Bibari Maeda is a Japanese actress as well as a talented pop singer. The first film she appeared in was director Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (a.k.a. Tanin no kao, 1966). It’s an amazing movie and happens to be a personal favorite. It’s also finally being released in the US today on DVD from Criterion as part of their terrific Three Films By Hiroshi Teshigahara DVD Box Set. If you enjoy avant-garde Japanese cinema I highly recommend giving The Face of Another a look. You can find a review I wrote about the film here.
In The Face of Another, Bibari Maeda appears in two brief bar scenes and in the second one she gets to sing what sounds like a German drinking song. It’s a nice song and she sings it beautifully, but it’s a shame that she isn’t in the film more
According to her IMDb page Bibari Maeda was born in Canberra, Australia on August 8, 1948. I have read that she grew up in Kamakura (Kanagawa prefecture) in Japan and that her mother was Japanese and her father was American, but I haven’t been able to confirm it. I believe she first started performing in musicals in 1964 and gained popularity in 1966 after she started modeling for Shiseido Co.
Besides her small role in The Face of Another, Bibari Maeda also appeared in the Japanese monster movie Son of Godzilla (1967) and she recently did some voice acting in the anime film Vampire Hunter D - Bloodlust which are both available on DVD in the US.
I don’t know much about her recording career, but I do know she recorded popular singles with both Columbia and Philips in Japan during the sixties and seventies. It seems that most of the songs she recorded during that time were done in conjunction with Japanese bands or they were duets with male artists. To celebrate the release of the film The Face of Another with Bibari Maeda I thought I would share one of her best songs. It’s called Twilight Beach and it was performed by Bibari Maeda along with Munetaka Inoue & His Sharp Five. The song was released by Columbia Records Japan in 1967.
Bibari Maeda is currently signed with the Japanese talent agency Creem International and her official web page can be found here. According to that site she continues to perform in musicals and her last role was in a Japanese stage production of Thoroughly Modern Millie in April of this year.
Happy belated New Year! Many thanks for the nice comments we’ve gotten about Let’s Go J-Sound! in recent months. We’ve been neglecting the blog, but we hope to keep it updated a lot more frequently in 2007 and expand it’s focus a little to include news and other tid bits about Japanese music made between 1955-1985. We’d like to start updating Let’s Go J-Sound at least once a week or at the very least every other week, so please visit us more often!
We’ve gotten lots of requests from people asking us to repost some of the old songs we talked about here last year, so we decided to kick-start the new year by compiling all the tracks into a mini compilation for your listening pleasure. We plan on making it available for a month and after that we will remove the file and the songs will not be posted ever again so grab them while you can.
Shunsuke Kikuchi is a prolific composer specializing in incidental music for television and film. His music has set the scenes for a long list of anime, drama and period drama programs, as well as tokusatsu shows like Chôjin Barom 1 (aka Superman Barom 1), Denjin Zaborga (aka Electroid Zaborger), Iron King and Robot Keiji (aka Robot Detective). In addition, he was responsible for the music in the first few installments of the long running Kamen Rider (aka Masked Rider) series. Kicuchi has also composed quite a few impressive soundtracks for films including Hajime Sato’s Kaitei Daisenso (aka Battle Beneath the Sea or Terror Beneath the Sea) and several of the Female Convict Scorpion, Gamera and Sister Street Fighter movies.
Masato Shimon is another heavy-hitter in the world of theme songs, lending his distinctive vocal talents to many tokusatsu classics such as Kikaida, Kikaida-01 and Inazuman (aka Lightning Man). He has teamed up with Shunsuke Kikuchi on several occasions with tracks for Denjin Zaborga, Iron King and Kamen Rider to name just a few.
Kamen Rider Amazon was the 4th installment in the Kamen Rider series and aired on TBS in Japan between 1974-1975. The program only ran over a course of 24 episodes and is known as the shortest running series in the history of Kamen Rider. The show starred Tôru Okazaki and is considered by many to be the most violent and bloodiest of the Kamen Rider series. It is for this reason Kamen Rider Amazon is said to have had such a short run on television, as it was considered to be just too “dark” for the kiddies.
Submitted for your listening pleasure are 2 short BGM tracks from Kamen Rider Amazon composed by Shunsuke Kikuchi. And for something a little different, a modern 2000 remix of the opening theme song “Amazon Rider Koko ni Ari” (aka “Amazon Rider is Here”), featuring vocals by Masato Shimon and remixed by URU.
