Artist

Mariya Takeuchi

1978-present·Tokyo, Izumo

Mariya Takeuchi's sophisticated pop, and her songwriting for idol singers, shaped Japanese music through the 1980s in ways the charts didn't always capture. Born in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture, she studied at Keio University and spent a year as an exchange student in Rock Falls, Illinois, before entering the music business. Her early RCA albums leaned hard into American session talent: David Foster, Jay Graydon, and the Toto rhythm section all appear on her records from that period. After marrying Yamashita in 1982, she stepped back from her own recording career for years, writing hits instead for idol singers like Naoko Kawai and Yukiko Okada. Decades later, "Plastic Love" turned her into an unlikely global phenomenon, discovered by listeners who weren't alive when she wrote it. Takeuchi has said she's simply grateful the songs still travel: she once found Russian and Korean comments on "Plastic Love" videos, and heard secondhand that her old host sister's grandchild had walked into an electrical appliance store that kept playing her and Yamashita's songs. Asked why city pop still connects across generations and borders, she pointed to something specific: it wasn't the "uniform sound of machines," she said, but real Japanese musicians doing something distinct with a Western form.

At a glance

Active
1978–present
From
Izumo, Shimane, Japan
Records in the issues
3 (1980–1994), 1 of them a Start here pick
Listening guide track
“Plastic Love”

Listen

In the Japanese City Pop listening guide: “Plastic Love”

Spotify

In the issues

  • Japanese City Pop
    Principal · 1973-1989

    Japanese City Pop is a genre from Tokyo, Japan, 1973–1989. Its principal artists include Tatsuro Yamashita, Mariya Takeuchi and Haruomi Hosono. This issue covers 10 essential albums and 15 dated events.

Records

  • Love Songs

    1980 · Go deeper in Japanese City Pop

    Takeuchi's chart-topping third album featuring American songwriters and session players including members of the Toto rhythm section. Her early RCA work established her sophisticated pop sensibility before her hiatus and later comeback, demonstrating the international collaborations that characterized city pop's production approach. The album showed her ability to work with Western musicians while maintaining her own melodic and lyrical voice.

  • Variety sleeve

    Variety

    1984 · Start here in Japanese City Pop

    Comeback album featuring "Plastic Love," which became city pop's most famous international export decades later. Released in 1984 after Takeuchi's hiatus, the album topped the Oricon chart. "Plastic Love" was sophisticated and slightly melancholic, a well-crafted piece of pop with a memorable bass line that charted modestly and faded. For thirty-three years it lived in obscurity until someone uploaded it to YouTube in 2017 with an anime-style illustration. The algorithm began suggesting it. Views accumulated: thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions. Vaporwave producers discovered it. Future funk artists sampled it. When Takeuchi checked to see who was listening, she saw comments written in Russian and Korean. Her niece in Canada told her people were surprised to learn the singer was her aunt. The song's revival happened entirely outside her control, driven by an algorithm and a community of listeners who experienced it as pure aesthetic.

    Listen on Spotify

  • Impressions

    1994 · For the obsessed in Japanese City Pop

    Best-selling compilation selling over 3 million copies, demonstrating city pop's enduring appeal despite genre's fall from fashion in the 1990s. Released in 1994 when most city pop was being dismissed as overproduced nostalgia, the compilation's success showed that the music's craft and sophistication retained commercial appeal even as musical trends shifted toward grunge and alternative rock. Takeuchi's commitment to making "music that is universal, both the words and the sound, and won't be considered old even after 20 or 30 years" proved prescient.

Places

  • RCA Studios Tokyo
    Tokyo · 1975-1990 · Japanese City Pop

    Recording home for both Tatsuro Yamashita and Mariya Takeuchi during their RCA years, where many of city pop's most iconic albums were produced with cutting-edge technology.

Voices

Quotations from the issues, each matched word for word against the source it links to.

“I think maybe people find it unusual, in that it's not the uniform sound of machines and that Japanese players were doing something that sounded like Western music by hand in the analog '80s.”
Mariya Takeuchi, Singer-songwriter, "Queen of City Pop". Source · Japanese City Pop
“We were certainly aiming to make something good and to create a sound influenced by Western music, but we weren't trying to sell it in the Western music market. It was more like, "That sounds cool, doesn't it?" But you know, it had power. The studio musicians were highly proficient, and above all, Tatsuro's arrangements were perfect.”
Mariya Takeuchi, Singer-songwriter, "Queen of City Pop". Source · Japanese City Pop
“I was recently made aware of the phenomenon regarding "Plastic Love" being played over and over again on YouTube, but initially I went "What the heck is going on here?" (LOL).”
Mariya Takeuchi, Singer-songwriter, "Queen of City Pop". Source · Japanese City Pop

Terms

Session musicians
Professional musicians hired to perform on recordings without being official members of the credited artist or band, often forming informal but highly skilled house bands for record labels or studios.