Yumi Arai / Matsutoya

I'm swept off my feet. The scene that started in Japan in the '70s keeps spoiling me -- first there was the (ongoing -- N.D.E. rules!) Hosono & Family obsession, then the summer I spent translating all those gorgeous early Takashi Matsumoto songs, then an autumn full of Morio Agata (who has, like, fifty records, and they're all good), and now it's spring and this "Yuming" whose name came up a lot as I was researching Hosono and Matsumoto is proving to be ... one of the best songwriters of all time...? and also -- a delightful bridge between obsessions -- married to a Caramel Mama member who has been her stalwart collaborator (co-producer, pianist, keyboardist) for decades. Hosono's Caramel Mama / Tin Pan Alley were the backing band for her first three records (which is why I got interested), after which Matsutoya left the Hosono mothership to focus more on supporting Yumi's career. I've listened to her/their* first nine albums now (1973-1980) and, contra RYM, which led me to expect a steep decline as the '70s ended, each one of them sounds incredible. I'm looking forward to heavy obsessions with these nine and beyond.

Anyone else here looked into Yumi much, beyond those two classic songs Miyazaki borrowed for Kiki's Delivery Service?

Rather unbelievably, considering the general dearth of English-language material about Japanese music, there's a 33 1/3 book about her fourth album, The 14th Moon. Reading it now. Couple of choice quotes I ran into in the first two chapters:

Among Yuming's new fans [in 1975, when she released her breakthrough single] was also Miyazaki Hayao, who was so fond of her songs that he would later listen to them all day long while working on his animations at Studio Ghibli (Suzuki & Matsutōya 2013, 52). This fondness can be witnessed in the use of "Lipstick Message" and "Embraced in Softness" in Kiki's Delivery Service; according to producer Suzuki Toshio, the songs became so important for defining the story's atmosphere that the film "could not even have been completed without them" (Suzuki & Matsutōya 2013, 53).

Listening to The 14th Moon can evoke a peculiar feeling. At first, it feels natural to focus on the melodies, rhythms, lyrics, and general soundscape—something one would do with any music. But as one listens further to the album, something strange begins to happen. It feels as if the music gradually wraps the surrounding reality in a dream-like fantasy, absorbing everything into its world. Yuming had a simple explanation for this phenomenon, arguing that her work is “background music” (Suzuki 1976, 57). But if this is the case, her music seems to immerse everything into that background.

This phenomenon has been explained in various ways. The social psychologist Yoshida Kaori has observed that Yuming’s
music renders everyday life into a dream-like reality that seems distant yet attainable at the same time (Yoshida 1977, 17).

*not a pronoun preference, it's just that Yumi herself considers the celebrated "Yuming" to be a musical unit formed by herself AND her husband Masataka.

I am interested in her as she is clearly a big part of Japanese pop music history but I've only checked out a couple of her records so far.

I am struck by how remarkably prolific and successful she has been, seemingly more so than any western singer-songwriter that I can think of. I mean, for no less than 30 years she put out an album just about every year, with the majority of them reaching the top of the charts (a run of 17 consecutive #1 albums!).

Yeah, it's blowing my mind that music this wonderful was so successful. Morio Agata was similarly prolific (not an album a year, but approximately 50 albums over a 50-year career -- he makes up for quiet periods by putting out 4-5 records at once) but after one early hit, kept himself lodged firm in the soil of the underground. Yuming is putting out her (I think) 40th album this year and, like you point out, she's been a major fixture of the pop scene all along. And all the while painstakingly attentive to artistry, dedicated to the album form -- another quote from the 33 1/3, in reference to why she wouldn't perform on TV in the '70s like most pop stars,

I hate being tied up for hours only to sing one song. I think of myself as a songwriter, so I would rather spend that time writing music. Besides, it would be risky for me to sing only one song, because the songs I release as singles only express the exaggerated aspects of my style.

Badass.

Her attention to detail and album construction is manifesting in surprising ways.. Her debut has 11 tracks, the eleventh being a short reprise of the first, but every album afterwards (so far) has exactly ten songs, five to an LP side. (Just found one with nine, but -- the exception that proves the rule? or, knowing her, there could be a thematic reason? and the next two are an elegant ten again.) It's giving her discography a monolothic aspect. "No one fucks with my structure."

