City Pop シティ・ポップ

A few weeks back I was at my local record store and did something I have not done for at least 20 years... I bought a record I knew nothing about purely based on the cover art. The record was Aoyama Nights by Mariko Katsuragi and I am so thankful for the delightful musical rabbit-hole the record led me down.

Aoyama Nights was supposedly recorded at sessions between 1982-1986. A demo was found Tokyo's Ebisu district's revered vinyl bars by Japanese music connoisseur Sten Saluveer AKA MILDHANS. These rare recordings were then restored, remastered and occasionally redubbed. The story is too wild for me to ignore, so I started googling.

This led me to another release, Seaside Highway, also by Mariko Katsuragi.

Is the story about the found recordings true? Is it a fake story to get attention? More googling...

These genre of these albums is listed on bandcamp as "City Pop", a fuzzily defined Japanese genre with R&B and jazz influences from the late 1970s and 1980s. The genre became closely tied to the tech boom in Japan during the 1970s and 1980s.

Through the magic of hard core fans of the genre and YouTube algorithms City Pop has started becoming popular with Gen Z. Near the end of 2020 the #1 song on Spotify's viral chart was a song from 1979 called “Mayonaka no Door / Stay With Me” and performed by a then-19-year-old Miki Matsubara.

The popularity of City Pop has caused many of these artists to create new music videos in the 2020s for songs that never had a video. Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi is considered a City Pop classic with a new official video released in 2019. And 「SPARKLE」by Tatsuro Yamashita has an official video from 2023.

Fun, right?!?!

There are some rare songs that are hard to find on YouTube and streaming services that are absolute jams. Listen to the bass line in Love Talkin' (Honey It's You) by Tatsuro Yamashita. I have to find a new links to this all the time. Apologies if the link is broken.

So is the Mariko Katsuragi story real? I asked at the record store that I picked up the record if they've heard anything... no. I've fired off emails to Memme Vaev, the record label, no answer. I can't find confirmation anywhere.

At this point it doesn't matter to me if the story is real, I've been getting so much enjoyment out of chasing the answer. If the story is real, it's a bonus. If it is fabricated, I appreciate the introduction to City Pop and all the fun corners of internet music fandom it has led me to.

SP