Above: Bibari Maeda in The Face of Another 1966

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/Munetaka Inoue & His Sharp Five - Twilight Beach

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.

- posted by Cinebeats

The Peanuts with the Japanese action star Sonny Chiba in the ’70s

There’s a new Japanese ’60s and ’70s Jpop group on last.fm that should appeal to anyone who enjoys the stuff posted in this blog. If you’re a last.fm member stop by and chat about vintage Jpop albums, various artists and whatever is on your mind. If you’re not a last.fm member yet, I highly recommend joining! It’s a great place to keep track of what you’re listening to and meet others who enjoy similar music.

Nihongo-a-go-go

Sorry for the long delay in posts, but we keep getting distracted by other things and forgetting to update the blog.

Here’s a sweet song by Betsy & Chris, who were a popular singing duo from Hawaii that made it big in Japan in the early 1970s.

Betsy Curtis and Chris Rolseth were part of the Kaillua High-School Madrigals who toured Japan singing Hawaiian folk songs in the late 1960s under the direction of Shigeru Hotoke. While they were there, Denon Columbia Japan were so impressed by the girls that they offered them a record deal singing Japanese folk music.

In 1970 they released the beautiful folk song Shiroi Iro Wa Koi Bito No Iro (a.k.a. Colors of Love) which was written by the Japanese songwriter Kazuhiko Kato. The song was a huge hit and it quickly made Betsy & Chris one of the most popular singing duos in Japan.

Their Japanese singing skills were very impressive and the girls spent the next 5 years recording music and touring in Japan where they had great success singing Japanese language songs. Betsy & Chris released nine albums in Japan, but unfortunately they couldn’t seem to find the same kind of success in the US.

Betsy & Chris - Shiroi Iro Wa Koi Bito No Iro (1970)

Betsy Curtis of Betsy & Chris fame is still recording and performing music. You can find out more about her as well as Betsy & Chris on her official website:

- Betsyko

Kayoko Moriyama has a really lovely voice and covered many popular songs during the 1960s. Her first big hit was a Japanese version of the Italian diva Mina’s hit single Tintarella Di Luna which was released in 1960. Tintarella Di Luna was a huge success for Kayoko Moriyama and many more hits followed. She covered a lot of popular songs throughout the 1960s including Pocket Transistor, which was originally recorded by Alma Cogan as Just Couldn’t Resist Her And Her Pocket Transistor, and Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo, which was originally recorded by the actress Sophia Loren.

During the 1960s Kayoko Moriyama also started acting and appeared in some Japanese television dramas and musical comedies alongside the well known Japanese pop star Kyu Sakamoto. She also costarred in the critically acclaimed Japanese film Kuroi junin no onna (aka Ten Dark Women, 1961) directed by the award winning filmmaker Kon Ichikawa (The Burmese Harp, Tokyo Olympiad, An Actor’s Revenge, etc.).

Kyoko Moriyama’s career seemed to wane a bit in the late 1960s, but in 1970 she updated her image and recorded Butterfly Samba. The song was another huge hit for her in Japan and it propelled Kayoko Moriyama into the spotlight once again. She continued recording throughout the 1970s for Columbia Japan, but she seemed to have stopped recording in the early 1980s. I believe she still performs live on occasion.

Here are three of Kayoko Moriyama’s most popular singles which I really enjoy. I hope you’ll like them too!

Kayoko Moriyama - Tintarella Di Luna (1960)
Kayoko Moriyama - Pocket Transistor (1965)
Kayoko Moriyama - Butterfly Samba (1970)

Download all three songs HERE

Kyoko Moriyama’s offical web page at Columbia Japan can be found here:
http://columbia.jp/moriyama/index.html

- brought to you by CineBeats

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.

- Let’s Go J-Sound! 2006 Collection

Cheers!

For your listening pleasure here are two of Ayumi Ishida’s popular singles. The first is Shadow of Love which was recorded in 1967 for Victor and was composed by Suzuki Kunihiko who’s also responsible for many popular Japanese songs during the 60s-70s as well as soundtracks for some great Japanese movies such as Onna banchô: Nora-neko rokku (Female Juvenile Delinquent Leader: Stray Cat Rock) the second is her big hit Blue Light Yokohama which was recorded in 1968 for Columbia.

Ayumi Ishida - Shadow of Love
Ayumi Ishida - Blue Light Yokohama

Last but not least, here’s a short but great video featuring Ayumi Ishida singing Blue Light Yokohama!

- brought to you by cinebeats

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.

- Jungle M-18 by Shunsuke Kikuchi
- Concrete Jungle M-10 by Shunsuke Kikuchi
- Amazon Rider Koko ni Ari vocals by Masato Shimon and remixed by URU

- brought to you by T3rtium Quid

A lot of people are probably familiar with the cute Japanese singing duo known as The Peanuts. The Peanuts were made up of twin sisters Emi & Yûmi Ito and they’re mostly remembered for playing the Shobijin (Fairy Twins) in the original 1961 Mothra movie. They originally called themselves the Ito Sisters, but changed their name to The Peanuts in 1958 when they began an extensive recording career in Tokyo, which lasted from the late 1950s to the late 1960s. The Peanuts’ popularity began to fizzle in the 1970s and they stopped recording and performing together in 1975.

Japanese music fans should enjoy listening to a couple of The Peanuts’ more obscure songs which really show off their great harmonies. The first song is called Small White Boat and its haunting melody showcases some of the best Peanuts’ vocals we’ve heard . The second song is simply called Bossa Nova and it’s a great tune that Bossa fans should enjoy.

Small White Boat - The Peanuts
Bossa Nova - The Peanuts

If you’d like to find out more about the Peanuts we recommend visiting Lawrence Tuczynski’s extensive Godzilla Monster Music site which is a lot of fun to explore and the best English language site for information about The Peanuts we’ve come across.

You can also enjoy a live performance of their popular tune Koi no Vacance (aka A Vacancy of Love) in this great clip featuring The Peanuts in the early as well as later part of their singing career.

- brought to you by Cinebeats & T3rtium Quid

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.

500,000,000 JPN by Hattori Katsuhisa
Sept-Elle-Meme by Hattori Katsuhisa

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