One of City Pop’s greatest mysteries has finally come to an end. After the 2018 release of Victor Records’ City Pop compilation album, DJ Notoya Presents: Tokyo 1980s Victor Edition, which included the seminal track ‘Sunset Road’, artist Reiko Takahashi has racked up a new generation of fans online. A defining track of the 2020s city pop revival, ‘Sunset Road’ found itself plastered all over social media, shaping memories of an idealised and neon Japan into our feeds. And yet, the artist behind the track completely faded into obscurity in 1987, leaving no trace behind. Internet sleuths and city pop enthusiasts have pondered for years about Reiko’s whereabouts, attempting to answer the question: just where did Reiko go?
Nearly forty years after seeming to fall out of the spotlight, Reiko Takahashi has returned.
Speaking candidly to JP ALT, she tells us what city pop’s revival means to her and where and who exactly she’s been in the decades since recording ‘Sunset Road’. With her final TV appearance in her home country being in 1987, Reiko seemed to have disappeared completely, but all isn’t as it seems. In this tell-all exclusive, Takahashi reveals that since leaving the world of idol-dom and moving to Los Angeles, she’s not only been involved in activism, but she never strayed from performing. From a chance encounter with a revival she didn’t even know had already happened to a new, upcoming re-release of ‘Sunset Road’, Reiko Takahashi had this to say to us in a Zoom interview.
How was your reaction with the increase of interest surrounding you through the internet? Because, you’re not the only City Pop artist that went missing, but somehow you revealed that you are THE Reiko Takahashi. What was it like?
Well, I didn’t know anything about it until my girlfriend, who is a big city pop fan, Momo, was looking through her playlist one day. I was like peeking on her phone and like looking through her playlist together and I saw myself. And I’m like, “wait a minute, that is me— my song. What is my song doing there?”
I had no idea about the resurgence of Sunset Road. And she’s like, “no, no, this is an artist that I’ve been following for a long time.” She didn’t know it was me. I was like, no, that is actually me! And she’s like, “What? I’ve been following this artist for years and I didn’t know it was you…”, because my name is spelled in Japanese kanji so she didn’t know how to read it. She did not put two and two together and she was floored.
After that, I started Googling my name and I started seeing all these YouTube videos, and one of the videos said I’m the ‘biggest city pop mystery’.
“What happened to Reiko Takahashi?”
I started seeing all those people doing covers of my songs. I was like….this cannot be real. I really couldn’t believe it. It was just the greatest moments of my life because who would have thought after 39 years…I guess 2018, when DJ Notoya did a compilation LP of City Pop, that’s when the resurgence started to happen.
Since it’s a mystery, people want to ask about the Reiko Takahashi era. Could you tell me about your childhood, how was your relationship with music growing up in Japan?
Oh, I was born singing and writing music. My first thing I ever wanted to do when my mind started developing was to sing. Music was my life from the very, very beginning. My parents had me studying piano twice a week. I told my piano teacher to leave because I hated piano lessons so much. She ended up developing my skill of composing. She said, okay, let’s go burn all your texts, hand me all those sheet music, we’re just not gonna study anymore. We went to the backyard and burned it all.
I was like, oh my God, this teacher is the best. She was very progressive, especially at the time in Japan. Then she said, “okay, let’s play a game. I’m going to start playing chords and you’re going to remember.” I was, you know, blindfolded. Well, not really blindfolded, but she was telling me to go to the other corner of the house, turn around so I couldn’t see what she was playing but she believed in my hearing and my senses. After a while, she told me to come back to the piano and asked me to play a song, whatever came to my mind. And I composed, I was like four or five years old. The first composition was about my mom. The whole song had an intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, outro and everything. She just really developed the start of my career as a composer.
Where were you born? And what was Japan like for you during that era?
Tokyo. I was born in Shibuya. It was filled with kogaru and ganguro. It was fashion, cafes and clubs. Growing up as a kid, we went there just to have fun. I grew up in a place called Seijo Gakuen. That was more of a suburb of Tokyo. It was really peaceful. We’ll ride a train or they ask for a car to go to Shibuya and just hang out. It was just a really vibrant city. Shibuya has always been vibrant. It’s constantly changing. Evolving.
Were there any Showa idols you look up to?
My ultimate idol was Akina Nakamori.
Yes! Oh my god! My favorite too! I love Akira Nakamori!
