Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music by The Japan Foundation, Sydney

W E A C KN OW LE DG E T HE GAD IGAL PEOPL E O F T HE E O RA N A T I O N , T HE T RAD IT ION AL C U S T O D I A N S O F T HE L AN D ON WHIC H T HE JA PA N FO U N DA T I O N , S Y D N EY N OW S TAN D S. W E PA Y O U R RE S PE CT S T O EL D ERS PAS T, PRE S E N T A N D EM ERGIN G.

Foreword

Introduction

A Message from Hiroshi Nagai

City Pop’s America

by Toshiyuki Ohwada

How Did City Pop Picture the City?

On Phantom and Reality

by Hirofumi Mizukawa

City Pop—A Return to Pleasure by Mark “Frosty” McNeill

Gallery Installation

Paintings

List of Works

Biographies

Credits

FOREWORD ごあいさつ

Hiroshi Nagai’s painting career, which began in the 1970s, has flourished over the last five decades and counting. In Japan, the artist is widely recognised as one of the leading visual contributors to the vanguard of popular culture produced during the country’s post-war economic boom. More recently, Nagai’s work has gained international esteem, continuing to find relevance among emerging generations and diverse cultural spheres. It is therefore very exciting to have Nagai’s work situated in Australia today. Despite 2020 being a turbulent year filled with unprecedented hurdles, the spirit of Nagai’s paintings offers a much appreciated sense of tranquility and colourful optimism as we push through to better times. Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music samples a rich variety of Nagai’s work, from original acrylic paintings on canvas, to illustrated record jackets generously loaned from the artist’s personal archives. Nagai’s subject matter and tonal and spatial precision reveal their magic when viewed in succession within the gallery environment. By straddling the interrelated worlds of art, illustration and design, Nagai’s practice is a refreshing eschewal of definition that can be appreciated free of visual binaries. As the exhibition title suggests, Nagai’s work correlates with music and the music industry at large, most notably with the Japanese genre known as city pop. The essays collected in this publication provide detailed perspectives on the social and cultural significance of city pop in Japan and abroad.

The introduction to this publication brings focus to the progression of the artist’s career and his deep affiliation with music. Toshiyuki Ohwada’s essay gives us insight into Japan and America’s relationship through city pop, unpacking the genre and its terminology. Hirofumi Mizukawa’s piece considers the transformation and interpretation of the ‘city’ in city pop music. In his essay in this publication, Mark “Frosty” McNeill reflects on his personal discovery of city pop and its resurgence through a Western framework. We are grateful to the contributors for this illuminating reading material. With these essays and the photographic documentation to follow, this publication can be viewed as an extension of the gallery exhibition. We hope that both elements encourage further investigation of Hiroshi Nagai’s work and its enduring and fascinating cultural phenomenon. It is with great pleasure that The Japan Foundation, Sydney presents Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music, the first solo exhibition of the work of Hiroshi Nagai outside of Japan. It is curated by our Arts and Culture Department and presented in collaboration with FMDC Gallery Studio, Tokyo. We would like to show our appreciation and gratitude to the artist, Hiroshi Nagai as well as Lens Nagai, FMDC Gallery Studio, without whom this exhibition would not have been possible.

INTRODUCTION イントロダクション

Hiroshi Nagai’s sun-drenched paintings are inextricably tied to a golden era of Japanese pop music culture. The illustrator’s affective visual style, evocative of balmy afternoons by the pool, pristine beaches and dazzling cityscapes, has made Nagai a veteran of album cover art in the city pop genre, which peaked in the 1980s. Despite his international cult status in design and music circles, Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music is the artist’s first international solo exhibition. Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music, presented by The Japan Foundation, Sydney on September 25, 2020 January 23, 2021, offers a rare chance to view Nagai’s vivid works outside of Japan. The exhibition unveils original paintings that adorn iconic record covers, posters and other products spanning the illustrator’s expansive career. America through Hiroshi Nagai’s eyes As a young adult, Nagai spent the early 1970s travelling across the United States. This is where he landed on a goldmine of inspiration for his work. Nagai drew on the country’s rich urban and natural landscapes, the relentless optimism of the American psyche and everyday visual culture found in ubiquitous advertisements. The artist’s iconic swimming pool paintings took inspiration from advertisements for pool cleaner.

With a distinct design aesthetic of flat lines, smooth forms and vibrant colour palettes, Nagai’s paintings depict an idealised lifestyle of effortless sophistication and indulgence. Motifs of airplanes, surfboards and glossy sportscars reflect the thengrowing accessibility of luxuries such as travel and recreation to America’s middle classes. These figures amplify the fantasy and escapism native to Nagai’s splendid imagery. Nagai harmonised his Japanese sensibilities with Western forms of surrealism, hyperrealism and pop art, unknowingly sharing formal and thematic similarities with the paintings of British artist David Hockney. Though Nagai has always lived and worked in Japan, the clear blue skies, tranquil oceans and opulent summers depicted in his paintings are archetypal of an all-American idyll of the West Coast and Hawaii, where beaches and resorts abound. Japan’s economic boom animates music culture Nagai was developing his craft during Tokyo’s tech boom, which resulted from Japan’s postwar growth known as the ‘economic miracle’. From the end of the second world war until the late 1980s, the country enjoyed a state of economic prosperity. Japan thrived through the export of cutting-edge technologies from companies such as Sony and Panasonic, along with vehicles manufactured by Toyota, Nissan and Honda. As cash flow pumped through the hands of Japanese

citizens, a new wealthy leisure class emerged. Buoyed by newfound optimism, people looked toward a modern living standard of leisure and abundance. Japan’s participation in a globalised economy prompted an increased interest in Western consumer goods and American popular culture. As Japan entered this bold new era, the urban sound known as city pop was born. This music genre is distinguished by its smooth and highly polished melodic tunes that blend synth pop, disco, funk, boogie, jazz-fusion, R&B and more. City pop had a purposefully Western flavour, but Japanese musicians and their lyrics offered local listeners relatability and thus a deeper affiliation with the music. While city pop made way for new music to emerge after Japan’s economic bubble burst at the end of 1989, decades later with the internet came a city pop resurgence. In 2017, a YouTube algorithm rediscovered the obscure 1984 pop-funk hit Plastic Love by Mariya Takeuchi.1 The city pop-style track became an online sensation and a new interest in city pop and nostalgia for the leisure lifestyle it produced spiked in the public imagination. City pop’s revival has paved the way for new subgenres like neo city pop, vaporwave and future funk, which reference the genre in new interpretations for the 21st century.

The paintings inspired the songs Although Nagai was not familiar with Japanese pop music at the time city pop was gaining popularity, the optimism and infatuation with American lifestyle conjured by his paintings drew interest from city pop musicians from the late 1970s onward. Renowned song writer and record producer Eiichi Ohtaki asked Nagai to collaborate on an illustrated book, which became the historic publication A Long Vacation. This fortuitous collaboration, as well as the subsequent record of the same name, thrust Nagai’s work into the limelight, fusing the city pop genre with the illustrator’s unique visual style. Nagai has remarked that “it was actually the paintings of mine which lead to the songs. Mr. Ohtaki did write them under the influence of my paintings.”2 As a result, Nagai met heightened attention from the music industry, with artists eager for him to illustrate their record jackets. Gaining widespread popularity, Nagai’s glittering skylines and turquoise bodies of water moved beyond city pop to soul, funk, rock and other music genres and were absorbed into different aspects of Japanese popular culture, including consumer products and advertisements.

