-penned original from the album Singer Lady (シンガーレディ), produced by Ōno as well.


Hatsumi Shibata - Mōichido Kikasete (1975)
しばたはつみ - もう一度聞かせて

Of course, Shibata's role in the gaudy theatrics typical of the late 70s variety show circuit mustn't be overlooked. This gem of a live performance, "I Love Paris", is taken from Sound In "S", a show which Shibata co-hosted with Ayumi Ishida (石田あゆみ) and Yuji Ōno as part of Ōno's trio.

The elaborate musical number features Shibata alongside Yuzuru Sera (世良譲) on piano, as well as idol singers Machiko Watanabe (渡辺真知子) and Yukari Itō (伊東ゆかり).

Three Steps Over Japan: Garo #29

To kick off what's turned into somewhat of a manga/anime kick that began earlier this month, we provided you with scans of monthly magazine Garo (ガロ), taken from the blog Three Steps Over Japan.

Well, the fellas over there — fella, actually — have done it again, providing us more quality scans with Issue 29 of the gekiga (劇画) journal, originally published January 1967.

You can tell just by the cover it's not your run-of-the-mill comic book.

To check out more of this issue, visit Three Steps Over Japan. To learn more about Garo, click on the "Garo" label at the bottom of this post.

Experimental Animation Of Osamu Tezuka (1962-65)

Osamu Tezuka (手塚治虫) — internationally renowned animator, director and pioneer of both page and screen — is probably best remembered for his starry-eyed wunderkind Astro Boy (known in Japan as 鉄腕アトム, Testsuwan Atomu). Although to limit Tezuka's artistic contributions as such would be to overlook a remarkably prolific career in which he is said to have created over 150,000 pages of manga, not to mention the countless cells of animation he saw produced in his lifetime.

Similar to the work of famed director Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎駿), though in a much different style, Tezuka addressed important issues of modern society (i.e. nuclear armament, human rights, etc.) while still managing to produce an end result that was as visually impressive as it was accessible. Ever the innovator, he pushed the boundaries of what could be communicated to a large-scale audience through the art of manga and anime.

In 1967 Tezuka created the monthly magazine COM — his foray into the world of "mature" manga (mentioned in our recent post on the journal's predecessor Garo). Through COM he was able to showcase the work of up and coming artists, as well as his own — some of which might not have seen acceptance amongst more mainstream audiences.

The clips below were created by Tezuka's production company Mushi Pro (虫プロダクション) in the years preceding COM's first publication. They clearly indicate the director's desire to explore new avenues of animation, both in style and content, particularly when considering the overtly sexual tone of the first two films.

Last year these animated shorts were finally made available to North American audiences as part of the DVD collection The Astonishing Work of Tezuka Osamu.


Male (1962)
おす


Memory (1964)
めもりい


Mermaid (1964)
人魚


The Drop (1965)
しずく

Akira Kurosawa Turns 100

Akira Kurosawa
黒澤明

March 23rd, 1910 - September 6th, 1998

"Akira Kurosawa was the youngest of seven children, born in Tokyo on 23 March 1910. He has said that the first important influence in his life was a teacher called Tachikawa, who was progressive in his emphasis on art education for the young. This was how the young Kurosawa was introduced to art and film. A talented painter, he enrolled in an art school that emphasized Western styles. Around this time he also joined an artists' group with a great enthusiasm for nineteenth-century Russian literature, with Dostoevsky a particular favourite. Another influence was Heigo, one of his brothers, who loved film and worked as a benshi, a film narrator/commentator for foreign silent films. His suicide deeply affected the director's sensibilities.

In 1930 he responded to a newspaper advertisement for assistant directors at a film studio and began assisting Kajirō Yamamoto (山本嘉次郎), who liked the fact he knew 'a lot about things other than movies'. Within five years he was writing scripts and directing whole sequences for Yamamoto films. In 1943 he made his debut as a director with Judo Saga (姿三四郎, Sugata Sanshirō), with a magnificent martial-arts sequence in which two masters fight to the death in a wind-swept field, their flying limbs all but obscured by the tall swaying grasses. Consider the acclaim given to the similar fight sequences in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and it's obvious why in 1943 people began to talk about a young film-maker with a brilliant future."

Continue reading Akira Kurosawa's biography at the British Film Institute.

Off Course - Kotoba Ni Dekinai (1981)

The second single taken from Off Course's 1981 release over, "Kotoba Ni Dekinai" (literally "a loss for words") highlights the emotional lyricism found in much of the group's better material. By this time Off Course had abandoned their folk stylings of the late 60s and early 70s in favor of a more polished pop aesthetic. As it happens, the title of the album is meant to combine with their previous album We are to form the bleak admission, "We are over."

In providing the majority of the album's music, lyrics and arrangements, frontman Kazumasa Oda (小田和正) exposes the trials and tribulations of love with a uniquely fragile yet passionate resolution. His pristine, pathetic delivery and solid songwriting talents, as well as a taste for spacy synths, add substance to the group's output during the mainly monotonous adult contemporary boom — often labeled in Japan as "new music" or "city pops" — of the late 70s and 80s.

Download:
Off Course - Kotoba Ni Dekinai
オフコース - 言葉にできない

Kleenex: It's A Fine Day

In light of the modern world's current obsession with up-to-the-second information, we're asking for a late pass on this one, if one is indeed necessary.

The haunting video above was posted a week ago (seems like ages, right?) over at incredulous upstart blog WTF Japan Seriously!? Actress Keiko Matsuzaka (松坂慶子) appears in a pair of 1985 television commercials for Kleenex tissue seated alongside some red demon child (赤鬼の子, akaoni no ko) with an affinity for soft, soaring paper products.

As the a cappella here sounds and feels very much like a lullaby that doesn't really have a happy ending ("Rock-a-bye Baby", anyone?), ironically it's been sampled in numerous dance/trance "anthems" since the early 90s. Originally, however, the song was recorded by English folk duo Jane And Barton for their 1983 single "It's A Fine Day".

What this has to do with tissues, though, I have no idea.

Showa OK! Now 25% Less Esoteric!

As this post clearly indicates, we've dropped the fancy Japanese titles from our blog posts. No more "昭和OK! 今25%未満の秘伝的なもの!" to offend the senses of those lacking Japanese comprehension. But don't worry, we'll be sure to pepper up future posts with plenty of translated words and characters because, hey, it just looks cool.

Garo Manga Monthly

Excepting obvious classics such as Doraemon and Akira, I must say I'm not a big fan of manga or anime. But recently I've discovered a magazine that exposed to me a side of the art I had yet to observe in any great detail.

First published in September 1964, the manga monthly Garo (月刊漫画ガロ) was heavily read by young, college-aged boys, many of whom were no doubt anxious for graphic literature that acknowledged the radical developments of the decade, whether in story or style.

Garo's founder and editor Katsuichi Nagai helped establish the genre of gekiga, or "dramatic pictures", with the help of fresh, talented artists like Sanpei Shirato, whose serialized ninja epic Kamui-den ("The Legend of Kamui") ran in the journal for nearly seven years. Through his ambitious choice of subjects and illustrators, Nagai helped pave the way for a generation of artists whose work targeted a more mature audience.

As an ambitious and influential periodical Garo spawned a number of imitators, most notably Osamu Tezuka's similarly themed monthly COM. Garo also appeared to have influenced some of Tezuka's more naturalistic works of the 70s and 80s, such as Phoenix — first published in COM and considered by many his crowning achievement — and Adolf, a dark mystery of sorts set in Nazi Germany.

Garo reached the height of its popularity in the early 70s, and though it encompassed a myriad assortment of modern artistic styles over the years, the magazine began to experience a gradual decline in circulation until Nagai was forced to sell his publishing company Serindō to PC software manufacturer Zeit in 1991; he was kept on as chairman until his death in 1996.

Nagai's passing marked the beginning of the end for the troubled monthly. Citing internal discord, Zeit filed for bankruptcy the following year. Despite this, Garo continued to be published. But in a market over-saturated with bland, easy-to-digest content, Nagai's original, pioneering effort ultimately became unprofitable, and the end of 2002 brought with it the journal's final issue.

I owe my discovery of gekiga to a gentleman by the name of Tsote (a.k.a. Curtis Hoffman), who, being somewhat of a manga connoisseur, graciously provides full-page scans, reviews and translations of Garo (and other manga) on his blog Three Steps Over Japan. Mr. Hoffman has also compiled a detailed history of manga from the birth of woodblock printing up until the advent of modern manga in the 1950s and 60s.

