Milestones

Takuro Yoshida

Name: Takuro Yoshida – Genki desu.
Item: Genki desu.
Author: Federico Romagnoli

Genki desu.

1972 (Odyssey)

folk-rock, new music

by Federico Romagnoli

Takuro Yoshida was among the pioneers of an artistic movement that in Japan came to be known as new music. This is a movement that began roughly in 1970 and involved musicians interested in creating rock music with Japanese lyrics developing a stylistically mature formula.

Before new music, Japanese rock was essentially split between group sounds ed eleki, reincarnations respectively of the beatimported via the Beatles, and surfmusic, in response to the huge local success of the American band the Ventures. These are two movements that Japanese music criticism has, in retrospect, viewed with some embarrassment and perhaps undeserved hostility (after all, naivety can be found in abundance in the music of every era and culture): in any case, just as they rose, they declined fairly quickly, never truly managing to challenge the popular music that dominated the media of the time (enka e kayokyoku, the description of which we'll skip for reasons of space).

American influence, however, gradually began to make itself felt through folk music too, and several Japanese groups tried their hand at imitating it. It seemed destined to remain an underground movement, until suddenly the Folk Crusaders, from Kyoto, surpassed 1.3 million copies sold with "Kaette kita yopparai" ("帰って来たよっぱらい"), a bizarre piece of psychedelic folk released as a single in December 1967.

That success led record labels to show interest in other artists translating folk sounds into a local key, such as Nobuhiko Okabayashi, who on his 1969 debut album – "Watashi wo danzai seyo" (わたしを断罪せよ) – blended original songs with covers of classic Japanese tunes and American blues, as well as modern songwriters like Eric Andersen and Bob Dylan.

Takuro Yoshida enters the scene right after. Hailing from Hiroshima, he reaches his album debut after a long apprenticeship, first in a group sounds-style band, then performing at local events and contests where he presented his own songs for voice and acoustic guitar, also following in Dylan's footsteps. He often played at the US military base in Iwakuni and at Hiroshima University during the clashes between students and police that also affected Japan in 1968-69.

In 1970 he was signed by Elec, a newly founded independent label with which he released three albums within just a few months: "Seishun no uta" (青春の詩, "Song of Youth", 1970), "On Stage Tomodachi" (オン・ステージともだち, "The Friend on Stage", 1971), recorded live, and "Ningen Nante" (人間なんて, "What It Means to Be Human", 1971). Public interest seemed to be growing: the first album peaked at number 64 on the Oricon chart, the second reached 40, and the third climbed to 25. These rankings translated into tens of thousands of copies sold, allowing Yoshida to make a living from his music, even though his name still remained largely the preserve of devoted fans and university students. Cbs, however, noticed that his cult following was expanding and decided to bet on him: they offered him a contract, guaranteeing him complete creative freedom.

Eager to launch him, the label's executives arranged to release one of his songs from the Elec period as a single: thus, on January 21, 1972, the 45 of "Kekkon Shiyouyo" (結婚しようよ, "Let's Get Married") came out, originally featured on "Ningen Nante". The song climbed all the way to number 3 on the Oricon chart and sold 422,000 copies over its seven months on the chart. Yoshida became one of the leading voices in Japanese music, and in hindsight the song's success can be pointed to as the big bang of new music: while it's true the term wouldn't be standardized by Japanese journalists until 1976, everyone would reference Yoshida's music when trying to explain what it actually meant. [note 1]

One could sum up that for this movement, the approach to music mattered as much as the actual content. On one hand, Anglo-American influence was put to good use, avoiding mere imitation and building complex, refined songs that could win over the public and challenge the hegemony of earlier Japanese popular music: essentially, first under the banner of folk rock (with blues and country shadings), the wing to which Yoshida also belongs, and later – particularly from the arrival of Yosui Inoue and Yumi Arai onward – incorporating other elements (first jazz and funk, then, moving beyond the Anglosphere, Brazilian and Caribbean music).

On the other hand, a selective attitude was fostered, probably due to the need to build an identity based on careful craftsmanship, one not to be sacrificed on the altar of the entertainment industry: television appearances were therefore doled out sparingly (at most, a song might be lent to a commercial, but music programs were firmly avoided, so as not to mix with more mainstream fare), and the preferred medium was radio, where the visual element was rendered moot.

Yoshida himself, now regarded as the movement's putative father, aside from a couple of fleeting appearances as an actor, would not make his first television appearance as a singer until 1989, nearly twenty years after his recording debut.