Oh my god, she was my favourite person. Everything about her, like her personality, she was so grateful about everything— she was so humble. I actually got mistaken for Akina Nakamori so many times because, number one, we kind of had the resemblance of each other, but then I loved her so much that I made myself look like her a lot. I remember I was at a train station and people would come up to me for autographs asking, “Are you Akina Nakamori?”
I’m like, “I wish I was. I wish I was.” It’s my dream to collaborate with her. She’s just…Oh my God, so sexy and just an amazing singer, you know? Like, oh, every time I think of her, I just get chills. And then I still look at her YouTube videos of her and Akina…and I wish her well. She’s amazing. She’s always been my idol.
How about Seiko Matsuda?
As for Seiko Matsuda, I used to sing ‘エクボの秘密あげたいわ’ (Seiko Matsuda – Hadashi no Kisetsu). I used to love her songs but Akina is so sexy, I love her husky voice.
I saw that your song was composed by Kingo Hamada and the lyrics are by Junko Sato. Could you tell me how you met these people and what was like the chemistry, the experience like working with these industry giants?
Yes! The TV series where I sang, Love Song wa Utaenai. [The chance] came to me all of a sudden, out of the blue. I got sideswiped. “You want to sing this song?” They were looking for a singer, and then I went to the studio, and I briefly met Mr. Hamada, It’s 39 years ago. My memory is just so… you know, all over the place, but Junko Sato…Miss Sato and I became really good friends.
We used to hang out, I used to go to her house, and she would come to mine […] we became really good friends, and it was just really cool to work with giants like that for sure. Maybe I can say this, but I’ve been talking with them. I’m working on my new city pop release. We are working on the song together. We’re going to write together, three of us. It was going to be maybe like a 40th anniversary of us working together again. So that is going to be amazing. I mean, Mr. Hamada is just a legendary songwriter. And yeah, Junko, oh my God. I call her Junko-san. The way she writes the lyrics, she uses imagery and takes you to visualize both the song and the words. When you hear it, you just get to that place of sunset or the heartbreaks. I cannot be happier. I’m so blessed.
An interesting fact I found out is that within the Sunset Road mixtape originally there was an English version of the song. Can you tell more about that? Were you already fluent in English back when you were in Japan?
I thought I was but not like this. I had a lot of friends from the States, so I could speak conversational English, but my pronunciation and grammar wasn’t good at all. And it’s so funny, the English version lyrics were written by my sister. She put Jacqueline Jones or something as a pen name because she was in college and somehow she didn’t want anybody to know. She thought maybe it was cool to put Jacqueline Jones, J.J., but she wrote the lyrics. My new release will have all four Japanese releases from 1987. We are doing ‘Sunset Road’, ‘Love Song Wa Utaenai’, ‘Kitto Only You’ and ‘September Blue’…I love ‘September Blue’ so much. We’re also going to re-recording the English version of ‘Sunset Road’.
During your days as an idol under Victor Records, were there actually any plans to record a debut album as an idol?
I think there was, but I left Japan, which is a long story. I left Japan as soon as I recorded ‘Sunset Road’ so there was no promotion, no tour, nothing. I left because I wanted to write my own music. My agency didn’t want me to do that at that time. So I just booked a flight and came here [America]. I was really fearless back then. I just wanted to tell my stories and wanted everybody to know who I am. Music is the only platform to do that. You can just write your own script and do your own music video independently and I couldn’t do that in my country. They didn’t let me do that so I wanted to like, you know…I don’t know if I was an idol or a product. I don’t know but it was a product that they wanted to produce but I wanted to produce myself, so I came here to the land of opportunity and it’s been really great.
What were some of the takeaways you learned throughout your career as an idol back then? What was the biggest lesson?
I remember one time I was in a meeting with a bunch of TV staff and stuff. They asked me what I wanted to drink. Everybody was drinking iced coffee and iced tea, and I wanted fresh squeezed orange juice. In Japan at that time, it was like triple or quadruple the price of the iced tea or iced coffee that they were drinking. I got called by my agency’s CEO, and I got scorched. They were yelling at me, you’re not supposed to do that, blah, blah. But anyway, that’s a funny story.
I remember significantly, um, this is kind of sad, bittersweet… but when I first met Minako Honda, I was really nervous and I think, I don’t know, she didn’t like me or something. So she looked at me and said, “you must behave well” or something like that. I kind of felt, oh my gosh, you know, intimidated. So there was like a senpai-kohai thing.
I remember running into legendary actresses like Wada Akiko, Tomoko Ogawa, and Yuki Saori, the three A-star actresses that were in the TV show that I sang the theme song for. They were immensely nice. They were so nice. I remember Akiko Wada came up to me and said, good luck to you with that signature deep voice. I will never forget that voice even though it’s been almost 40 years.