And to round things out, a video clip of the Kamen Rider Amazon opening title sequence with theme song music by Shunsuke Kikuchi and vocals by Masato Shimon.
Composer Hattori Katsuhisa has been a respected figure in the Japanese music industry for many years. He is most well known in the US for composing anime soundtracks for popular television shows and movies such as Crest of the Stars (1999) and Fist of the North Star (1986), but he’s also had a long career composing music for Japanese films.
In 1969 he composed a terrific soundtrack for Yoichi Maeda’s little known film Nanatsu no kao no onna (aka The Woman with Seven Faces) which starred Shima Iwashita, Ken Ogata and Ichiro Arishima. We’ve never seen the movie ourselves and haven’t been able to find out very much about it, but we do know it has a great soundtrack!
Hattori Katsuhisa’s score for Nanatsu no kao no onna ranges from Bossa Nova, to Easy, to Beat and contains some commanding horn arrangements, nice vocalisms, sweeping strings, interesting violin work, subtle flute and driving beats. We’ve uploaded two complimentary tracks from the Nanatsu no kao no onna score that soundtrack enthusiasts should enjoy.
Many fans of Japanese cinema are probably familiar with actor Jo Shishido, but not a lot of people know that he was also a singer. Jo Shishido performed numerous songs in some of his early films and even released an album called “Ace no Jo.”
In 1961 Jo Shishido got his first big starring role in Buichi Saito’s film Rokudenashi Kagyo (aka Dirty Work). In the movie Shishido plays Eiji Yano, a carefree rogue who’s prone to breaking out into song whenever the mood strikes him.
The title song from Rokudenashi Kagyo is a catchy R&R/R&B song that enka fans should enjoy since the composition and Jo’s deep vocal style give it a very traditional feel.
Za KageStar (aka The Shadow Star) was a tokusatsu program that aired between 1976-1977 on NET TV in Japan over a course of 34 episodes. The show starred Naoki Tachibana as KageStar, who along with his trusty companion BelleStar (played by Emi Hayakawa), battled the forces of Doctor Satan and his Satan Empire.
Ichirô Mizuki (seen in picture) provided the lead vocals for the 4 songs associated with this show which include the closing theme “Star! Star! KageStar!” where he is accompanied by the childrens choir known as The Columbia Cradle Club. Mizuki is a force to be reckoned with in the world of anime & tokusatsu theme songs, recording hundreds of them over his 30+ year career so be prepared to see/hear more of him in upcoming posts!
Without further delay, this is my favorite KageStar track “Star! Star! KageStar!” and a video of the opening title sequence.
Bibari Maeda is a Japanese actress as well as a talented pop singer. The first film she appeared in was director Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (a.k.a. Tanin no kao, 1966). It’s an amazing movie and happens to be a personal favorite. It’s also finally being released in the US today on DVD from Criterion as part of their terrific Three Films By Hiroshi Teshigahara DVD Box Set
Shunsuke Kikuchi is a prolific composer specializing in incidental music for television and film. His music has set the scenes for a long list of anime, drama and period drama programs, as well as tokusatsu shows like Chôjin Barom 1 (aka Superman Barom 1), Denjin Zaborga (aka Electroid Zaborger), Iron King and Robot Keiji (aka Robot Detective). In addition, he was responsible for the music in the first few installments of the long running Kamen Rider (aka Masked Rider) series. Kicuchi has also composed quite a few impressive soundtracks for films including Hajime Sato’s Kaitei Daisenso (aka Battle Beneath the Sea or Terror Beneath the Sea) and several of the Female Convict Scorpion, Gamera and Sister Street Fighter movies.
Masato Shimon is another heavy-hitter in the world of theme songs, lending his distinctive vocal talents to many tokusatsu classics such as Kikaida, Kikaida-01 and Inazuman (aka Lightning Man). He has teamed up with Shunsuke Kikuchi on several occasions with tracks for Denjin Zaborga, Iron King and Kamen Rider to name just a few.
Composer 
Many fans of Japanese cinema are probably familiar with actor 
Za KageStar (aka The Shadow Star) was a tokusatsu program that aired between 1976-1977 on NET TV in Japan over a course of 34 episodes. The show starred Naoki Tachibana as KageStar, who along with his trusty companion BelleStar (played by Emi Hayakawa), battled the forces of Doctor Satan and his Satan Empire.