History Main / KenjiSawada

* Music/TheTigers: THe band Sawada was member of.

[[quoteright:335:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2886648589_61afb588fc_4373.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:335:Sir Loreal Julie of Peacock Hill, ladies and gents.]]
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[[caption-width-right:268:Kenji Sawada as of 2013 at the first Tigers Reunion Concert, performing "Love Only For You" with the audience swooning like teenagers no doubt.]]

'''Kenji "Julie" Sawada''' (born 1948) is a Japanese musician, actor and composer, best known to Americans for being in MishimaALifeInFourChapters. His claim to fame among Japanese is perhaps, according to many, such as {{SMAP}}, with planting the seeds of the VisualKei movement. His manner of dress when he performed, his heavy use of makeup, and his tendency to not seperate his stage personality from his real one are all traits later adopted by most VisualKei groups. His band, the Tigers, were one of many attempts to cash in on the Beatles by Japanese record labels, his was the most successful, with composer Koichi Sugiyama (yes,[[DragonQuest that one]]) giving much of their songs a very classical feel.. After the breakup of The Tigers, Sawada formed the SuperGroup PYG, bringing together many of his former rivals as musicians and churning out three albums. He later began a very successful solo career and became apt to a Japanese DavidBowie, acting in many roles to this day.

[[IThoughtThatWas Probably not related to]] the [[Music/TaijiSawada bassist]] of X and Loudness.