When you were in America, what was living in America for you in the beginning compared to now?
It was freedom, a sense of freedom. Because like I said, all I wanted to do in my life is music and I found a place where I could just be free to do music. I didn’t even skip a beat. I went to find a studio, a small studio in Huntington Beach, California and I started recording my own demo.
I started being discovered with this one song called ‘Lucky Guy’ by the promoter of this club called China Club or something like that in Hollywood. I was a minor at the time, so I could only go with a guardian. I started singing and performing and I was like, oh my God, this is life; performing my music at a club with an audience. I didn’t even think of myself being Japanese at that time, I thought of me being unique, because I didn’t really look like anybody and I was maybe the youngest performer. The sense of liberation I felt was starting.
Then I found another big studio in Hollywood and I started recording my albums. The first album under Rayko, Purple Shoes then Crave. So I would put two backpacks on my shoulders and I would go to UCLA, USC, Santa Monica College and all those universities and high schools, everywhere in LA and OC and then pass [cassettes] out to anyone who I walk up to. I’d just tell them to listen to my music because I didn’t grow up here and I didn’t go to school here. I didn’t have any friends. So that was the only way to get people to the shows. It was just really self promotion and self independent releases, and it was not easy. I remember one time I got my hair pulled by this girl because I went up to her boyfriend and she was on the other side somewhere. She thought that I was hitting on him and she just went really violent! Hey if you’re watching this I remember you!
Being Rayko in America and being Reiko Takahashi in Japan. In your opinion, could you tell me what is the biggest challenge you face in America as a musician under Rayko? And compare it in Japan when you are Reiko Takahashi. Is it harder for you?
There’s some harder and some easier. I got a lot of Asian female singers and Asian fronted band titles, but in Japan there’s no Asian singers because everybody’s Asian. I felt kind of weird about it, but then I guess it’s the norm here. Especially around 9/11. One time, people started yelling at me from the crowd, “go back to your country!”, but then there were so many people who were supporting, so the person got kicked out. After a while, I learned to use that as a niche. I cannot get away from being called an Asian singer. So let’s do it, use that as a tool to get more, to get discovered more. So that’s when I started incorporating Japanese language. We became a bilingual band.
The first bilingual band that I have is called Dig Jelly and then we toured across the country. The next band was Lolita Dark and we did a lot of anime conventions like anime expo. We got flown to a lot of places to perform and that’s one thing that I’m glad about. I use the criticism or racism as a… not racism, but what do you call it? ‘Discrimination’, as a tool. And I use that to better my career.
Earlier you mentioned anime expo, it made me curious like this is not on the list of questions I prepared, but are there any anime openings that you love?
Oh yeah! I thought that I was gonna marry Naruto. I would just binge watch Naruto all day. There is a b-side of Naruto by No Regret Life. I used to love the song and we used to cover that song and also I loved ‘Nana’. I covered ‘Glamorous Sky’.
From what I’ve seen from your account you’re a very spiritual person. Could you tell me what God means to you and are there any testimonies you would like to tell as a musician?
So besides me working for a production music company for many years, almost 10 years, and then many bands, I’ve done so many, I never stopped music. But besides all that, I am an associate professor of Japanese tea ceremony, Chadō and that is really zen.
Spiritual, spiritual, spiritual. Humble yourself.
It came from a Japanese samurai and they used to do it to humble themselves and to know that tomorrow may never be there so you live today as a grateful spiritual person. So I am Christian but I was never an organized religious person. So anything that divides people, has animosity or abuse, those are not coming from God. I believe that just doing unto others is the best teaching of Christ and I try to live that way every day. For music too, this is a very competitive industry and I try not to get swept away with that kind of attitude of the industry. There’s a lot of drugs and alcohol. I’m a straight edge and I don’t do any of that. I just love peace, I love people, I love animals. Just believe that God created everything and we are equal. So if we love one another, do unto others, then the world will be the greatest place.
I recognize that you also prioritize mental health, such as collaborating with a Golden Gate Bridge jumper survivor. Could you tell me more about it?
That’s Kevin Hines, yes, we did Stay Alive, the video. He was the one of the one percent that survived the fall and then he said as soon as his hands left the railing he regretted immediately and he was saved by a seal, by the way. The seal brought him to the shore. I am a huge advocate for suicide prevention because I’m from Japan, we’re the only country that has a suicide forest— Aokigahara.
