J-pop, 1996–1999
A video playlist exploring the half-decade via the Oricon chart
I made this video playlist for fellow Jukebox writer Joshua Kim, though if I was going to write down notes, might as well post it here too for everyone else to read. The deal was, he makes me a mix of ‘70s/’80s Japanese pop if I made him one for the ’90s. This is my end of the exchange.
Let me say this upfront: this playlist covers the equivalent of me compiling the ’90s in American music solely by the Billboard charts. These songs are directly pulled from the Oricon year-end charts from 1996 to 1999. For anyone looking for less mainstream choices like, I don’t know, Shibuya-kei here, sorry, there aren’t any.
Why those years? Because it’s the range of years which I can actually recollect something from the songs whether it be the melody, the chorus or just the name. I’ve explored the Oricon chart like a time machine with an entry possibly tapping into a certain memory. (For the record, I was born in 1992, so my association with it is cloudy at best up until 1999.) For the most part, listening to J-pop in the 20th century has been an exercise in nostalgia for the past year. That explains why I need someone to introduce me to the pop music of Japan before the ‘90s.
I haven’t got to the charts in its entirely. Some names I have yet to touch because they’ve been so famous since this decade, they’re now grandfathered into the charts, and so it doesn’t seem all that worthwhile. Names like B’z, Spitz, Yuzu, SMAP and V6. Others I haven’t got to because, hey, there are 400 songs alone from this selection. That’s work. I included the number ones for each respective year — except 1999, which I’ll get to later — because ignoring those didn’t seem right even if I haven’t actually checked out the artist in detail.
Anyway, here are some annotations for each song on this video playlist. The order was loosely put together for flow.
1996
Namie Amuro, “Don’t Wanna Cry” (#9)
1996 was Tetsuya Komuro’s year. Though he charted with TM Network and TRF years before, this year kicked off his reign as superproducer for the rest of the decade with a number of idols plus his own group Globe. The shining star out of the Komuro family was Namie Amuro, who still dominates the J-pop conversation today. Home to her debut album Sweet 19 Blues released the same year, “Don’t Wanna Cry” represents the new sound for her that she honed with Komuro for the rest of the ‘90s.
See also: “I Believe” by Tomomi Kahara; “Sexy” by hitomi; “All Night Long” by Ami Suzuki
MAX, “Seventies” (did not chart)
But before Amuro was Amuro, she was the member of the Super Monkeys, an idol-group who sang Eurobeat covers. (Check out “Try Me ~Watashi on Shinjite~” for what that sounded like.) The group then formed into MAX as she left, and they put a platinum album with more Eurobeat covers. History remembers “Tora Tora Tora” more, but I like this one better.
Globe, “Departures” (#2)
See: “Don’t Wanna Cry” by Namie Amuro / See also: “Feel Like Dance”
Mr. Children, “Na mo Naki Uta” (#1)
MisChil joins those aforementioned names who’ve been a chart mainstay for a decade and change. Their more traditional set-up of classic ’60s rock will come up later as you go down the years (See: Yuzu). What’s more interesting out of rock music around this time that’s sadly missing from the Oricon are more rookie bands like Quruli or Supercar that debuted around this time. Blame the media repeating the hell out of this for retrospective countdowns but the chorus will be something I’ll recall forever even if I don’t know this band. (Japanese rock is a big blind spot for me, so forgive me.)
Puffy, “Asia no Junshin” (#15)
For ’60s rock revival, I’m way more familiar with Puffy — or Puffy AmiYumi over here in the US, thanks to Sean Combs. Their hit album JET-CD is full of oldies bangers like this one that jumps on the back of the Beach Boys/Beatles era.
See also: “Ai no Shirushi,” “Nagisa ni Matsuwaru Et Cetera” (#18, 1997)
Judy and Mary, “Sobakasu” (#18)
Famously the opening song for the anime Rurou ni Kenshin, Judy and Mary’s explosive power-pop as well as Yuki’s bratty vocals for that snarling chorus won’t leave my head. The band has been long gone, but Yuki continues to have a solid solo career.