Its definitive consecration came in July 1972: on the first day of the month the single "Tabi no yado" ("旅の宿", "The Inn Where We Stayed") was released, and three weeks later the album "Genki desu." ("元気です。", "I'm Fine.").[note 2]

Both reached number 1, selling 700,000 and 469,000 copies respectively during their time on the charts. Although it may seem counterintuitive, the more significant figure is the second one: "Genki desu." was, by a wide margin, the best-selling Japanese album of the 1972-73 two-year period (simply put, the singles market was more developed at the time).

Having the resources of a major at his disposal, Yoshida put together his most ambitious album to date, with layered arrangements dense with technological flourishes, aided also by the support of young sound engineer Mitsukazu Tanaka, who would later become one of the most sought-after figures in the history of Japanese music.

The team of session musicians who took part in the album is quite large, but revolves around three names in particular: Takahiko Ishikawa (guitars, keyboards, bass, mandolin), Masataka Matsutoya (keyboards, banjo, mandolin) and Tatsuo Hayashi (drums). Here too, all three would go on to become gray eminences of the local scene.

The tracklist opens with "Haru dattane". It's an exemplary track for Yoshida's style: a brisk-paced folk rock number, introduced by a joyful electric organ melody, with harmonica flourishes and slide guitar lines in the background. The organ theme then cyclically returns at the end of each chorus, linking back into the verse.

What captures the attention most, however, is Yoshida's voice, which overloads the meter by packing in far more words than would traditionally fit. The break from the popular Japanese music that had dominated until then is evident: consider in particular the typical enkasinging style, often slowed down by an exaggerated use of vibrato in pursuit of a melodramatic effect that here vanishes entirely, even though the lyrics themselves are often dense with nostalgia, melancholy and regret.

Even compared to the embryonic rock ofgroup sounds the break is evident: the themes are handled with greater maturity and rich in metaphor, doing away with childish slogans and resting on a confiding tone that seems to erase the distance between the listener and the icon of the entertainment world, previously seen as unreachable (this aspect has been highlighted by music critic Tsuyoshi Ito, with reference to the movement as a whole).

While you forget me

I cannot forget you

My letter from back then has arrived.

I want to knock on the frosted window glass

And try to stop your clock

Mine stayed behind in that time.

Along with the dust swept away by the wind

Our voices are gone now

It happened in spring, didn't it?

When I try to remember

I can no longer picture your face

My letter from back then has arrived.

While the dandelions sway in the wind

I want to wipe away your tears

Mine stayed behind in that time.

I used to run along the great riverbank

Looking back

It happened in spring, didn't it?

Despite the comparisons to Dylan, political engagement wasn't among the themes Yoshida tackled: after the crackdown on student protests, Japanese society entered a phase of retreat, and even those who had once sung from the barricades found themselves disoriented and disillusioned. The few who still attempted openly protest songs remained confined to the underground, while others turned to intimate narratives with an obvious escapist intent, or tried a more indirect approach, describing social situations that might contain veiled criticism of generic aspects of Japanese culture, but never militant political messages.

The stance taken by Yoshida, and later followed by others, nonetheless retained strong symbolic power, because it conveyed a clear desire for independence from the mechanics of more commercial music and sought to portray a young, dynamic world, far removed from the previous generation — the one that had experienced the defeat suffered during the war as a source of shame.[note 3]

The care that went into building the record is shown by “Kagawa Ryo no tegami,” a ballad more complex than its immediate impact suggests: over a 6/8 groove, it features constant interplay between banjo, acoustic guitar and guitar slide, emphasizing them with a pronounced use of panning, meaning the signal is split in the mix between left and right channels.

A similar bit of studio craft appears in “Natsu yasumi,” with the banjo on the left channel creating the effect of a horse ride. At 2'22" thehi-hat comes in to mark the four beats of the measure, tightening the pace and adding a slight sense of tension.

The lyrics paint a picture of the Hiroshima summers Yoshida experienced as a boy. The sense of nostalgia is so palpable that many fans became convinced the lyrics describe the Hiroshima that existed before the bombing — something the artist later denied.

The straw hats are gone

The frogs of the rice paddies are gone

But I'm still waiting for summer vacation.

The young teacher is no longer here

The pretty teacher is no longer here

But I'm still waiting for summer vacation.

Summer vacation, when I used to draw my illustrated diary

Summer vacation, when I used to buy fireworks

The summer vacation I was waiting for.

Where did the dragonflies in the field go?

Even though back then I let them go free

I waited for summer vacation alone.

