City
Izumo
Japan
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.