Hiroshi Nagai’s lasting impact Along with city pop, Nagai’s summer landscapes are well-known as visual representations of the atmosphere of the 1980s. With city pop’s re-emergence in the 2010s, Nagai’s work has also drawn renewed widespread attention. Like Plastic Love, his early imagery has traversed online forums, blogs and streaming sites and found new appreciation in contemporary culture. Beyond this, as captured in this exhibition, Nagai’s indelible painting style fascinates artists and organisations across countries, generations and music genres, with commissioned works for Speedo and Tower Records, as well as cover art for the Pacific Breeze compilation albums and French musician Onra’s record Nobody Has To Know. Perhaps this is because the artist’s work has a universal appeal in enticing viewers to be transported into the paintings’ settings. Nagai’s work continues to invite us on an eternal vacation.

EN DN O TES 1.

Patrick St. Michel, “Mariya Takeuchi: The pop genius behind 2018’s surprise online smash hit from Japan”, The Japan Times, November 17, 2018. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/ culture/2018/11/17/music/mariya-takeuchi-pop-genius-behind-2018s-surprise-onlinesmash-hit-japan/.

Thomas Venker, “My Heart is Dedicated to Soul Music”, Kaput Magazine, March 19, 2015. https://kaput-mag.com/stories_en/hiroshi-nagai/.

A MESSAGE FROM HIROSHI NAGAI アーティストメッセージ

For my first overseas show here in Sydney, Australia I have made a special selection spanning my career as an illustrator from the end of the 1970s through to my most recent work. Recently, the music and culture of Japanese artists who were deeply influenced by AOR and West Coast Rock has been getting attention as ‘city pop’. As this style grows in popularity internationally, it is being imported back into Japan, and as an artist who has been associated with it since the beginning, I have been getting support from overseas fans on Twitter and Instagram. I find myself bemused but at the same time intrigued by the fact that, without meaning to, I can collaborate with creators who are two generations younger than myself.

CITY POP’S AMERICA T O S HI Y U KI OHWADA

It is difficult to say exactly what type of music ‘city pop’ refers to, because the way the term is used today references both city pop’s heyday and the genre’s recent re-appraisal.1 Music Magazine, which represents the orthodoxy of music criticism in Japan and is highly regarded for its documentary value, defines the genre as follows in its ‘definitive disc guide to city pop’ titled City Pop, 1973–2019 (2019): [City pop refers to] refined, urban pop songs made in Japan from the 1970s. New music which sang of the values and feelings of city dwellers. This became known as ‘city pop’. ‘New music’ referred to music whose artists wrote and performed their own material, unlike in earlier Japanese kayōkyoku popular songs. But the term actually included a jumble of folk and rock. City pop emerged as a label or genre to differentiate artists who did not fit into the ‘new music’ category, those who had a taste for Westernmusic and a keen sense of the changes taking place in American and British rock and soul.2

This magazine defines a number of important points about city pop, dating its origins to 1973 and noting that the genre’s songs were not about depicting cities themselves, but rather the values and feelings of city dwellers by musicians who ardently listened to Western music. I will come back to these points later. The magazine quoted above extends into the 2010s, including musicians Ryūsenkei and Hitomitoi, as well as bands Suchmos and never young beach, making it useful for identifying a particular genealogy of popular music in Japan. However, if we want to know what kinds of music came to be called city pop or to track the historical changes of the meaning of the term, we need to look elsewhere. In this essay, I consider the origins of the term city pop and the types of music to which it has been applied in different periods. I aim to illustrate the influences and representations of America in city pop through what we might call an ‘archeological approach’. 8

The archaeology of city pop The term ‘city music’ was first used in Japan in the latter half of the 1970s in association with musicians such as George Benson, Boz Scaggs and Michael Franks, who today would be categorised as albumoriented rock or jazz fusion artists. The albums Breezin’ (1976), Silk Degrees (1976) and Sleeping Gypsy (1977) were released during this period and it is easy to imagine the way their “urban feeling and pop sensibility, as well as…smart, laid-back easiness” was connected with the ring of the phrase city music when these albums were introduced to Japanese listeners.3 However, it is important to recognise that the city/urban feeling we are talking about does not necessarily bring to mind the skyscrapers of New York. The three albums I have just mentioned were produced by Tommy LiPuma and Joe Wissert and recorded at Capitol Records’ Hollywood studio (Breezin’ and Sleeping Gypsy) and Davlen Sound Studios and Hollywood Sound Studios (Silk Degrees), also in Los Angeles. Considering that most of the musicians featured on these albums were West Coast session musicians from the groups TOTO and The Crusaders, the image of the urban here is best understood as referring to the beaches and resorts of West Coast cities such as L.A.. Having recognised city pop’s connection with the American West Coast, the fact that the first issue of the men’s fashion magazine Popeye—which was published by Heibon Shuppan (now Magazine House)—had the subtitle ‘Magazine for City Boys’ and included a special feature on ‘California’, is highly suggestive. The editors’ note for this new youth magazine published in June 1976 began as follows: 9

We are launching our first issue with a special feature on California.... There is not one iota of vain anti-establishment-ism (sic) or apathy there but a really healthy and substantial way of life... We want to make this new magazine into an entirely new and fun lifestyle magazine centred on the idea that ‘health’ is the starting point for any human lifestyle.4 In an essay reflecting on the first issue of Popeye, editor Yamato Shiine recalls that after the 1970 protests against the renewal of the US-Japan Security Treaty and the Vietnam War, the magazine was significant in “enabling Japanese students infused with an anti-American spirit to say that they loved America”.5 The healthy and substantial lifestyle mentioned in the editors’ note was introduced to Japan through new sports which were gaining popularity mainly on the American West Coast, such as skateboarding, hang gliding, surfing and jogging. Significantly, Popeye presented this new lifestyle alongside possessions and products. One representative article titled ‘International Sneaker Catalogue’ introduced readers to seventy pairs of sneakers, including some from the rising Nike corporation. Shiine explains the social changes that were taking place at the time: Entering the 1970s, more and more Japanese people began to see possessions and products in much the same way as they saw nature and landscapes. Until that time, domestic and international travel meant looking at nature, such as rivers, mountains and forests. After the liberalisation of overseas travel, more young Japanese people began to travel abroad and see possessions and products as natural objects.6

