Ballsack’s J-Pop Midlife Crisis, pt. 3: 戸川純

Starting sometime last year, I started really getting into Japanese music. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, because I had always thought I hated singing in Japanese. Turns out I don’t! In the night threads for the following week, I’ll write a little about each of my favorite artists that I’ve discovered, and share a streaming album for you to dutifully ignore.

I don’t think most people would consider Jun Togawa (戸川純) J-Pop, per se. Indeed, as we go along here, that label will probably be more and more inappropriate. But, since we’re really talking about my own personal journey of discovery, I’ll just lump them all into one thing. If we’re talking about ‘anti-Idols’, like I mentioned for Seiko Oomori, Togawa is another artist that’s often, again, unfairly, lumped into that category. She’s a fascinating, wild artist, forging her own path through music, and making some really interesting stuff along the way. She’s a bit older than a lot of the stuff I’ll probably put on her, releasing her solo stuff in the 80s (maybe some day I’ll talk about Enka music, which goes back to the 50s and 60s).

Besides her solo stuff, she’s been a member of a number of different bands, most notably Yapoos, which has released a number of interesting albums, particularly their 1987 release 『ヤプーズ計画』 (Yapūzu keikaku). For shear creativity, though, I would recommend her sole release from Jun Togawa Band (戸川純バンド), Togawa Fiction from 2004. It’s a really interesting and inventive approach to rock. Too short, and gone too soon, with an ugly cover, it’s very good.

I feel like I’ve rambled for quite a bit without really saying anything, so here’s a short video of Togawa talking about her 1985 album Suki-Suki-Diasuki 『好き好き大好き』.

And here is that, very good, album