The Ventures tour Japan

In May 1962, American instrumental kings, the Ventures, made the first of many tours of Japan. Japanese teenagers immediately flipped over their sound and started forming instrumental combos in the style of the Ventures.

Eleki Boom

When the Ventures returned to Japan in January 1965 they had become household names and the impact of their music on Japanese teenagers was enormous - the band was greeted with Beatlemania-like crowds. Unhindered by the language barriers inherent in performing American or British vocal music, hundreds of Eleki (Japanese English for "electric," as in electric guitars) combos sprung up all over the country.

Domestic guitar manufacturers such as Guya couldn't keep up with the demand, so companies usually associated with other industries such as Victor (better known as JVC in the U.S.) began producing electric guitars. (Even a manufacturer of wooden clogs got in on the act!) In 1965 760,000 guitars were made in Japan, a record that has yet to be broken.

Takeshi Terauchi & Yuzo Kayama

Takeshi Terauchi

Two guitarists of particular note who came out of the Eleki Buumu (Eleki Boom) are Takeshi Terauchi and Yuzo Kayama.

Takeshi "Terry" Terauchi started out as a sideman in Jimmy Tokita & the Mountain Playboys, a country & western band. In 1962, he formed his first eleki band, the Blue Jeans, with whom he remained until 1966. He then formed a new group, the Bunnys, who recorded the eleki classic "Test Driver". After the Bunnys disbanded in the fall of 1968, Terauchi formed a new version of the Blue Jeans, called Takeshi Terauchi & the Blue Jeans (to distinguish them from the original Blue Jeans, who continued recording and performing after Terauchi's departure, and even opened for The Beatles at their 1966 Japanese concerts).

Terauchi's style is very Ventures-influenced, but much faster and more frantic, with a heavy picking style and liberal use of his Mosrite's whammy bar. Later on, Terauchi experimented with adapting flamenco and other western styles (WFMU has, for example, several classics performed surf guitar style available as MP3 files) as well as Japanese musical forms (such as enka) to eleki, with mixed results.

Terauchi is probably Japan's first guitar hero, and he has continued recording and touring through the years with new groups of Blue Jeans, and he has recorded and released over 300 albums to date. Some of his signature songs have been covered by many bands around the world, including newer Eleki groups such as The Royal Fingers.

Yuzo Kayama

Yuzo Kayama first came to fame in 1961 as the dashingly handsome young star of the "Wakadaisho" ("Young General") series of teen films. Heavily influenced by the Ventures he formed a backing group, the Launchers and started recording for Toshiba Records. In Yuzo Kayama's second "Wakadaisho" film, the 1965 feature, "Eleki No Wakadaisho" ("The Young General's Electric Guitar"), Kayama and Takeshi Terauchi perform together backed by the Launchers and they really blast the place to pieces!

He showed his ability for drama when Akira Kurosawa cast him for his 1965 film, Red Beard (???, Akahige?), starring Toshiro Mifune. Kayama reported that he found the two years spent making this film the most difficult, but proudest work of his life.

As a guitarist, he performed a distinctly Japanese form of psychedelic surf music in the 1960s with his Mosrite guitar. This triggered a big fashion statement in Japan, mainly in Osaka where younger men will walk around with surfboards even though there isn't a near beach. Two of Yuzo Kayama's best known instrumentals, Black Sand Beach and Yozora No Hoshi were even covered by the Ventures (as well as many surf bands), who were so impressed with Kayama and the Launchers that they presented him with one of their own signature-model Mosrite guitars.

As a singer, he is best known for the Japanese ballad "Kimi To Itsumademo." Several performances of this song, spanning over 40 years, can be found on the internet.