Here Shiine points to the unique character of the age, when ecology and the consumer society and lifestyle subtly merged. This pre-history starting in the mid-1970s is important because city pop later inherited these values. The term city pop (or city pops) was first used in the Japanese mainstream media in the early 1980s. One newspaper article from the time observes that, “‘city pops’ has been gaining traction as a new trend in youth music since Akira Terao had his hit [‘Ruby Ring’].”7 We can conclude from this article that ‘Ruby Ring’, with lyrics by Takashi Matsumoto, music by Akira Terao and arrangement by Akira Inoue, provided one impetus for the spread of this term. The single was an unprecedented hit. Released on February 5, 1981, it stayed at number one on the Oricon charts for ten weeks and sold 1.3 million copies. The article also mentions singer-songwriters such as Yumi Seino, Tatsuhito Yamamoto and Jun’ichi Inagaki alongside Akira Terao. We can surmise that city pop was emerging at the time as a distinct category/subgenre. The article states that, “where folk bases itself on ‘simplicity’, this music is based on a ‘sophisticated city sensibility’’’.8 We can see that the keyword city clearly emerges here, but even more significantly, this article from the time traces the roots of the phenomenon to a single Western city music artist: “since the appearance of Boz Scaggs, a city music current has also emerged in Japan, with young fans supporting Akira Terao and Akira Inoue”.9 The Boz Scaggs album referred to here is probably not Silk Degrees but his next album, Middle Man (1980). In the year the album was released, the track ‘You Can Have Me Anytime’ (Japanese title, ‘Twilight Highway’) created a sensation when it was used in

an advertisement for the first Toyota Cresta. And, Boz Scaggs’ Japanese sales director at that time attested to the fact that Middle Man sold better than Silk Degrees in Japan.10 The advertisement celebrates an urban sensibility as a Cresta bearing California number plates speeds along a desert highway. The moving images are accompanied by a narration which announces that, “Toyota’s highest-level personal sedan has arrived”. Middle Man was the album where Boz Scaggs first used David Foster as producer. David Foster was born in Canada, but he is well-known as a twentieth century Los Angeles/Hollywood producer of hit music. Foster, who went on to have a series of smash hits with Chicago, Whitney Huston, Barbra Streisand and Celine Dion, specialised in spectacular and dramatic arrangements. In ‘Twilight Highway’ too, he brought the tune’s elegance and splendour with his successful use of majestic string arrangements. In summary, we can infer that the image of the city in city pop inherits the American West Coast vibe of city music, and seasons it with the smash hit/major label feel of figures such as David Foster and Akira Terao. In one account of city pop from the time, it is described as sharing “its historic origins with Yumi Matsutoya and her generation, with the genre itself created later by Tatsurō Yamashita, Eiichi Ohtaki, Tetsuji Hayashi, Takashi Satō, Keiko Maruyama, Masamichi Sugi, Shozo Ise, Mariya Takeuchi, Miki Matsubara and Motoharu Sano”, which demonstrated that even at the time it was understood that the subgenre was placed in the lineage of early 1970s new music.11 However, these musicians preserved an indie feel in the music scene of that time. Indeed, it was this indie status 10

which served as a guarantee of their music’s quality and fascinated so many music connoisseurs. Then came the 1980s and with it, mainstream success. As mentioned earlier, Boz Scaggs appointed David Foster as his producer and his song was used in a commercial jingle for a Japanese luxury sedan. Akira Terao’s ‘Ruby Ring’, with its strong city music influence, went to number one on the yearly Oricon Singles Chart. When the arranger of ‘Ruby Ring’, Akira Inoue, listened to the song, he thought “it’s classy and it’s got bounce” (there were few songs with bounce at that time).12 City pop was no longer music for a small number of enthusiasts, it had secured a firm position in the major scene. It had become such a part of the stylish lifestyle of the city dweller that the American West Coast, with its characteristic commodification of nature, could be promoted via a television commercial. City pop and visual culture Any investigation of city pop’s visuals cannot ignore Hiroshi Nagai’s illustrations. It is widely known that A Long Vacation was originally published in 1979 as an illustrated book, before being released two years later as an Eiichi Ohtaki album with the same cover and title. Apparently, when the album became a smash hit, fans made lots of inquiries about where they could acquire the jacket art to use as a wall poster13. Nagai’s illustrations are recognised throughout the world as iconic examples of city pop visuals. They grace the covers of Light in the Attic’s Pacific Breeze compilation series (2019, 2020), which have been decisive in the city pop revival taking place overseas. His illustrations feature skies and poolsides in blue which could soak you right up. As Nagai explains, “I use L.A.-style palm trees for 11

urban landscapes and yashi palms for the islands and resorts.” How did these illustrations come about? Nagai, who first started illustrating under the influence of the Surrealism of René Magritte and Salvador Dalí, found the American West Coast a major source of inspiration. Of course, I liked America. The first issue of Popeye had just been published and the West Coast vibe was being introduced to Japan. I thought it was pretty cool... I can still remember clearly the first time I alighted at San Francisco airport. Hyper-realism art was popular at the time and I felt like that world of those pictures had materialised before my eyes.14 Nagai hit upon the idea of using photographs to recreate the landscapes of the West Coast, but rather than copying reality, his process more closely resembled the invention of an ideal landscape by combining a number of photographs. One essay commenting on Nagai’s style uses the phrase “designing landscapes”.15 This method of “freely transforming and designing landscapes” resonates perfectly with the new lifestyle described by Shiine which considered nature and possessions/ commodities as equivalent16. Moreover, according to Shiine, an important point about the new sports hang gliding, skateboarding and surfing that developed on the American West Coast, was their “weightlessness”, “sense of floating” and “feeling of equilibrium”.17 This abstract sense of floating can be seen in Hiroshi Nagai’s work. Its sense of weightlessness is probably derived from the artist’s origins in surrealism in addition to a shared sensibility of American West Coast sports.

Finally, I would like to conclude this essay with a brief discussion of one important coincidence. Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation, which became a major hit with Nagai Hiroshi’s illustrations, and Akira Terao’s ‘Ruby Ring’, which gave rise to the term city pops, were both released in 1981. They also shared Takashi Matsumoto as a lyricist and featured arrangements or keyboards by Akira Inoue. As a musician, Inoue was an indispensable part of Niagara Records, so much so that he later described his relationship with Ohtaki as that of a master and disciple. The principal components of the sound and visuals of Japanese city pop derived from the coming together of Takashi Matsumoto’s lyrics, Akira Inoue’s arrangements and Hiroshi Nagai’s illustrations in 1981. Contained in it was the essence of the new lifestyle of the American West Coast, with its curious sense of weightlessness.

EN DN O TES 1.

Research on ‘city pop’ is expanding substantially. Handai Ongakugakuhō, Vol. 16 & 17 (Oct. 2020, Department of Musicology, Osaka University) has a feature on city pop, including a Japanese translation of ‘Intermediality and the Discursive Construction of Popular Music Genres: The Case of ‘Japanese City Pop’’ by Moritz Sommet and a review and survey article in Japanese, ‘‘Shiti’ tarashimeru monowa nanika? Shiti poppu kenkyu no genjo to tenbo [What makes city pop, city pop?: The current state and prospects of city pop studies]’ by Ken Kato.

2. Rekōdo korekutāzu zōkan CITY POP shiti poppu 1973–2019 [Record collector special edition – city pop 1973–2019], Music Magazine, 2019, p. 4. 3. Miki Mizuno, ‘Maiku o hanarete [Stepping away from the mike]’, Yomiuri Shimbun, evening edition, December 10, 1977, p. 6. 4. ‘Come Join Us!’, Popeye, Heibon Shuppan, June 1976, p. 98. 5. Yamato Shiine, Popeye Monogatari [The Popeye story], Shinchō Bunko, 2010, p. 30. 6. Ibid., p. 30. 7.

‘Tokai kankaku shiti popusu [City pops with an urban feel]’, Yomiuri Shimbun, January 25, 1982, p. 9.

8. Ibid., p. 9. 9. ‘Shiti popusu renzoku kōen [City pops performance series]’, Yomiuri Shimbun, July 16, 1982, p. 11. 10. At the time, Toto’s first album Uchū no kishi [Sky knight] sold 120,000–130,000 copies whereas actual sales of Middle Man were approximately 290,000. ‘interview Okada Ryō: 1980 nen wa masa ni Bozu iyā deshita [Interview Ryo Okada: 1980 was the year of Boz]”, AOR AGE, vol. 17, April 5, 2020, p. 23. 11. ‘Tokai kankaku shiti popusu [City pops with an urban feel]’, Yomiuri Shimbun, p. 9. 12. ‘Rirē intabyū No 44, Akira Inoue kiibōdo ensō/arenjā/purodyūsā [Relay interview no 44, Akira Inoue keyboardist/arranger/producer]’, Musicman, July 7, 2004, https://www. musicman.co.jp/interview/19512 13. ‘AOR CITY 1000 Supesharu kikaku Hiroshi Nagai Intabyū’ [AOR City 1000 special project, interview with Hiroshi Nagai]’, Billboard Japan, 2016, http://www.billboard-japan.com/ special/detail/1638 14. Bijutsu Techō (ed), ‘Intabyū Hiroshi Nagai [Interview with Hiroshi Nagai]’, in Nihon irasutorēshon shi [A history of Japanese illustration], 2010, pp. 54, 56. 15. Ibid., p. 56. 16. Ibid., p. 56. 17. Shiine, Popeye monogatari [The Popeye story], p. 58.

HOW DID CITY POP PICTURE THE CITY? ON PHANTOM AND REALITY HI RO F U MI M IZUK AWA

Was Tokyo the ‘city’ in the Japanese city pop music produced from the mid-1970s to the 1980s? The answer is both yes and no. Japanese music critic Yutaka Kimura, who is an expert on city pop, sees the basis of the genre in the expression of the “imagined landscapes” and “philosophy” of “city dwellers”, mainly people born in Tokyo. He even captures the core of city pop with the term “Tokyo pops”.1 Kimura’s understanding of city pop, however, is worth close attention. He does not simply understand city pop as music about Tokyo exclusively, preferring to see it as an expression of the awareness and imagination of city dwellers. Drawing on this approach, we cannot consider the ‘city’ in city pop to be synonymous with 15

Tokyo alone but rather as something that musicians and lyricists transformed in different ways. I adopt this perspective in this essay in order to outline some of the characteristic ways in which city pop expressed the city. The band Happy End, which debuted in 1970, occupies an important place in the story of city pop not only because former members Eiichi Ohtaki, Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki and Takashi Matsumoto make important contributions to the genre, but because of the band’s idiosyncratic rendering of the city. The band’s song writer Matsumoto—who went on to become one of Japan’s

leading lyricists—projected his own imagined landscapes onto Tokyo and created an illusory space quite different from the actual Tokyo. Matsumoto named this defamiliarised space ‘Kazemachi’ (wind city) and he used this neologism in the band’s second album title Kazemachi Roman (1971). Many people trace the origins of city pop to this album. The 1964 Tokyo Olympics provided the impetus for urban development in Tokyo. The concept of Kazemachi derives from the sense of loss which the Tokyo-born Matsumoto felt due to the total transformation of Tokyo’s urban environment (indeed, this is a well-known story in the history of Japanese rock). He shared this critical sensibility concerning urban development with other artists of his generation, such as the filmmaker Mamoru Oshii. Incidentally, the symbolic Kazemachi song ‘Kaze o atsumete (Gather the wind)’ appears on the soundtrack of Sofia Coppola’s film Lost in Translation (2003), which is set in Tokyo. One could go so far as to say that this expressive mode, which establishes a fictitious/imaginary space or ‘wind city’ is the royal road of city pop. The spatial imagery of city pop cherished both within Japan and overseas is captured in Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation (1981), illustrated by Hiroshi Nagai and Tatsurō Yamashita’s For You (1982), illustrated by Eizin Suzuki. The covers of both albums use this approach. Here, I will focus on Nagai’s illustrations for A Long Vacation. For the album jacket for A Long Vacation, Nagai painted a space which does not exist in Japan, let alone in Tokyo. Nagai explains his method of painting as constructing images based on a number of photographs taken during trips to the American

West Coast.2 The poolside landscape depicted on this jacket—the ultra-refreshing blue of the sky, the sea and the pool and the sparkling sunshine reflected in the green of the plants, as well as the white of the parasol and chair—are, in other words, high-resolution phantoms. This image stimulates brilliantly the imagination and desire of the city dweller. From the mid-1970s, Japan’s economy was growing and the country was rapidly becoming a high-consumption society. A number of fashion and lifestyle magazines for young people were launched in this period and cultural and leisure activities such as surfing spread among the youth. There was a flood of literature, films, advertisements and music based on love affairs and images of the beach during summer.3 At the border of consumer culture and art, Nagai’s work perfectly expressed a mania for travel and longing for sun-drenched resorts produced by this era. At the same time, references to American pop music were cleverly reconfigured in the music on A Long Vacation. The city pop making such a splash overseas today has a club sound, however Japanese city pop incorporated diverse musical elements, from top American pop charts made in the Brill Building to techno. This album in particular possessed the expansive sonic landscape of Phil Spector Sound’s Hi-Fi dream, known as the ‘wall of sound’. Takashi Matsumoto wrote the lyrics to almost all of the songs included on the album. His lyrics depicted a world where the sentimentality of lost loves was intertwined with images of resorts.4 The layering of music, lyrics and jacket illustrations produced love stories that were somehow both crystal clear but also dripping with sentimentality. They were 16

even more colourful than David Hockney’s listless Los Angeles pool sides and evoked a yearning for American popular culture that permeates Haruki Murakami’s literature.5 People were hooked. There are many songs in which resort towns and other images of Americana are arranged alongside Japanese spaces. Bread & Butter best represent this phenomenon. They are known for their songs about the holiday resorts of the Shōnan Coast in Kanagawa, where the closest beaches to Tokyo are located. For example, the title of Bread & Butter’s album Barbeque (1974) mixed Shōnan with American culture by simply yet effectively invoking this American outdoor leisure activity. When considering the musicality of Japanese city pop, with its insertion of funk elements into West Coast rock, we cannot fail to mention Sentimental City Romance.6 Geographically, the band performed primarily in the city of Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture, central Japan. In their debut album Sentimental City Romance (1975), they went so far as to compare a bridge in Nagoya to one in L.A., singing ‘Los Angeles Ōhashi U Turn’ (ōhashi means large bridge in Japanese), thereby bringing into being a lifestyle and creative practice which likened the Aichi seaside to L.A..7 On the other hand, the song ‘Downtown’ (1975) by Tokyo band Sugar Babe, refrained from using specific place names and settled instead for inserting the cheerful atmosphere of an American streetscape into their songs. In this track, the band sings about having fun in an urban shopping and entertainment district, but there is nothing to suggest a particular place. Listeners are free to imagine their own streetscape. However, when they hear the refrain “let’s head downtown”, an American streetscape 17

springs to mind. While the word ‘downtown’ is well-known in Japan, it is not used to refer to the city’s entertainment district in Japanese. Listeners imagine an American-style space, but they derive their imagery from their own experiences of enjoying a night on the town. By contrast, the Sadistics explicitly mention Tokyo in their lyrics to ‘The Tokyo Taste’ (1977), but the song is widely understood to refer to a kind of otherworldly New York. The song describes a spicy transactional kind of love that plays out night after night between men and women dressed in cocktail dresses and tuxedos. However, it is obviously based on an image of nightlife unfolding amid the skyscrapers of New York. The listeners are merely dreaming about this fascinating illusion. It is worth mentioning that the cover of this song by RAJIE and Yoshitaka Minami (1978) is outstanding. The images of the city expressed in city pop examined so far are mostly positive. However, we can also read loneliness and alienation as well as a negative or critical view of the city in city pop. Indeed, the loneliness and alienation of the city may well be the most common theme in city pop lyrics and always takes the form of romantic affections. The city pop anthem ‘Pink Shadow’, included on the previously mentioned Bread & Butter album Barbeque, paints a fantastic picture of lovers who appear in a park under a full moon. After the woman colours in the man’s shadow with pink chalk, the couple dance a waltz, in a scene which is narrated from the man’s point of view. The lovers do not engage in conversation and they waltz without looking at one another. Although they inhabit their

own world cut off from the rest of the city, loneliness steals in between them. In the song, the man repeats over and over, “I love you, only you”, but the woman does not respond. Toshiki Kadomatsu’s album After 5 Clash (1984) vividly captures the loneliness of 1980s Tokyo office workers. Kadomatsu focused on the extraordinary world of disco. The album’s title refers to the time that unfolds after the workday ends at 5 o’clock. It shows the night as a time liberated from work time; a time where office workers lead another life. But these evening hours contain not just the happy figure of lovers, but also the inconsolable loneliness of people living in the commercial city of Tokyo. Another song of this type is Mariya Takeuchi’s ‘Plastic Love’ (1984), which is the most internationally famous city pop song. It uses the fake beat (plastic beat) of disco and the expressway at night to give form to the loneliness and alienation of a woman who lives in this overripe city of consumption. A refined expression of this critique of the city can be found in Taeko Onuki’s song ‘Tokai (City)’ (1977). The lyrics describe people who consume the city, dubbing the landscape of Tokyo at night as “a flood of whispered light” and beckoning to them, “let’s go home, together”. Having revealed the pleasures of the city at night, she gently chides it for its consumerism. Taeko’s voice, timbre and groove are elegant and the song’s critical spirit is gently expressed. Several songs in influential city pop figure Tatsurō Yamashita’s oeuvre are sharply critical of Tokyo. The spirit of cultural and political critique embedded in Yamashita’s work is rarely addressed in Japan, but

he was a musician with a keen critical intelligence. This comes across directly in his tune ‘Escape’ (1978), where he expresses his anger about the commercialisation of urban culture. He proclaims that the city, which embodies consumer society, is “all lies”, and calls on “city boys” and “city girls” to “get out of here”.8 In ‘Bomber’ (1978), which features lyrics by Minako Yoshida, he issues a stinging criticism of the city, with its rows of skyscrapers steeped in corruption—this is what used to be referred to negatively in Japan as the ‘concrete jungle’. The song opens with a sound effect of a jackhammer, reminding us of the turbulence of the big city and city dwellers’ resistance to it. The lyrics to ‘Dancer’ (1977) refer to a repatriation project which saw thousands of Koreans living in Japan returned to North Korea after the war.9 Based on his personal experience of a confrontation with a student at his high school who was repatriated to North Korea under the scheme, the tune expresses Yamashita’s complex emotions and ideas at the time through the metaphor of a “dancer standing on his head”.10 Despite reaching for the lofty heights of critical engagement with Japan’s modern history, the song is still unquestionably city pop in the sense that it is based on Yamashita’s life experience as someone who was born and raised in Tokyo. It is interesting because it brings out the way everyday life in Tokyo and modern Japan’s social issues intersect. But now I am running out of space. As I come to the end of this essay, I am conscious of how little I have been able to cover. Nevertheless, I hope to have enabled a good understanding of some of the representations of the ‘city’ in city pop.11 I would like to finish with a little more on Tatsurō Yamashita. 18

Yamashita was so intimately associated with the world of Hiroshi Nagai and Eizin Suzuki, that in the early 1980s he had his own catchphrase: “it’s summer, it’s the sea, it’s Tatsurō”. The song ‘Kōkiatsu girl’ (high pressure girl) (1983) was typical of the songs of the time and was even used in a commercial as part of an ANA airline campaign promoting travel to Okinawa (which also incorporated images of a Hawaiian-style resort). The song’s composition includes swinging polyrhythms and a chorus created by Yamashita’s carefree, multi-layered overdubbing. The lyrics describe a “high pressure girl”, a literal goddess of the south, who beckons the listener towards the clear sky and the cobalt blue sea. Here we can see city pop’s typical imagery of the kind of southern resorts city dwellers dream about. However, Yamashita uses a pattern of continuous chord strumming in this song which is actually influenced by James Brown’s ‘There Was a Time’ included in Live at the Apollo Vol.2 (1968).12 In the middle of this super-crisp city pop-esque groove, lurks the frenzy of James Brown’s funk. Learning the secret of Yamashita’s city pop facilitates a slightly different interpretation of Nagai’s work. Let us examine Nagai’s jacket illustration for the city pop compilation Pacific Breeze 2, released by Light in the Attic. In a work that is highly typical of Nagai, the foreground contains an elevated pool and we look past poolside palm trees to a dusky city in the background. If we overlay this illustration with the secret of Yamashita’s music—where James Brown’s funkiness reverberates at the centre of crisp city pop—we might arrive at the following interpretation. In the city there is the nightlife which sits comfortably within commercial album-oriented rock, where lovers whisper to one another, martinis 19

in hand, in a high-rise luxury hotel bar. But elsewhere lies a club where waves of funk surge and people dance through the night, dripping with sweat. From this perspective, we can begin to appreciate the breadth and abundance of city pop’s expressive range within the artwork of Hiroshi Nagai. Just like when we saw the phantom of California in one of Nagai’s illustrations.

EN DN O TES 1.

See, Yutaka Kimura (ed), Disuku korekushon Japaniizu shiti poppu zōho kaiteiban [Disc collection Japanese city pop, enlarged and revised edition], Shinkō Myūjikku Entāteinmento, 2020; Yutaka Kimura, ed, Kuronikuru shirīzu Japaniizu shiti poppu, Shinkō myūjikku entāteinmento, 2002.

2. Hiroshi Nagai et al., ‘INTERVIEW Hiroshi Nagai’, in Bijutsu Techō (ed), Nihon no irasutorēshon shi [History of Japanese illustration], Bijutsu Techō Shuppansha, 2010, pp. 54–56. 3. See Chapter 6, Keiji Sezaki, Umibe no koi to Nihonjin: hito natsu no monogatari to kindai [Love on the beach and the Japanese: Modernity and the story of one summer], Seikyusha, 2013. 4. Sezaki performs a more detailed lyrical analysis in Umibe no koi to Nihonjin, pp. 205–211. 5. This is the standard interpretation of A Long Vacation in Japan. However, my use of nostalgia here references the cultural phenomenon described by Fredric Jameson as the ‘nostalgia mode’ in the author’s ‘Postmodernism and Consumer Society’ in The Cultural Turn, Verso, 1998 (The Japanese version was translated by Atsushi Aiba, Kunio Shin and Shintaro Kono. Sakuhinsha, 2006). Jameson uses ‘nostalgia’ to explain the characteristic peculiar to the culture of postmodernism which lacks a certain kind of historical experience. Most of the young people who listened to A Long Vacation had only experienced the West Coast (of the 1960s) symbolically, in novels, films and music. Their experience of resorts in the south was the same. Their only direct experience was of their own disappointed loves. In other words, they were searching for a vague nostalgia which combined their own lives with things they had yet to experience. 6. Shinichi Ogawa, ‘Senchimentaru Shiti Romansu “Kutsurogi” [Sentimental city romance “Relaxing Time”]’, Guitar Magajin, vol. 41, no. 9, September 2020, p. 86. 7.

This point was discussed by Masahiro Hirose, Hirofumi Mizukawa, Nobuhiko Baba, Shinichi Ogawa and Masami Takeuchi, ‘“Nagoya-Nishi Kaigan” to iu fantajii: senchimentaru shiti romansu o meguru toshi bunka/chiiki bunka [Fantasy of the “Nagoya-West Coast”: Urban and regional culture in sentimental city romance]’, 29th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Popular Music, December 2017.

8. Tatsurō Yamashita, ‘Kaisetsu to kyokumoku kaisetsu [Commentary and track guide]’, IT’S A POPPIN’ TIME CD booklet, BMG Fan House, 2002, p.15. 9. Between 1959 and 1984, this project repatriated people who had immigrated to Japan for various reasons during Japan’s rule over the Korean Peninsula to North Korea. See, Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Exodus to North Korea: Shadow from Japan’s Cold War, Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. 10. This was mentioned in Tatsurō Yamashita’s ‘Kaisetsu to kyokumoku kaisetsu [Commentary and track guide]’, SPACY CD booklet, BMG Fan House, 2002, p. 14. It was also discussed during Yamashita’s tours in 2013 and 2016. 11. Due to considerations of length, there were a number of topics I could not address. These include modernism and representation of the urban in the work of Keiichi Suzuki (including his music for Takeshi Kitano’s films), city pop and the image of Chinatown in Japan, and Yumi Arai’s photographic landscapes of the Tokyo suburbs. Of course, some works also draw happiness and peace from the urban scenery. 12. From Tatsurō Yamashita’s guest appearance on the radio program, ‘Kyō wa ichinichi “JB & fanku” zanmai [Today’s all-day immersion in “JB & funk”]’, NHK-FM, May 3, 2016.

CITY POP— A RETURN TO PLEASURE MA RK “ F RO S T Y ” M C N EIL L

The desire to discard musical modes from the nottoo-distant past seems to be a common compulsion within hyper-driven, consumerist economies. When a popular style becomes a tired trope and its idols have fallen out of fashion, whole scenes can sink into the horizon. It is possible to encounter treasures in these fresh cultural burial grounds. My sweet spot as a record collector is excavating the neglected and out of vogue. Wondrous worlds lay in wait if you seek ahead of the curve, because inevitably, all that is old becomes new again. Eventually, critical reassessments also allow true gems to reemerge, their dividends multiplied through renewed reflection. While the specific duration of a genre’s lifespan and the timing of its possible return to grace is up for debate, the endless cycle churns on. Listeners struggle to pull themselves 21

from the undertow of music deemed stale while simultaneously latching onto fresh styles, even if this ‘new music’ might simply be revisions of the past or simply the return of the original artifacts themselves. Japanese city pop is a genre that has moved through these cycles and is on the rise again. I first stumbled upon city pop in 2003 while browsing the fluorescent-bathed bins of a sprawling Tokyo record shop. The domestic discs were tucked into the recesses of the store, close to the loud humming of a half dozen vinyl vacuums that were sucking dust from secondhand albums before they hit the shelves. This was a shunned section of the shop with prices to match. While these same records might now fetch a small fortune, they were clearly undesirable at the time, only a notch above dustbin status. I started

finding albums projecting a very specific vibe in this limbo zone. Lacking the ability to read Japanese, I was guided by the covers alone—visions of late1970s to mid-1980s cosmopolitan cool with tropical undertones hinted at compelling grooves tucked within the sleeves. I scooped up a stack of these albums and upon returning home to Los Angeles they merged into my collection with little fanfare. The intention for a deeper listen was derailed by life’s hustle and it wasn’t until a few years later that an epiphany on my home turf helped city pop take cohesive shape in my mind. While browsing the aisles of a local Los Angeles record store I came across Tatsurō Yamashita’s 1979 album Moonglow in a bargain bin. On its sleeve, the musician leans against a metropolitan edifice wearing a breezy blazer, snowy jeans and ivory t-shirt. The album title hovers above his head in a graphic triangle reminiscent of a Memphis Group design. With one thumb tucked into his belt and a glowing globe in the other hand, Yamashita gives a sidelong glance, radiating sanguine nonchalance. I immediately recognised this album as kin to my previous Tokyo record haul. This time, however, I was ready to give the whole lot my attention. When I dropped the needle on Moonglow I was greeted with ear-worm melodies embroidering glossy funk rhythms—a neon glow rippled across rain-slicked streets in my mind’s eye and like flypaper, I was stuck. While listening, I gazed closer at the globe in Yamashita’s hands, its axis tilted towards the camera revealing a perfect curve from California’s coast to Japan’s Eastern Seaboard. In that moment, it was as if the Pacific Ocean folded into itself—Los Angeles and Tokyo merging into a single megalopolis of iconic

cultural connections. The illuminated globe seemed like a coded signal pointing to the trans-Pacific exchange etched into the grooves of city pop. My antennae were tingling. Recorded music is static, but our humanity gives it infinite expanse. A song once loosened from its creator grasp might be dispersed in a multitude of forms finding their way to widely scattered ears. On the surface, these duplicates might seem to vary depending only upon the medium which each replica has possessed, but countless aspects colour how music hangs in space—from the devices that trigger playback to the acoustics of the environment into which it is amplified. Regardless of these factors, it’s really the listener who mutates recorded audio the most. Hearing a tune while hungover with heartbreak will likely be drastically different than the same track heard in the haze of a happy reverie. The emotional and physical state of each human listener is the X-factor and springboard for a song’s destiny. Our internalisation of recorded music manifests its multiplicity and keeps the songs moving through time and the internet accelerates and splinters this proliferation exponentially. When guided by YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, the endless audio flow can simultaneously feel like a serendipitous listening experience and a calculated, corporate mechanism. Regardless, the ghost in the machine seems to have a recent penchant for Japanese sounds and its tilt eastward has developed a global hunger for music the appeal of which was once thought to be limited to domestic audiences alone. At the time of writing, the YouTube views on Mariya Takeuchi’s 22

‘Plastic Love’ stood at an eye-popping 40,379,094 and counting. While far from a hit when originally released, Takeuchi’s infectious, saccharine jam has since served an oversized role in the popularisation of city pop. It has also helped spawn contemporary genre tributaries such as vaporwave and future funk, which incessantly scrub the song’s anatomy in order to create new clones from its DNA. ‘Plastic Love’ is only part of the city pop story though, and a consideration of the full genre is a slippery exercise. Like most music classifications, city pop is a critical and economic construct attempting to fence in a more fluid aural landscape. To gain a wider understanding of this genre, it’s best to run headfirst into the facade of hermetic cyberspace and open up the scope through real world listening. Up a narrow staircase off a sleepy street in Tokyo’s Kōenji neighborhood, there’s a record bar named Grass Roots. Feeling more like a clubhouse than an official establishment, it’s a few square meters of eager ears smooshed closely together. The tiny room resembles a Jamaican beach shack that has been blasted into orbit by the power of its hi-fi stereo boosters. Grass Roots is a gathering place for DJs and musicians seeking the outer realms—a braintrust that’s a bonafide breeding ground for the next wave of emergent music. On one particular night in 2013, I stood in the cozy room as musician Shintaro Sakamoto was DJing. The former Yura Yura Teikoku frontman had recently released his debut solo album How to Live with a Phantom and its spectral compositions had struck a chord with me. His gauzy revisitations of ‘70s and ‘80s Japanese pop aesthetics were shrouded in a mist of his own invention. On this night, Sakamoto tossed on platter 23

after platter of Japanese heat and had everyone’s heads swaying in magnetic unison. It was at this moment that I knew city pop was destined to reach the wider population, its fate sealed by the firstwave whisperers assembled in the room. These tastemakers would scatter the seeds that would eventually grow into the millions of listeners now scanning YouTube for tracks that hit their pleasure centers, in the way Takeuchi’s famed single did. In 2018, I hosted a public conversation with Kunihiko Murai, founder of the legendary Japanese record label Alfa Music, which is home to Yellow Magic Orchestra, amongst others. During our chat he dropped this jewel: “I believe in the theory that everything starts from the avant-garde. If it’s for everybody that’s for nobody. If it’s for you, it’s the real thing.” The notion that the underground largely informs the mainstream as opposed to the inverse, resonates with me. Bright minds operating outside of the spotlight are the vanguard that eventually imprint wider culture. City pop reached a level of mainstream status during its original era largely due to the boundless minds who built its foundation. Japan’s prosperous bubble economy of the 1970s and 1980s created the conditions that allowed for an environment of experimentation. State of the art studios stocked with the latest electronic instruments helped drive audio advances while plentiful funding allowed artists to make music outside of normal channels. Bespoke soundtracks were commissioned to accompany everything from air conditioners to architecture to perfume. This environmental view of audio bred an exploratory mentality and none took it further than Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Haruomi Hosono. His works foresaw

future sound-art movements and helped evolve the form of Japanese pop itself. Hosono’s innovative framework emphasised lyrical Japanese tonguetwisting and a reversal of Oriental exoticisation through witty satire, while his sonic architecture was informed by a multi-culti stew of sounds. Looking to Los Angeles for some seasoning, Hosono’s band Happy End sought out composer/arranger/lyricist Van Dyke Parks and the band Little Feat to give their music that ‘Burbank sound’. While that moniker might have existed solely in the minds of Hosono and his crew, the energy they sought was a real commodity made by artists brewing a distinctly West Coast sound—psychedelia-laced earthy elegance that catapulted rock music into imaginative realms. Many other city pop artists would follow suit and engage collaborators in palm-shaded Los Angeles studios. The desire to beam beyond oneself is a natural instinct. Even if life is delightful, fantasising can always make it better, and in the midst of Japan’s miraculous bubble economy, creative minds often gazed across the ocean to pursue idyllic essences from distant shores. Hiroshi Nagai’s art embodies this escapism. His works are hazy California daydreams suspended in paint. It’s a style perfectly suited for the city pop sound and his designs adorn some of the genre’s preeminent titles, including Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation. Nagai’s art completes a circle of sound and vision that, when absorbed as a full package, is intoxicating. If you drop the needle on the right song, you can lean into Nagai’s artwork and tumble into its bucolic embrace—where palm trees sway in the warm breeze to smooth sounds floating from open-topped convertibles. City pop seems to

embody the transcendent sense of nostalgia that the Japanese call natsukashii. It opens a portal to brighter possibilities, like awakening with the memory of a delightful dream still sitting on the edge of your subconscious. I think this is one of the greatest drivers for the music’s current resurgence. In a world gripped by a pandemic and mired in sociopolitical chaos, city pop transports us to better times and imbues us with the impermeable optimism to push on through to paradise.

Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai, album cover of Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986, courtesy of Light in The Attic

GALLERY INSTALL ATION ギャラリー 25

PAINTINGS ペインティング

1 Sorry... Come Back Later, 2017

2 Untitled, 1993

Above: 3 D owntown Sunset Aircraft - Nite Flyte, 2019

Right: 4 Uptown Sunset, 2013

5 Urban Sunset - Two Palm Trees, 1982

6 Downtown Sunset - Poolside Red Flower, 2006

Left: 7 Poolside - Yellow Towel, 1990s

Above: 8 Time Goes By..., 2008

10 Downtown Sunset Poolside, 2009

9 Uptown Poolside - Bondi Beach, 2017

11 Uptown Poolside - Architecture, 2000s

12 A Long Vacation, 1978

Left: 13 Uptown Poolside, 2019

Above: 14 Reimen de Koiwoshite, 2001

15 夜韻 Night Tempo, 2019

16 Brighter, 2015

Above: 17 Urban Tokyo Sunset, 2017

Right: 18 Rhythm from the Ocean, 1995

19 Beachside Cloud Vehicle, late 2000s

20 Eleki on the Beach Ventures Medley, 1984

LIST OF WORKS リスト・オブ・ワークス PAIN TIN GS 1 Hiroshi Nagai

Sorry... Come Back Later 2017 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Sorry... Come Back Later by Aklo x Jayed 2 Hiroshi Nagai

Untitled 1993 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for The Best of T.K. Records (Rock Your Soul) 3 Hiroshi Nagai

Downtown Sunset Aircraft - Nite Flyte 2019 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 455mm 4 Hiroshi Nagai

Uptown Sunset 2013 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Record Store Day Japan 2013 5 Hiroshi Nagai

Urban Sunset - Two Palm Trees 1982 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Niagara Song Book by Eiichi Ohtaki 6 Hiroshi Nagai

Downtown Sunset - Poolside Red Flower 2006 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm 57

7 Hiroshi Nagai

Poolside - Yellow Towel 1990s Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm 8 Hiroshi Nagai

Time Goes By... 2008 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm 9 Hiroshi Nagai

Uptown Poolside - Bondi Beach 2017 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Speedo 10 Hiroshi Nagai

Downtown Sunset Poolside 2009 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for Afternoon Delight by Ginger Rose 11 Hiroshi Nagai

Uptown Poolside - Architecture 2000s Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Delfonics / Rollbahn 12 Hiroshi Nagai

A Long Vacation 1978 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for A Long Vacation by Eiichi Ohtaki

13 Hiroshi Nagai

Uptown Poolside 2019 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Tower Records Japan 40th Anniversary 14 Hiroshi Nagai

Reimen de Koiwoshite 2001 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Reimen de Koiwoshite by Eiichi Shotaki (parody of A-Men de Koiwoshite, Niagara Triangle Vol. 2) 15 Hiroshi Nagai

夜韻 Night Tempo 2019 Acrylic on canvas 410mm x 410mm Artwork for 夜韻 Night Tempo by Night Tempo

18 Hiroshi Nagai

Rhythm from the Ocean 1995 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 530mm Artwork for Rhythm from the Ocean by Kiyotaka Sugiyama 19 Hiroshi Nagai

Beachside Cloud Vehicle late 2000s Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm 20 Hiroshi Nagai

Eleki on the Beach Ventures Medley 1984 Acrylic on canvas 455mm x 380mm Artwork for Nagisa-no Eleki Party by Sea-Boys

16 Hiroshi Nagai

Brighter 2015 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for Brighter by Ikkubaru 17 Hiroshi Nagai

Urban Tokyo Sunset 2017 Acrylic on canvas 530mm x 455mm Artwork for gotokyo.org, Tokyo Convention & Visitors Bureau

LIST OF WORKS リスト・オブ・ワークス VIN YL 21 Various Artists

Light Mellow Sealine 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 22 Air Supply

Strangers in Love 1980 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 23 Various Artists

Breeze - AOR Best Selection 2002 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 24 Various Artists

Hawaiian Dream (soundtrack) 1987 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 25 Ikkubaru

Brighter 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 26 Various Artists

Battle of Groups Vol.1 1977 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 27 Various Artists

Battle of Groups Vol.2 1977 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 28 Bronze

East Shore 2019 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai

29 Sea Boys

Eleki On The Beach Ventures Medley 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 30 Niagara Fall of Sound Orchestral

Niagara Song Book 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 31 Pictured Resort

Southern Freeway 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 32 Anders & Poncia

Anders ‘N’ Poncia Rarities 1988 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 33 AAA

No Way Back 2017 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 34 Eiichi Ohtaki

A Long Vacation 1981 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 35 Various Artists

Pacific Breeze: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1976-1986 2019 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 36 Various Artists

Pacific Breeze 2: Japanese City Pop, AOR & Boogie 1972-1986 2020 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai

37 Onra

Nobody Has To Know 2018 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 38 Sunny Day Service

Dance To You 2016 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 39 Various artists

The Twist (The Best of Oldies But Goodies) 1977 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 40 Kay Ishiguro

Purple Road 1983 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 41 Max Romeo

Loving You 1983 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 42 Air Supply

The Whole Thing’s Started 1980 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 43 Boo

Smile In Your Face 2002 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 44 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing

September Wind 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai

45 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing

The Wind Whispers 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 46 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing

Majorca 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 47 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing

The Show 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 48 Naoya Matsuoka and Wesing

Son 1982 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 49 Sing Like Talking

Reveal (Sing Like Talking On Vinyl Vol.1) 2000 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai 50 Hiroshi II Hiroshi

Hiroshi II Hiroshi Vol. 1 1993 Artwork by Hiroshi Nagai The vinyl display will be rotated throughout the duration of the exhibition. 21-38 Sept 25, 2020 - Nov 25, 2020 34-50 Nov 26, 2020 - Jan 23, 2021

PAIN T IN GS FOR M USIC : SOUN D T RAC K

サウンドトラック

Playlist available on Spotify during the exhibition period 60

BIOGRAPHIES バイオグラフィー

H IRO S HI N A GA I Born in Tokushima City in 1947, Hiroshi Nagai first gained experience as a graphic designer before launching his career as a freelance illustrator in 1978. His work is distinguished by his illustrations of crisp urban landscapes and tropical motifs, as seen on album covers such as Eiichi Ohtaki’s A Long Vacation and Niagara Song Book. Nagai’s publications include A Long Vacation (1979, CBS/Sony Publishing), Halation (1981, CBS/ Sony Publishing) and Niagara Songbook (1982, Shogakukan). He was awarded the Golden Disc as a special album cover prize for his work on A Long Vacation. Nagai’s style has gained iconic status and his work adorns album covers for numerous artists, including Naoya Matsuoka, Hiroshi Fujiwara/Hiroshi Kawanabe, Kiyotaka Sugiyama, Teen Runnings, ikkubaru, Sunny Day Service, and Kashif as well as the AOR breeze compilations. Today, he works not only as an illustrator but also as a designer, DJ and music critic.

ESSAY C ONTRIBU T ORS Toshiyuki Ohwada Toshiyuki Ohwada is a Professor of American Studies at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. He is the author of On American Music: From Minstrel Show, Blues to Hip Hop (in Japanese), awarded the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities in 2011. His research interests include Japanese and American popular music, Afro Asia, and he also writes about literature and film on both sides of the Pacific. He has co-authored three books on hip hop (Cultural Studies of Hip Hop, Vol. 1, 2, 3) and a book on music in Haruki Murakami’s works (100 Songs of Haruki Murakami). Throughout 2020-21, he is taking up the position of Visiting Scholar at Harvard-Yenching Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts to conduct research on the resurgence of city pop in Asia and the West. Twitter: @adawho

Hirofumi Mizukawa Hirofumi Mizukawa is an associate professor of modern Japanese literature and culture at Kanagawa University. His research centers on Japanese culture and representation since the 1960s, such as literature, film, animation and popular music. He has written a number of papers on criticisms of Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, animations of Mamoru Oshii, novelized movies of Nobuhiro Yamashita and others. He is currently working on a study of Japanese popular music from the 1970s onwards.

Mark “Frosty” McNeill Mark “Frosty” McNeill is a DJ, radio producer, sonic curator, filmmaker and creative community builder based in Los Angeles. He’s the founder of dublab.com, a pioneering web radio station that has been exploring widespectrum music since 1999. McNeill hosts Celsius Drop, a weekly dublab radio show and has produced long-running programs for Red Bull Radio, Marfa Public Radio, and KPFK 90.7fm. McNeill co-curated/produced the Pacific Breeze compilations of Japanese City Pop music for Light in the Attic Records as well as Somewhere Between, a forthcoming album focused on the more experimental side of Japanese pop. His output on a multitude of international media platforms has focused on sharing transcendent sonic experiences. dublab.com/djs/frosty

CREDITS クレジット

Catalogue Texts commissioned by The Japan Foundation, Sydney on the occasion of the Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music exhibition Authors Toshiyuki Ohwada Hirofumi Mizukawa Mark “Frosty” McNeill

Exhibition The Japan Foundation Gallery Hiroshi Nagai: Paintings for Music September 25, 2020 - January 23, 2021 Presented by The Japan Foundation, Sydney Yurika Sugie, Simonne Goran, Susan Bui, Anne Lee, Aurora Newton In collaboration with

Editors Yurika Sugie and Simonne Goran Translation from Japanese to English Alexander Brown

Supported by

Copyediting Nina Serova Design Daryl Prondoso Exhibition Photography Document Photography Artwork Photography Hiroshi Nagai Except pages 38, 46, 50, 52, 56: Document Photography Published by The Japan Foundation, Sydney Published on December 5, 2020

Design Daryl Prondoso