How idol culture is in Asia, which is relentlessly harsh, what is your experience persevering mentally as a musician?
It’s really, really hard, actually. Growing up in Japan, especially for males, it’s a peer pressure. It’s just so hard. Then also the idol culture, of course, you know you have to be skinny, you have to be pretty, you have to be 21, you’re still too old and you have to keep competing. I just think it’s just really hard to live in that kind of society and I really wish that there were more advocates and therapies. I wish mental health and mental illness wasn’t looked down upon…because it is like cancer. It is a real actual disease and you really need help and more advocacy and more therapists, but Japan didn’t have that availability when I was growing up.
A song sung and produced by Reiko Takahashi for the theme song for Stay Alive
I saw that you ever appeared on an episode of the Eric Andre show. Could you tell me more about your experience behind that?
Oh, it was the best. Eric Andre was the best. The show was so much fun. There was an audition that my engineer friend told me about, Akiko told me that, oh, they were looking for a Japanese house band and in-house musician. I auditioned and I got it right away.
That day I went to the audition and the producer called me and said, you’re in, you’re the house band, the singer. It was so much fun. We shot the whole season five in one day. We met all the guests and it was amazing. It was so much fun. He is pretty crazy, but as a person, he’s the nicest guy. At the wrap party, he surprised me with all the crew members to celebrate my birthday. I walked in and then the band that they hired started singing happy birthday to me, so that is the kind of person he is. I’ll never forget that.
Rayko has been a very interesting shift from your past as an idol. Could you tell me about your inspiration for your modern music now?
I get briefs every day from various production companies. My sister was like a music encyclopedia. So I write from Ava to Zappa, A to Z. I would write country music, hip hop and metal in one day. I have to keep listening to modern music. I’m working on two albums for a publishing company making K-pop and Japanese hip-hop. I like going back and forth and then going to hip-hop, K-pop, Jazz, Orchestra, and all this stuff all the time. I have to always listen. I would always have to be up to par on all the modern music and retro music because that is my day job. So that is like music is just like constantly changing my life.
Are there any musicians or friends you still have in contact with from Japan, you know, that you still communicate with outside of Junko-san or also like Kingo Hamada?
No, I don’t. The person that I would like to connect with is Anri. Because she’s here. She lives here. And she’s playing at Wiltern in May. I would love to connect with her. She’s another person that I used to grow up looking up to.
Being a vegetarian and an animal activist outside of your music career does not shun away from the spotlight. Could you tell me the first time you entered into this realm of activism for animal rights?
So I’m a vegan, so I don’t do any dairy, no eggs, no milk, and then I have no leather. I got rid of everything. I’m thinking about just donating every leather or anything with fur and donating the money to an animal sanctuary.
It came about when my sister was a really strong advocate for animals for years and at that time I didn’t open my eyes, but one day I was driving up north and I stopped and there’s the field of cows and I was holding my dog at that time. There was a young brown cow that came up to us. And then I was looking at him wagging his tail. Then I looked at my little dog and they have the same waggy tails and I was thinking, God created all those animals equal. If God wanted animals to be food or clothing or something to be exploited, then why did God make them sentient?
Why can they feel fear, anger, sadness, sorrow, pain, and suffering, and happiness and joy? And I put two and two together and never again. I started seeing movies like Eating Our Way to Extinction, The Game Changers, Unity, and I saw the footage of slaughterhouses and I said I cannot contribute to this. So that’s when I started advocating for animal rights. Animal rights activists, it’s like the title is always looked down upon but we just love life. People say we’re the extremists, but I think we’re the least extreme because we can’t even kill. I used to be a meal planner for Hollywood executives and celebrities, so I know how to do a balanced vegan diet. So I am on a really high fiber and protein and complex carb diet. It’s been great! The only thing that I lost is more weight (chuckles).
You know, Billie Eilish, you know, Ariana Grande and all those great vegan stars. I’m so inspired by them, too. So I really appreciate that question.
With the final question for today, what are some final words you want to say to the readers, the City Pop fans, Reiko fans, and the JP Alt Magazine readers who are reading this right now?
I am endlessly grateful for you guys. And you kept my voice alive for all these years. And if it wasn’t for you guys, I wouldn’t be here right now talking to you about this. And you know, music has always been my life. I cannot exist without music, but the city pop resurgence is all you. And I am so grateful and I have so many opportunities coming to me. There’s so much more coming to you because you have given me the new chapter of life in music. And I’m so grateful and stay tuned with so much that’s coming.
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