Where to start with Japanese City Pop
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.
Start here
- 1
Songs
Sugar Babe · 1975It's the blueprint album that defined the city pop template and became a secret influence on everything that followed.
- 2
Ride on Time
Tatsuro Yamashita · 1980It's the commercial peak of city pop, embodying the genre's expensive sound at Japan's height of economic confidence.
- 3
Variety
Mariya Takeuchi · 1984Its song 'Plastic Love' shows how city pop became the genre's most famous international export decades later.
Go deeper
- 4
Circus Town
Tatsuro Yamashita · 1976Yamashita's ambitious debut recorded with American session players in New York and Los Angeles, establishing his pursuit of Western pop sophistication.
- 5
Melodies
Tatsuro Yamashita · 1983Contains "Christmas Eve," which became Japan's best-selling single of the 1980s and perennial holiday staple, charting every December for 35+ consecutive years and selling nearly two million copies.
- 6
Cochin Moon
Haruomi Hosono · 1978Experimental "electro-exotica" soundtrack demonstrating genre's capacity for playful boundary-pushing.
- 7
Love Songs
Mariya Takeuchi · 1980Takeuchi's chart-topping third album featuring American songwriters and session players including members of the Toto rhythm section.
For the obsessed
- 8
Pacific
Haruomi Hosono, Shigeru Suzuki, Tatsuro Yamashita · 1978CBS/Sony Sound Image Series collaboration demonstrating exotica influences and electronic production techniques that connected Hosono's experimental work with mainstream city pop.
- 9
Impressions
Mariya Takeuchi · 1994Best-selling compilation selling over 3 million copies, demonstrating city pop's enduring appeal despite genre's fall from fashion in the 1990s.
- 10
Hosono House
Haruomi Hosono · 1973Pastoral folk-rock debut recorded in American Village (an idealized slice of 1950s America built for air base families north of Tokyo), showing Hosono's range before he helped define city pop's more urban sound.
The stories behind every record are in Japanese City Pop.