Жапон тіліндегі рок революциясы: Happy End және музыка тарихындағы өзгерістер

Japanese folk rock band

When his band Burns needed a bass player, drummer Takashi Matsumoto reached out to Haruomi Hosono, a Rikkyo University student whom he heard was quite skilled. After playing shows together, Hosono eventually invited Matsumoto to join the psychedelic rock band Apryl Fool, which the drummer described as being influenced by bands like Vanilla Fudge, "really progressive sounds for the time." When their keyboardist, Hiro Yanagida, started getting more into music like Buffalo Springfield and the West Coast sound that was becoming popular, Matsumoto said Hosono got into it too, and "we started shifting toward that style." The band began recording their own album in April 1970. Matsumoto stated that at the time Happy End started, they were influenced by Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield, and the Grateful Dead. This album marked an important turning point in Japanese music history, as it sparked what would be known as the "Japanese language Rock Controversy" (:ja:日本語ロック論争). There were highly publicized debates held between prominent figures in the Japanese rock industry, most notably the members of Happy End and Yuya Uchida, regarding whether rock music sung entirely in Japanese was sustainable. Previously, almost all popular rock music in Japan was sung in English. The success of Happy End's debut album and their second, Kazemachi Roman released a year later, proved the sustainability of Japanese language rock in Japan. For their third album, also titled Happy End (this time written in the Latin alphabet), they signed with King Records and recorded in 1972 in Los Angeles with Van Dyke Parks producing. A language barrier along with opposition between the Los Angeles studio personnel and Happy End was also apparent, which further frustrated the group. These feelings were conveyed in the closing track "Sayonara America, Sayonara Nippon", which received some contributions from Parks and Little Feat guitarist Lowell George. As Matsumoto explained: "We had already given up on Japan, and with [that song], we were saying bye bye to America too—we weren't going to belong to any place." In 2003, their song "Kaze wo Atsumete" appeared in the American movie Lost In Translation and on its soundtrack. Eiichi Ohtaki died on December 30, 2013, from a dissecting aneurysm at the age of 65. For the 2015 tribute album Kazemachi de Aimashō, commemorating Matsumoto's 45th anniversary as a lyricist, Matsumoto, Hosono and Suzuki recorded the previously unreleased Happy End song "Shūu no Machi" (驟雨の街). A special two day concert for the same anniversary was held at the Tokyo International Forum on August 21–22, 2015 featuring numerous artists. Matsumoto, Hosono and Suzuki opened each day by performing "Natsu Nandesu" and "Hana Ichi Monme", immediately followed by "Haikara Hakuchi" with Motoharu Sano. They also closed the shows with "Shūu no Machi", and finally "Kaze wo Atsumete" alongside a number of other artists. The three surviving members of Happy End reunited again on November 5–6, 2021 for a two day concert, that also featured numerous other artists, at the Nippon Budokan to celebrate Matsumoto's 50th anniversary. Also in 2021, Suzuki's band Skye recorded the unreleased Happy End song "Chigiregumo" (ちぎれ雲) for their self titled album.

Happy End are credited as the first rock act to sing in Japanese. In 2012, Michael K. Bourdaghs wrote, “For Matsumoto, the Japanese language was above all a source of raw material for use in experimentation. [ ] for Happy End, the Japanese language functioned not as a repository of tradition or identity but as an alienated and alienating tongue — a source of noise.” Singer songwriter Sachiko Kanenobu wrote that "they had a poetic way of writing that was never part of Japanese rock music before". Happy End's music has been cited as one of the origins of modern "J pop", with each member continuing to contribute to its development after the group's break up. The band is also considered progenitors of what would become the "City Pop" style. Masataka Miyanaga, Japanese music critic and founder and professor of Beatles University at Kanazawa University, wrote that, given the impact they had, it would not be an exaggeration to call Happy End the "Japanese Beatles". In September 2007, Rolling Stone Japan named Kazemachi Roman the greatest Japanese rock album of all time. It was also named number 15 on Bounces 2009 list of 54 Standard Japanese Rock Albums.