I listened to a bunch of '70s and '80s idol singers while translating Matsumoto, and some of them were pretty great, but none had anything like the Hosono/Agata aura of "singleminded auteur" like Yuming does. And yet she's the most successful of them all.

But now that I think about it, of course the idol singers I've encountered wouldn't radiate an auteur vibe, since I was listening to them precisely because Takashi Matsumoto was writing their lyrics. Yumi wrote her own songs.

I know very little about her but I see she may put out her 1st album in years, this year

Oh, this goes down so easily! And I don't mean that in a dismissive 'easy listening' sense. I mean, this stuff is so smooth and breezy and sweet, it's quite delightful. But it's the kind of lightness you can tell takes an incredible amount of craft and restraint to make it sound so easy. It's almost like Carpenters level of wistful and dreamy in places?

Smooth and breezy and sweet, exactly. Wistful and dreamy, absolutely, yes! I keep falling deeper into the dream of her (their) work.

I've had the first ten records on repeat for days. I've yet to hear a boring song. Yumi writes lots of ballads, and though the ballads are as slow, weighty, and dramatic as you'd expect '70s ballads to be, they're always anchored by a strong and beautiful melody line. She sings the melodies out so slowly, but I hang on every note. As I keep getting reminded: songwriting, not genre, is everything!

And she's got the singing voice of an eleven-year-old gazing out at the rain. A voice that sounds like it's full of possibility, but caught on something -- some emotion, some predicament...

Caramel Mama's Masataka Matsutoya becomes more and more prominent as arranger/producer over the first few albums, and then from 1976 on is basically in charge. I learned from the 33 1/3 book (not great, but information is information) that the two of them would work on everything together on the album scale, talking over their plans for each successive album with great care, Yumi coming up with the thematic/sonic directions and Masataka translating her ideas into an audible sphere.

Masataka loves strings. For most of my listening life I detested them. The surest way for me to start hating a song was for the string section to kick in. But over the years the allergy has shown signs of weakening, and I think Masataka has cleared its last vestiges away. There's plenty of what I would have called schamltz as the '70s progress beyond the "Yumi Arai era," as the more purely folk-rock first four pre-marriage records are known (but then, the fifth -- the first after Yumi and Masataka got married -- is the folkiest of all), but Masataka's string arrangements actually make the song's emotions feel deeper, wider, grander... I can hardly believe myself as I type! This is what people always said about string arrangements! In Yuming's work, I hear it.

Restraint is also a great point, Ether. The band across these records is anywhere between 50 and 100% of the same roots rock band that recorded Hosono House, and Yoshitaka Minami's Skyscraper Heroine, and half of Morio Agata's Alas No Mercy, and Chu Kosaka's Horo, and Tropical Dandy; and they're laying pretty low, but I keep noticing these moments where Tatsuo Hayashi lets *a little* loose on drums, or where Shigeru Suzuki is furtively doing something Happy End-esque with his rhythm or tone... it's thrilling! Like a secret depository of the talents and energies of these musicians I adore so much, all in service of someone I am increasingly convinced is one of the best songwriters (and singers) ever...

and so of course now I'm wondering how good Yumi's lyrics will turn out to be. The lines I catch tend to the evocative. The two Kiki songs have gorgeous lyrics. But I'm still not proficient enough to figure out a song just by listening, I have to sit down with the lyric sheet, and a couple of dictionaries and reference sites. So there's a lot of good work ahead of me. *And* some twenty or thirty Yumi/Matsumoto co-writes, mostly for Seiko Matsuda... this whole Yuming affair is like the Holy Mother of cross-overs for my recent obsessions.

At first I meant to focus on the Yumi Arai era, but kept wondering: "is this streak of hers going to end? it must at some point, right?" so I would try the next album -- and the next -- and the next, and now I have ten in rotation and am blown away by them all. The songs are all so good, it feels like I could pluck however many tracks off her acknowledged 1974 masterpiece Misslim, and swap in some relatively unknown numbers from a 1980 record, and neither album would be worse *or* better off. And where I'm up to, Yumi is still only 24 -- what the hell! Plus there are lots of Japanese fans online swearing by records of hers from the mid-'80s and '90s.

Joy, joy, joy!

Some twelve years back, I was a new teacher at my first job, a university tucked into the middle of nowhere, outside one of those massive, hazy metropolises China has so many of. I remember being on a huge Clash kick and telling a friend as we walked to the teaching building: "I have to go to work, but all I want to do is listen to Sandinista."