SPEED, “Body and Soul” (#45, Toy’s Factory)
Idol group SPEED came from Okinawa’s Actors School where Amuro, MAX and other music acts were trained. (Fun fact: Perfume was inspired as kids by SPEED to join a similar academy to pursue music.) They were energetic as kids can be when they came out — just listen to them shouting their hearts out in “Body & Soul,” a loosely American-influenced debut single.
See also: “Steady” (#5, 1997) “White Love” (#34, 1998)
Pocket Biscuits, “Yellow Yellow Happy” (#30, TM Factory)
Honestly, I just wanted to include this song to cover some novelty stuff of the ’90s. The members of PockeBi are better known as entertainers of the Japanese TV circuit: Teruyoshi Uchimura of Ucchan Nanchan, Udo Suzuki of Cayeen, and Chiaki whose got a resume of her own. You see more than a few celebrity vehicles like this one in the Oricon throughout the ’90s. Another example is H jungle with T, a collaboration between Tetsuya Komuro and Masatoshi Hamada of Downtown. Many actresses ranked into the charts too. But really, some of them are worth your time, and PockeBi took their gig pretty seriously as this earnest synth-pop band.
See also: “Ultra Relax” by Tomoe Shinohara (did not chart)
Nanase Aikawa, “Koigokoro” (#23)
For her second album, paraDOX, Aikawa Nanase cools her bratty voice that marked her great debut album Red to go for a more adult rock record. You can see the shift from “Koigokoro,” a dramatic, moody piece of heartbreak, from her name-making banger “Yume Miru Shojo ja Irarenai.” I recommend both.
1997
Namie Amuro, “Can You Celebrate?” (#1)
The 1997 chart looks like the hangover from its previous year: TK singles, Johnny’s groups SMAP and V6, B’z, Puffy, SPEED, Spitz, Judy and Mary and — hey, the Pokemon theme song! A new emergence is visual-kei branch-offs GLAY, SHAZNA and L’Arc ~en~ciel, but we’ll go through those more in 1998.
And so the year is topped by “Can You Celebrate?”: a mainstay from 1996 but improved in every way. Written to commemorate the singer’s marriage, the six-minute single is the penultimate Amuro ballad as well as a peak work from the Komuro family.
Kinki Kids, “Glass no Shonen” (#2)
A year without a Johnny’s boy band in the Oricon would be a goddamn miracle. It’s not that their music is entirely bad; I tend to like Arashi singles, and I admit I also enjoy this hit by the Domotos (no relation!), a.k.a. Kinki Kids. But it’s just so predictable as chart successes, and there are so many groups, it clogs up too much of the charts to make following the Oricon any fun. (See also: AKB48 and their branch in the 2010s.) To ignore them entirely, though, wouldn’t be a correct writing of history, so here it is.
See also: SMAP, “Yozora no Mukou” (#2, 1998)
Every Little Thing, “Future World” (did not chart)
Shameless self-promotion: I recently spent a week writing about most of the songs from Every Little Thing’s Every Best Singles +3, a compilation album collecting their singles from 1996–1998. A good entry way to this synth-pop-turned-soft-rock band is this one that shows off the cool of singer Kaori Mochida the best.
See also: “Time Goes By” (#9, 1998) “Deattakoro no Yoni” (#45)
1998
The Brilliant Green, “There Will Be Love There ~Ai no Aru Basho~” (#22)
A lot of rock singles cover this section. Out of them, the only one I’ve checked out in depth so far is the Brilliant Green, a trio that seems to grew up with a steady diet of the 4AD-signed alt-rock bands of the early ’90s. So, yes, it’s roughed up around the edges but sways back and forth like a shoegazer. This one, though, goes for that stadium-status anthem with that sky-reaching chorus, and sure enough, it climbed the charts. (But forreal, tho, please go listen to Tomoko Kawase’s post-BG solo project Tommy February6, like now.)
GLAY, “Yuuwaku” (#1) / hide with Spready Beaver, “Pink Spider” (#11) / L’Arc~en~ciel, “Honey” (#8)
These three, though, I apologize, but I haven’t really poked around their catalog enough to speak much about them. Both GLAY and LeC’s names have been present every time I caught a glimpse of Japanese music TV while I know hide from X Japan. The most of-the-time document is hide, whose video is given an early nu-metal treatment.
MISIA, “Tsutsumikomu Youni…” (#61)
R&B would come to the Oricon a year or two down the road, though you can arguably pick Misia as the bridge between an Utada Hikaru from a Dream Come True. The rest of her great debut album Mother, Father, Brother, Sister follows this neo-soul sound if this path seems like a thing you want to pursue.
Kiroro, “Nagai Aida” (#6)
I never know if Kiroro was in the wrong decade or responsible for influencing the next. Their sappy piano ballads fit awkwardly in a chart filled with singles by flashy rock bands and all-made-up pop groups competing for attention. But the next decade will bring more than a few earnest singer-songwriter types, often carrying an acoustic guitar. (A possibly not-true theory of mine and mine only: one group bridging the two eras might be ZONE.)
1999
Morning Musume, “Love Machine” (#7)
Predecessors to the AKB legion and one of the most influential Japanese girl groups, Mo-Musu kicked around 1998 with a few modest hits, though I’m unsure if anything prepared the country for “Love Machine.” It’s a really dumb song, but Tsunku of Sharam Q is really good at making silly songs like this: it’s the crux of his Hello! Project. Though Japan was going the complete opposite in mood as the girls here who declare it as “the envy of the world”— the ’80s bubble burst and the country spent the decade in recession — but my, what a party to cap off an eventful decade.
Speaking of dumb songs: the year’s best-selling single was “Dango 3 Kyodai,” a novelty song about, yes, dango. It’s the spiritual sibling to “Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun,” another pop song based around a character of a traditional Japanese snack. And like the latter, the single sold millions; “Oyoge!” holds the record as the best-selling Japanese single ever. It beat out every big name of that year: GLAY, Ayumi Hamasaki, Utada Hikaru, you name it.
See also: “Daite! Hold on Me” (#52, 1998)
Ayumi Hamasaki, “Boys & Girls” (#11)
Is there a pop star who better represents Japan’s pop culture in the early 2000s than Ayumi Hamasaki? She’s already prepared to embrace the role as the voice of a generation in “Boys & Girls” as the new millennium dawns.
See also: “Love ~Destiny~” (#30), “To Be” (#67)
Ringo Shiina, “Honnou” (#40) / Ryoko Hirosue, “Private” (did not chart) / Rie Tomosaka, “Cappuccino” (did not chart)
That scene where she shatters a mirror with her fists — what an intro! Ringo Shiina is the Japanese equivalent of Bjork or Kate Bush in that every remotely ~experimental~ female rock artist after her will be compared to her music. She released one successful debut before this single, Muzai Moratorium, but this hints at yet another exciting new direction. (Another shameless self-promotion: I spent a week writing about her second album, Shoso Strip, earlier this year.) She wrote songs for other people around this time, too, notably for actresses Rie Tomosaka and Ryoko Hirosue — the latter being one demanded name in the media circuit in the late ’90s.
Utada Hikaru, “Automatic” (#5)
If Ayumi Hamasaki represented the beginning of the millennium, Utada marked the end of a century. The built-in nostalgia of “Automatic” is still embedded in its home decade, though Utada paves a new way with such familiar, homely pop sounds. The next few years after the ’90s in pop would be led by her and Ayumi Hamasaki, and what an exciting time that unfolds to be.
See also: “Movin’ on Without You” (#16), “First Love” (#72)
