City

Izumo

Japan

Izumo appears in 1 Songsheets issue: Japanese City Pop. One artist in the archive came from here: Mariya Takeuchi.

Izumo in Shimane Prefecture is the birthplace of Eiichi Ohtaki, who left this provincial city to join Tokyo's music scene and co-found Happy End in 1969. His rural Izumo roots provided a counterpoint to city pop's metropolitan sophistication, informing his later solo work's nostalgic undertones. Ohtaki's journey from Izumo to Tokyo embodied the migration narrative that city pop both celebrated and interrogated throughout its existence.

Scenes

003
Japanese City Pop
Primary

Artists from Izumo

  • Mariya Takeuchi

    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.

Records made by artists from Izumo