Now swap Yuming for the Clash, and that's me right now. It's the same feeling. I'm grateful that enthusiasm for beautiful art is not, as yet, something age can dampen.

Go figure that the summer 1979 record with a sudden vocoder interlude (her first of two albums that year... Yumi & Masataka in the late '70s and early '80s were Morio Agata / Big Blood levels of prolific) has contributions from Hosono, Takahashi, and Hideki Matsutake.

I love the way you write about music, NuNuNu - the excitement you feel is so palpable! I completely understand that feeling of standing on the edge of something new, which you've been investigating, that just draws you in so strongly you want to know more and more about it.

It's one of the best feelings in the world, that sensation just as you have listened enough to know it's something you know that you are going to get obsessed with! And having enough links to things you already love to make it even more intriguing. But also feeling like you've only just scratched the surface. That there is a huge, rich, bountiful seam of more and more material to explore!

You capture that feeling really well. And your enthusiasm always makes me want to hear whatever it is that has captured your attention so completely!

Thanks, Ether! That's moving :-)

and a great description of that moment of poise. Like walking down a mountain road and seeing fog in the valley. Feels like it's all your kingdom, but you're still only seeing the contours.

Did a translation and a half today -- promising stuff...!

Gleanings from the last few days:

> not sure about Yumi's lyrics. I'll soon be done translating Side A of Beni Suzume, her lovely and gentle first 1978 album. I like the songs more for knowing what the lyrics are saying, and each song has a good image or formulation or two, but it's all on the ordinary side. Love, hearts, memories, uncertainty, pretty landscapes -- there's a singular touch to the usual tropes, but not enough to make me excited to translate more. I miss the specificity of situation & tone in Kiki's opener and the sweetness, conviction, and uncommon subject matter of Kiki's closer, which were from 1975 and 1974 respectively.

> Masataka is amazing. Sometimes he reminds me of Lindsey Buckingham, when Lindsey had a Christine or Stevie song in his hands. Definitely not Lindsey's own songs: Masataka doesn't go in for edge or innovation, he's all about richness and sparkle. I can focus in on any instrument (in tracks that are lushly arranged, with what feels like twenty or thirty instruments or voices weaving in and out of the mix, and marvel at how pretty it sounds.

> moving deeper into Yumi & Masataka's '80s, I'm encountering my first obstacles -- songs that don't captivate on first listen, arrangements that don't make me think "yes exactly, this is the ideal way to adorn a song this heartfelt," a (granted, intentionally) tacky LP of holiday resort songs (1980's Surf & Snow), a lackluster EP (followed by a killer album later the same year, though), concessions to the 1980s as they were materializing in the West. But

> every time Yumi harmonizes with herself, I fall in love again. It doesn't matter if three seconds ago I was thinking something less than generous, as soon as her harmonies enter, all is forgiven.

> even if I don't come around on the '80s releases that are sounding less than stellar, and even if lots more of Yumi's lyrics turn out to be considerably less awesome than their music, it doesn't change the fact that the nine-album run from Hikouki-gumi in 1973 to 時のないホテル in 1980 is all-time.

* wrong vowel, that's Hikouki-gumo (ひこうき雲)

obstacles like a (granted, intentionally) tacky LP of holiday resort songs (1980's Surf & Snow) ... even if I don't come around on the '80s releases that are sounding less than stellar ...

Well, that didn't take long. I was very wrong about Surf & Snow. The majority of the songs may not be quite as good as on the albums before it, or the masterpiece directly after (Let's Meet Last Night), and it is *certainly* tacky -- but it's tacky the way Eiichi Ohtaki is tacky. The whole record is an Ohtaki tribute, which the Ohtaki-tribute cover art should've alerted me to sooner. It's like a prologue to A Long Vacation, which Ohtaki put out the next year. Masataka had backed Ohtaki on Niagara Moon with Caramel Mama, and probably got to hear an early version of the album, which was finished musically long before it came out, because Ohtaki insisted on waiting for Matsumoto to write all the lyrics, but Matsumoto had personal stuff going on and it was a long wait...

Always amazing to see the pieces of that extended family discography coming together!

Listening to Olive, arguably the *lesser* 1979 album,and it's just one wonderful song after another. These albums are like rivers of light coursing through cracked earth.