Here, we offer a sample of Mr. Hoffman's scans of Garo thus far; a collection of choice images representing the magazine's outstanding art, specifically during the latter half of 1966. For more, visit Three Steps Over Japan and its sister blog Nihongo Hunter.


Garo, Issue 23, July 1966






Garo, Issue 24, August 1966






Garo, Issue 25, September 1966






Garo, Issue 26, October 1966






Garo, Issue 27, November 1966






Garo, Issue 28, December 1966

Toyota Concept Cars (1957-89)

Though Toyota Motor Corporation (トヨタ自動車株式会社, Toyota Jidōsha Kabushiki Gaisha) has usually remained at the top of car sales in both Japan and the U.S., sales have slumped for the auto manufacturing giant. In early 2009, after Wall Street closed out its worst year since the Great Depression, Toyota announced its first annual loss since the company's founding in 1937. To make matters worse, as of late Toyota has been embroiled in a scandal involving the recent recall of over ten different models, tarnishing its polished consumer image. But enough of the world's financial woes for now (I have plenty of time to gripe elsewhere).

After stumbling across a treasure trove of images hosted by the good people at Carstyling.ru, we'd like to showcase some of the more interesting designs of Toyota concept cars over the decades. While most were never slated for mass production, a handful of designs eventually made their way to the assembly line. Mite ne!


1957 Toyota Proto


1962 Toyota Publica Sports


1966 Toyota Concept


1969 Toyota EX-1


1969 Toyota EX-III


1971 Toyota RV-1


1972 Toyota EX-7


1972 Toyota RV-2


1973 Toyota F101


1977 Toyota F110


1979 Toyota CX-80


1983 Toyota FX-1


1983 Toyota TAC3


1985 Toyota FXV


1987 Toyota AXV-II


1989 Toyota 4500GT

Hiroko Yakushimaru - Sailor Fuku To Kikanjū (1981)

"Sailor Suit and Machine Gun", the title's translation, presents an image of tantalizing paradox in that of the bad-ass schoolgirl, an altogether not uncommon theme in Japanese media. The teenage daughter of a yakuza boss inherits her father's clan and finds herself faced with an unbelievable burden of responsibility. Originally a 1978 novel penned by prolific author Jirō Akagawa (赤川次郎), the story was later made into a film, and then into pair of television miniseries filmed over twenty years apart.

But before it all was Hiroko Yakushimaru's titular single, released November 21st, 1981 (exactly one year before this writer's birth). Anticipating the movie's release by about a month, the film's theme song, with it's dramatic keyboard stabs and melancholy air, was written music and lyrics by Takao and Etsuko Kisugi (来生たかお, 来生えつこ), respectively. The brother and sister duo helped produce a multitude of hit records together, with Takao in particular enjoying immense popularity as a singer-songwriter.



However, "Sailor Fuku To Kikanjū" was in fact a cover of sorts, only the Kisugi siblings happened to pen the original as well: Takao's single "Yume No Tochū" (夢の途中). Ultimately released a month after Yakushimaru's offering, Kisugi had originally chosen his own song as the film's theme, but reportedly director Shinji Sōmai (相米慎二) would only accept a version with Yakushimaru singing.


Takao Kisugi - Yume No Tochū (1981)

Luckily for everyone involved both the film and record were hits, and the following summer saw the first of two subsequent television miniseries. Hot on the heels of their previous success, the theme song for the 1982 series featured the same writing and production staff, only with idol Tomoyo Harada (原田知世) assuming lead vocal and actress duties.

With it the 2006 series brought a lackluster remake of the original theme, sung this time around by popular actress and leading lady Masami Nagasawa (長澤まさみ). The single, Nagasawa's first and only thus far, was released under the pseudonym "Izumi Hoshi", the name of the heroine in Sailor Fuku To Kikanjū.

Download:
Hiroko Yakushimaru - Sailor Fuku To Kikanjū
薬師丸ひろ子 - セーラー服と機関銃

And here's the film's original trailer from 1981, with Yakushimaru singing over Kisugi's instrumental: