is Japanese singer

Ringo Sheena , known by her stage name , is a Japanese singer, songwriter and musician. She is also the founder and lead vocalist of the band Tokyo Jihen. She describes herself as "". She was ranked number 36 in a list of Japan's top 100 musicians compiled ...

's 6th single and it was released on March 27, 2001 by

Toshiba EMI , formerly , was one of Japan's leading music companies. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of British music company EMI Group Ltd. on June 30, 2007, after Toshiba sold off its previous 45% stake. Its CEO and president was Kazuhiko Koike. When ...

Virgin Music Virgin Records is a record label owned by Universal Music Group. It originally founded as a British independent record label in 1972 by entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Simon Draper, Nik Powell, and musician Tom Newman. It grew to be a worldw ...

Background

In this single, Sheena canceled her partnership with

Seiji Kameda is a Japanese music producer, arranger and bass guitarist. He has worked extensively with Ringo Shiina, serving as her producer and touring bassist for many years, including his tenure with their band Tokyo Jihen from 2005 to 2012. Biography ...

, with whom she had arranged her songs up to that point, and asked musicians of various genres to arrange her songs. She arranged three songs in a "night, daytime, and a morning" order, according to the title, and she showed the reading of these song titles by writing

katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived f ...

. All players of each song were named "- Paradise Orchestra" on "Mayonaka wa Junketsu" which is the title tune of this single. is a

Ska Ska (; ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walki ...

band, and is a

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...

, and is the trio of a

pianist A pianist ( , ) is an individual musician who plays the piano. Since most forms of Western music can make use of the piano, pianists have a wide repertoire and a wide variety of styles to choose from, among them traditional classical music, ja ...

, a bassist, a drummer, with

accordionist Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

coba Coba ( es, Cobá) is an ancient Maya city on the Yucatán Peninsula, located in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo. The site is the nexus of the largest network of stone causeways of the ancient Maya world, and it contains many engraved and sculp ...

. Sheena intended to record "Mayonaka wa Junketsu" and "Aisaika no Chōshoku" on the third album ''

Kalk Samen Kuri no Hana , also known as ''Kalk Samen Chestnut Flower'' and ''Chlorine Semen Chestnut Flower'', is the third studio album by Japanese singer-songwriter Ringo Sheena, released on February 23, 2003, on Toshiba EMI / Virgin Music. The album's lead single was ...

''. However, she judged that they weren’t suitable for the view of the world of the album while she was producing that, and she shelved the adoption of the two songs for the album. The literal translation of song titles is slightly different from the official English title. The song was covered by Mino Kabasawa on her piano cover album ''Piano Pure: Memory of 2001'', by

Rieko Miura is a Japanese actress, voice actress, singer and former member of the band CoCo (band), CoCo. She was born in Nakano, Tokyo. Her solo debut was on 14 September 1991. Filmography Film *''Kyō no Kira-kun'' (2017), Kanon Okamura *''Love and Lie ...

, Atsuko Kurusu and Saki Kamiryo on the NTV variety show ''The Yoru mo Hippare: Aki no Special'' on September 22, 2001 and by Max on the NTV variety show ''The Seiya mo Hippare: 2001 Christmas Special'' on December 15, 2001.

Music video

"Mayonaka wa Junketsu" was accompanied by an animated

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device ...

. Originally, the music video was filmed by

live action Live action (or live-action) is a form of cinematography or videography that uses photography instead of animation. Some works combine live-action with animation to create a live-action animated film. Live-action is used to define film, video ...

. The story was that a mysterious woman fights with a baldheaded leader of an evil secret society. Sheena played the woman and Masato Minagawa, a keyboard player of her band, played the enemy's leader. However, Sheena's pregnancy came to light while filming, so the video was hurriedly changed into animation. The story remained as it was and the character design was also modeled on Sheena and Minagawa. Her pet cat "Goethe" also appears in the music video as a

cyborg A cyborg ()—a portmanteau of ''cybernetic'' and ''organism''—is a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts. The term was coined in 1960 by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline.

cat. The heroine was named according to the anagram of the song title.

Track listing

Credits and personnel

# Mayonaka wa Junketsu #: with #*

Trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitched one octave below the standard ...

: Nargo (Kimiyoshi Nagoya) #*

Trombone The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...

: Masahiko Kitahara #* Alto Saxophone & Agitator: Tatsuyuki Hiyamuta #*

Tenor Saxophone The tenor saxophone is a medium-sized member of the saxophone family, a group of instruments invented by Adolphe Sax in the 1840s. The tenor and the alto are the two most commonly used saxophones. The tenor is pitched in the key of B (while ...

: Gamou #* Baritone Saxophone: Atsushi Yanaka #*

Piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

: Yuichi Oki #*

Electric Bass The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and s ...

: Tsuyoshi Kawakami #*

Electric guitar An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gu ...

: Takashi Kato #*

Percussions A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Excl ...

: Hajime Ohmori #* Drums: Kin-ichi Motegi (from

Fishmans are a Japanese band formed in 1987 in Minato, Tokyo. They are known for their unique psychedelic sound and the distinctive vocals of the late lead singer Shinji Sato, as well as the drum playing of Kin-Ichi Motegi and rocksteady basslines of ...

, support member)The nine months later, he officially became a member of the band in November, 2001. # Sido to Hakuchūmu #: with #* Electric guitar: Jun Sumida #*

Double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox additions such as the octobass). Similar i ...

: Benisuke Sakai #* Drums: Shuichi "Ponta" Murakami #*

Electronic organ An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed ...

: Nobuo Kurata #* Trumpet: Eric Miyashiro, Shiro Sasaki, Yusuke Hayashi, Isao Sakuma #* Trombone: Eijoro Nakagawa, Osamu Matsumoto, Satoshi Sano #* Bass Trombone: Junko Yamashiro #* Alto Saxophone & flute: Bob Zung, Kazuhiko Kondo #* Tenor Saxophone: Osamu Koike, Osamu Yoshida #* Baritone Saxophone: Masakuni Takeno #* Harp: Yuko Taguchi #*

Vibraphone The vibraphone is a percussion instrument in the metallophone family. It consists of tuned metal bars and is typically played by using mallets to strike the bars. A person who plays the vibraphone is called a ''vibraphonist,'' ''vibraharpist ...

& Glockenspiel: Hitoshi Hamada # Aisaika no Chōshoku #: with #* Piano & Programming: Toshiyuki Mori #* Contrabass: Hitoshi Watanabe #* Drums: Takashi Numazawa #* Accordion:

Yasuhiro Kobayashi

References

{{authority control Ringo Sheena songs 2001 singles Songs written by Ringo Sheena 2001 songs EMI Music Japan singles Animated music videos