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A singer-songwriter recognized globally for her songs used in Miyazaki Hayao's beloved animations, Yuming has captured the hearts of listeners of different generations since her debut in the early 1970s. Her fourth album, The 14th Moon (1976), was a milestone in establishing her signature style: the posh, "city? sound that later paved the way to the 1980s City Pop and 1990s J-pop. In addition to examining the album's astonishing stylistic versatility, this book explores how Yuming revolutionized the position of women in Japanese popular music and how her work can help us understand social changes in Japan of the 1970s.
List of contents
Track ListingPrefaceIntroduction
1. Becoming Yuming
2. Transient worlds
3. New Music
4. Women's images
5. Soaring women
6. Musical legacies
Conclusion
AcknowledgmentsBibliographyIndex
About the author
Lasse Lehtonen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tokyo, Japan, focusing on music in modern Japan, ranging from Western art music composition to popular songs and video game music. He is especially interested in examining different types of music in and as modern Japanese cultural history.
Summary
It is not an exaggeration that Matsutoya Yumi—better known by her stage name Yuming—is one of the most influential figures in Japanese popular music history. A singer-songwriter recognized globally for her songs used in Miyazaki Hayao’s beloved animations, Yuming has captured the hearts of listeners of different generations since her debut in the early 1970s. Her fourth album, The 14th Moon, released in 1976, was a milestone in establishing her signature style: the posh, “city” sound that later paved the way to the 1980s City Pop and 1990s J-pop. In addition to examining the album’s astonishing stylistic versatility, this book explores how Yuming revolutionized the position of women in Japanese popular music and how her work can help us understand social changes in Japan of the 1970s.
Foreword
Yuming’s fourth album, The 14th Moon (1976), is not only an iconic landmark of Japanese popular music history but also a window to musical and social change in 1970s Japan—especially from the viewpoint of female musicians.
