Surely, he must have known. That’s all I can think about when I listen to Katsuhiko Nakagawa’s memorial album, Again, Me… Released just months after his untimely death, this best-of collection served as a memory of a young artist who seemed just at the cusp of doing one other great step forward. It’s not often I start at the end but to get to Lover People, one has to begin to look back from somewhere.
It was in 1992, when Katsuhiko received notification of his diagnosis: Acute myeloid leukemia (or AML). At his age, just 30 years old, he knew the prognosis wasn’t good. The vast majority with this form of cancer don’t live past a few years. At this point in his life, he’d taken a sojourn from his music career to try one in acting and presenting. Feeling considerably physically and mentally weaker after the course of his last album 1989’s Human Rhythm, Katsuhiko had already quietly withdrawn from musical career, not feeling strong enough to perform live (and put in long hours in the studio).
Faced with the very personal question of revealing his health problems, Katsuhiko chose at first to keep that information quiet and present his best face forward. A year later, as his body deteriorated from all sorts of therapies that weren’t working, he finally held a press conference announcing the status of his health. A few concerts were performed under the auspices of such news but unable to see a path forward and refusing to put his young daughter, Shoko (the only matching donor), through the pains of a bone marrow transplant, Katsuhiko accepted whatever fate would bring and passed away nearly a year later, at the age of 32, in 1994.
Shoko Nakagawa (or “Sitsuko” as she’s more widely known), relates elsewhere, how before her father passed away he’d tirelessly draw pictures for her, memories of his life, as if trying to leave a living testimony for her in those images. Eventually, those would coalesce into a children’s book released right before his passing. Likewise, huge amounts of demo tapes of his music could be found in his home. Katsuhiko, it seems, just ran out of time to give that form of testimony to his fans.
Reflecting on this, it seemed like Katsuhiko understood that what others wanted for him might not be what he wanted for himself in life. Katsuhiko could have gone into the corporate world, as his father did to provide for his wealthy family, but Katsuhiko chose a path elsewhere. He wanted to earn his own future and name. In high school he got that first inkling that music might be his future path, winning songwriting competitions he’d enter in. However, that wouldn’t come again until later.
Initially, he’d attend Tokyo’s Keiko University hoping to get a degree in the arts. Katsuhiko would drop out of university, choosing instead to pursue a career in acting and fashion. Although soft-spoken and shy, Katsuhiko’s good looks and real dramatic chops made him an in-demand young actor. However, in the back of his mind music was where he really wanted to be creative.
It was the music of David Bowie, the androgynous aesthetics of New Wave and a love of American soul music that spurred Katsuhiko to push for a musical career. Signing with the Elektra record label, his debut would set him up to aim for a direction of his own.
Recording with members of Moon Riders, in 1984, Katsuhiko released his first of two records with their help: してみたい (Shite Mitai) a barn-burner of an album that showed he can cover styles that ranged from jittery techno-pop to suave dance floor disco and the cosmopolitan pop dujour (we now call City Pop) in Japan. What he took advantage of was music video as a form and as a sometime “visual artist” made some of Japan’s earliest pioneering MV (music video) media. It would be shortly after its release that Katsuhiko’s pin-up visage would be found in the home of those looking for their next idol and he’d had to decide whether he could navigate through all the waters he chose to take on.
For the first two years of his music career, the albums and fame came to him profusely. Unknown to legion of fans, Katsuhiko was a young dad by then and wary of playing the role of sexy idol laid upon him. Huge arena tours didn’t phase him from shaking up his own career. For his 1986 record, Puberty, he’d adopt a harder-nosed sound while expanding his vocalist vocabulary by exploring more sophisticated soul ideas (working with the smoothed-out prince, Tetsuji Hayashi).
Then, a year later he’d work together with Mr. “Shinin’ You, Shinin’ Day”, Char, an obvious influence, to create a knowingly more adult album, 1987’s Maji-Magic, that hinted at the music coming from America, like New Jack Swing and more hip-hop-inspired R&B. Always the rebel at heart, he wanted to shed off all that cleverly put-upon persona of the time.
What brings us back to Lover People is because it’s where we see Katsuhiko come into his own as the sole proprietor of his music. Seeking artistic freedom over fame, Katsuhiko absolved himself from Elektra’s grasp and took a risk by signing a record deal with Japanese-based upstart NEC Avenue (more known for their multimedia and computer software). No matter, Katsuhiko convinced them to pony up an advance that would buy him studio time and the freedom he needed to create.
It’s that risk that Katsuhiko took that ultimately brought him to New York City, the city where he’d end up recording and producing the record. Seeking to get away from all the celebrity he had in Japan, in America (although largely on his own), he felt inspired to write out of a space that fed off the vibrancy of a more diverse urbanity. Joined by his trio, he’d dub 10th 2nd (with experimental musician RA and dance specialist Haruki Hiraishi), they’d show glimmers of the underground dance scene on tracks like the opener “Moon Wolf”, as if it was Katsuhiko trying to make music that felt forward-thinking rather than keeping pace with the times.
In that anonymity of 1988 NYC, Katsuhiko came into his own as a composer, inhabiting the role of voyeur, provocateur, and shapeshifter through his music. What could begin as a Prince-like ode could end in more nebulous atmospheric territory where the funk vaporizes into something else, like on “Body Impression”. Somehow, Lover People finds Katsuhiko in the middle of the venn diagram between avantgarde and pop.
Those late nights spent traveling around the city make for curious conscious companions to dreamy ballads like “Wonderful Night” that present him with one foot in world music and the other in this distinct atmospheric soul music he was creating. The single, “Albite Dreamer”, likewise, uses influences from house music to create his warped imagining of it. “Message” finds him setting aside those experiments for an epic, glorious, alternative, rock torch song that hints at his more complex ideas at play.
There’s a certain darkness burning the seams of Lover People that works to its benefit. While in the past songs were vehicles for Katsuhiko to separate himself partly from the music, here it appears the songs are self-examinations that cover his id, his desires, and worries. Songs like “Dreams” are bold, real things, that hint at the “realness” music was missing in his homeland. “Old News” ends this album on a melancholy note, a delicate, heart-wrenching ballad to his loved ones who couldn’t be here with him to share this success.
It’s all prescient stuff, at least in hindsight to listen to, found in a remarkable album from a singular artist who finally found some peace in what he was looking for. In our day and age, when we’re going back to rechristen albums like Utakata No Hibi, Melting Moment, and others, surely, we can make room for other totems like this one?