Summer vacation, when I used to eat watermelon

Summer vacation, when I used to splash water on the ground

Sunflowers, summer downpours, the crying of cicadas

The tracklist also makes room for experimental fragments barely over a minute long, like “Uma”, a brief gallop with filtered vocals pushed along by bass mixed up front, coming across as a psychedelic reworking of a children's nursery rhyme:

The horses are running, their big nostrils flaring

The horses are laughing, their big mouths wide open

The horses are jumping, all four of their limbs spread apart

The horses are stamping their hooves, beaming down from the sky

The horses are singing, until today and then from tomorrow

Another fragment dense with inventive touches is “Koenji”, where over a raw strumming acoustic guitar part, Yoshida's voice splits through overdubs, weaving the two lines together with unisons, harmonies, and moments where one voice comes in to finish the phrase where the other left off.

The range covered is wide, as shown by the calm of “Kocchiwo muitekure”, a ballad in 3/4 with flourishes of mandolin and Wurlitzer electric piano, the idyllic harmonies of “Tadori tsuitara itsumo amefuri”, with choruses in the style of sunshine pop (that same year the song would be turned into a hit by hard rock version the Edo-era band Mops), and the assault of “Mata aou”, a kind of proto-punk track in which Yoshida sings himself hoarse, with a rough, aggressive tone that at that moment in Japan was matched only by the voice of Kiyoshiro Imawano, legendary singer of R.C. Succession, who also debuted that same year, 1972.

The track is in 4/4, but with an unusual muted guitar hit on the third beat, over which the drums then play fills ad hoc to lock into place. The instrumental backing also stands out for a sort of triple solo: the electric guitar sits center in the mix, while a piano Jerry Lee Lewis occupies the left channel and a resonator guitar sits on the right.

Toward the end of the tracklist there's room for a stripped-down version of “Tabi no yado”, which compared to the 45, where it featured a electric arrangementis reduced to voice, guitar and harmonica, without losing any of its evocative power.

The lyrics recall the wedding of Osami Okamoto, a friend of Yoshida's and frequent co-writer. Even within a scene of romantic intimacy like the one described, it exudes a sense of failure and of the impossibility of recovering lost time.

You wore that ornament of blades of grass in your hair

While you gripped the neck of that bottle of warm sake

You asked if I wanted another glass

[The situation] was strangely sexy.

As usual, I sat cross-legged

Your cheeks and ears were bright red

Ah, how elegant

I'm trying to write a haiku.

All the lights in the room were off

Your hair smells nice after you get out of the bath

Wasn't it [during] a first quarter moon?

It was a long time ago.

To see the moon

I got completely drunk

Absentmindedly lying on your lap

I ended up drinking too much

I don't even think I can hug you

As already mentioned, “Genki desu.” becomes a massive hit, and for a few years Yoshida ranks among the dominant figures on the local scene, placing five more albums at number 1 between 1973 and 1977. After that, his records' success gradually tapers off, though it stays at a mid-to-high level until 1983. At that point comes a downturn, which by the end of the the Eighties to granting television appearances. Between 1997 and 1999 he hits a revival period that brings him back into the spotlight, then a new decline pushes him to focus on live performing, where he continues to be a major draw, pulling in tens of thousands of people at every date.

In 2022 he releases “ah-Omoshirokatta” (“ah-面白かった”, “ah – It Was Interesting”), simultaneously announcing his retirement: the announcement has the desired effect, so much so that the album reaches number 2, his highest chart position since 1977, and earns a gold record, his first since 1999.

However, it isn't the numbers that testify to Yoshida's importance for Japanese culture, or at least not only that, but rather being recognized as the initiator of a new local approach to music, one that later led Japan to develop one of the most thriving and respected scenes in the world. A distinction that can never be taken away from him.

[note 1]In the following decades, Japanese critics, shifting their favor toward alternative rock music, developed a certain distaste for a segment of the new music and reshaped its own narrative, placing at the center of the revolution of the early the Seventies Happy End, the band in which Haruomi Hosono (later in theYellow Magic Orchestra) and the future star of city pop Eiichi Ohtakiplayed. This view has been harshly criticized by several journalists who witnessed the movement's development firsthand, in particular by Suzie Suzuki, who called it a distortion of history and stressed that the new music developed thanks to the spread of records by Takuro Yoshida, Yosui Inoue and Yumi Arai.

[note 2]The point is included in the title.

[note 3]From this point of view, Japanese cinema carried out a far more heated and committed critical function than music did, with dozens of films that, starting right after the war, denounced the imperialism, nationalism and chauvinism of prewar Japan.

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12/11/2023

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Federico Romagnoli, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition