Thank you for the music: Here's to the 'cheap, embarrassing' 1980s

“It’s easier to say this is a 1980s bar, but actually we focus on the Showa fifties,” says Kei Sekine, owner of Bar Plastic Model. If you don’t know the difference, an education is waiting through a set of unassuming doors in Shinjuku’s Golden Gai.

The curriculum is a respectable selection of Japanese seven-inch singles mostly from 1975 to 1985 (the sixth decade of the emperor Showa's reign, known by the Japanese dating system as the Showa fifties). “I like to think of these as finger food,” Sekine says of the records which occupy a space on the bar where you’d usually find beer nuts. “I want people to browse and be able to connect over the records as they drink.”

Other bars in the vicinity feature collections from other eras, but Sekine’s love of the plastic decade is laced with real nostalgia. “The music I listened to in junior high is the stuff I can’t get out of my head to this day. I like 1970s music too, but I can’t talk about the 1970s, I wasn’t really ‘there,’” he explains.

A looked-down upon decade

As for the Showa 1950s, they share at least one aspect with the Western 1980s: “It’s a looked-down upon decade. People called it cheap or embarrassing, or they don’t want to remember it.

“In that time people had more of a margin for superfluity than they do now; economically people were well off,” offers Sekine. Whereas today’s aesthetic rejects the unnecessary, the 1980s “anything goes” atmosphere gave rise to creativity. But the music of the Showa 1950s diverges from Western 1980s in its forced amalgamation of pre-existing Western and Japanese styles.

Yamaguchi Momoe, active from 1972-80 (Showa 1947-55), is a prime example. Many of her songs combined rock and enka, Sekine explains as he shows me a TV performance of “Playback” from 1979. She wears a purple satin pillbox hat and mesh gloves while whipping glances at the camera with dramatic sincerity.

But Yamaguchi’s appeal went beyond her rich voice and alluring presence. Her father left her family when she was young, and according to Sekine, she helped people reflect on and accept painful episodes in their individual and collective past, “at just the time when they were trying to forget.”

Catchy commercialism

Opposite the more serious Yamaguchi was the short-lived duo, Pink Lady. They sang disco wearing glitter jumpsuits and antennae. They sold instant noodles and all manner of other products with catchy jingles. They starred in their own anime series. They were Japan’s prototypical “idols.”

Flipping through the discs with practiced speed, Sekine shows off a few less canonical selections. One is a song by an American country artist written for a Japanese male cosmetics commercial featuring Robert Redford. Another is a song created for the end of the Japanese theatrical release of Jacky Chan’s "Drunken Master" (in Japanese, “Drunk Monkey”) with cover art by Monkey Punch, creator of Lupin the Third.

They illustrate what he loves about singles in particular. LPs are interesting, but too serious: “The cover art is actually art. With the singles, it’s more like a commercial.” The jackets are playful; they’re easy to talk about. They’re as cheap and fascinating as the decade itself.

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