[[folder: Tropes describing Kenji Sawada]]
* AlterEgoActing: Somewhat of a type 3.
* AntiLoveSong: "Toki No Sugi Yuku Mama Ni" can be interpreted as the singer lamenting over an extremely toxic relationship.
* BadassBeard: Sports one as of 2013.
* BadassBaritone: His voice can range from this to a beautiful boyish tenor.
* {{Bishonen}}: Pretty much the one of the UrExample of the androgynous lead singer in Japanese music.
* BreakupBreakout: After the Tigers broke up, Sawada launched a successful solo career, acted in many movies, picking up the moniker "Japan's DavidBowie", and pretty much singlehandedly began what became the VisualKei movement of music/fashion. Not bad huh?
* BreakupSong: LONELY WOLF, Forbidden Love(About longing for a woman who has long left him), Pari ni Hitori
* BSODSong: "The 6th Melancholy", an angry rant on fame and the toll it takes on an individual.
* CampStraight
* CastIncest: Currently married to a fellow actress from the set of Tora-san: The Professional.
* ConceptAlbum: The Tigers 1968 album "Human Renascence" was the first use of the trope in Japan. Julie's solo career had him have more than one has well, with Onnatachiyo being a RockOpera retelling TheTaleOfGenji and JULIE II being themed around sea travel.
* CreativeDifferences: The reason PYG disbanded. Hagiwara's bad boy lawbreaker personality is well known in Japan to not be a mere act, and this clashed with Kenji Sawada's extremely "boy-next-door" image he had at the time.
* CreatorBreakdown: A lot of Sawada's early 80s material can be interpreted as this, with Rokubanne no Yuutsu, his BSOD song, seemingly being a rant on his feelings about fame, and seemingly having a much more eccentric manner of dress and stage persona.
* CrucifiedHeroShot: Most performances of Ikutusuka no Bamen.
* CunningLinguist: Speaks Japanese, French, Italian and English fluently.
* DudeLooksLikeALady: ESPECIALLY in the early 80s.
* DyeHard: His hair has ranged from hot pink, to blonde, to orange. However his hair greyed very early(in his late 40s, early 50s) from dying it so much.
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: JULIE I and Julie II are about as far away from the proto-Visual Kei pop rock and New Wave Sawada is mainly known for, having a sound one can liken to Barry Manilow or other easy listening, and almost none of the songs in these two albums have been included in Sawada's later years, with Yurusenai Ai being rearranged to fit more with Sawada's later style in TheEighties then dropped from his setlist after 1991, and almost all of the other songs from these two albums being forgotten.
* FountainOfExpies: Unlike the numerous hide clones however, the trend of Kenji Sawada emulators in the late 70s quickly died overnight.
* GenreShift: Went thru many. Like DavidBowie, his shifts reflect that of popular music in the country he came from as a whole was like at the time. Going by the Julie Special GreatestHits alone, he went thru EasyListening, PowerPop, SynthPop, {{New Wave|Music}}, and in the late seventies, early eighties thru a proto VisualKei period, with the album S/T/R/I/P/P/E/R featuring heavily distorted, blazing guitar and bass and very sexualized lyrics, and after the 90s, his output almost became BruceSpringsteen like, with a greater focus on traditional pop-rock anthems, and a much more tame, almost socially aware feel to the lyrics.
* GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff: Both Sawada and The Tigers have a significant following in Europe, China, and to a much lesser extent North America.
* GriefSong: From PYG, "Flower, Sun, Rain", "The Days Already Past" (grief over past loves) "No Longer On The Earth" and "Jeff" the latter a grief song directed towards a dog. His later solo career brings "Nageki no Tenshi" a song which deals with the process of grief itself, as well as "Illusion of Love" which is a song grieving over lost love.
* HoYay: Had a very subtext-laden photoshoot with Kazuya Yoshi of Yellow Monkey.
* IAmTheBand: He largely carried his band The Tigers's success on his shoulders.
* IntercourseWithYou: STRIPPER, the title is self-explanatory, and the first live of it actually [[TooSexyForThisTimeslot moved to watershed hours]] for NHK's 1981 New Years Eve show.
* InternationalCoproduction: JULIE, JULIE II, JULIE III, JULIE VI: ARU SEISHUN were all coproductions between Kenji Sawada & Takayuki Inoue Band (Japan) and Olympic Sound Studios(UK).
* ImpossiblyCoolClothes: Sawada is a master of this. Look at his 2008 concert where he performs in an Indian chief outfit, for instance, or his outfit in the PV for "The 6th Melancholy"!
* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: ''Julie III: Julie Recital'', Sawada's first live album is out of print and sells at very high premiums, as do all three of Julie's {{AOR}} albums done with Co-Colo, and to add insult to injury, virtually no songs from the album are floating around in digital form minus the single "Coal and diamonds" and a live performance of "Adagio of Sorrow" and "Namimuto"
* LeadBassist: Again, Ittoku Kishibe, who is lifelong friends with Sawada, and composed numerous songs for him as well as writing lyrics, and his bassplaying under PYG was noticed by John Paul Jones when PYG covered "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You"
* LargeHam: He ALWAYS chews the scenery, just watch him in ''Film/SamuraiReincarnation'' for a great example.
* LongRunner: First solo album was released in April 1969, his latest solo single was released spring 2013, and his latest studio album was released March '14.
* MrFanservice: And how! Had several nude photoshoots in the 80s....
* NewWaveMusic: Sawada's main genre from the mid-late 1970s until the 1990s.
* NewRomantic: His mid-late 80s output, with his androgyny UpToEleven, and a new backing band, Co-Colo, who included rather dark sounding string passages in addition to the synthesizers and guitar-drum-bass Sawada had become so accustomed to.
* NewSoundAlbum: A better list, in chronological order:
** Easy listening in the vein of Barry Manilow(Julie-Julie III)
** A revisitation of the psychedelic rock sound PYG had done with the original members of that band (Julie IV)
** Symphonic Rock(Julie VI)
** Glam Rock(Jewel Julie, Itsukana no Baman, And Now I Feast On A Grand Banquet, The Fugitive Ai No Troubador)
** New Wave(Bad Tuning, TOKIO, STRIPPER)
** Synthpop/New Romantic(NON-POLICY, MISCAST, Onna-tachiyo, A WONDERFUL TIME)
** {{Main/AOR}}-(A Grand Ballet With Co-COLO)
** TinPanAlley (A Saint In The Night)
** HardRock- His late 90s output with Jazzmaster.
** AltRock- His 2000s-TheNewTens albums mostly have shades of poppier alt-rock.
* PeripheryDemographic: Ever since VisualKei became more popular internationally, he seems to have gained a significant fanbase crossing over from bands like Buck-Tick, GLAY and X Japan, all of which have members who have professed to have Sawada as one of their influences(Sakurai Atsushi even covered two of Julie's songs and seems to style his vocal mannerisms after him, and GLAYs vocalist has covered "Toki no Sugiyuku Mama ni")
* PowerBallad: Ikutsuka no bamen is the most prominent example of sawadas ballads
* PuttingOnTheReich: like Gackt and MaliceMizer, has been photographed in Third Reichesque outfits.
* ProtestSong: "F.A.P.P" against nuclear power.
* RevolvingDoorLineup: Most of Julies backing bands have been replaced within 5 years.
* ScrewedByTheLawyers: Sawada currently cannot rerelease any of the albums he did with Co-CoLo due to the band being considered an independent entity. This also explains why nothing from his two studio albums with them has shown up in his solo setlist after the 1990s.
* SelfTitledAlbum: Several.
* SeinfeldIsUnfunny: To most people today, Kenji "Julie" Sawada's antics onstage seem mundane in the age of artists like MaliceMizer, DirEnGrey and the like, but at the time he was in his prime years(1975-1982), Sawada's onstage antics on songs like STRIPPER were considered darlingly sexual and flamboyant, and producer/bandmate Kunihiko Kase's invention of the term "Visual" to describe Sawada's onstage costuming and persona. This later was taken by Music/AtsushiSakurai and Music/YoshikiHayashi and turned further into the VisualKei movement.
* SexyGrandpa: Still has legions of fangirls to this day despite advanced age.
* SingerNamedrop: "Julie My Love" in Hoshizora no Romance
* SingerSongwriter
* ShoutOut: Jules "Julie" Deane in Literature/{{Neuromancer}}, an effete, androgynous smuggler in Japan who seems to be based on Kenji's persona.
* Atsushi Sakurai of Music/BuckTick cites Kenji Sawada as an influence upon the band's look.
* SomethingCompletelyDifferent: The Broken Earth, a PsychedelicRock song on a BaroquePop concept album which had little to do with the rest of the album's theme.
* SympathyForTheDevil: A LOT of the characters he plays tend to be evil guys with tragic pasts and bishie looks, Ryo from Akuma no Youna Aitsu, Shiro Amakusa....
* SpiritualSuccessor: His modern equivalent could be considered {{Gackt}}, who like Sawada, found more sucess after the band he debuted in broke up, and has a gigantic acting resume.
* SynthPop: His early eighties work, specifically ''Onnatachiyo'' and ''Non-Policy'' which had Sawada in full on Mr. Fanservice mode once again on the cover and featured mostly synthezied instruments and Sawada's voice reverberating through layers of synthesizers.
* TheBandMinusTheFace: Sort of. After PYG split, most of the members including Tigers bassist Ittoku "Sally" Kishibe became Julie's backing band, the Takayuki Inoue Band until 1977, when he replaced them.
* UnbuiltTrope: Not only the costuming and makeup, but the very onstage act of VisualKei vocalists can be traced to Sawada. Just watch any of his live performances and you'll see the same type of behavior later made famous internationally by vocalists such as Music/ToshimitsuDeyama of Music/XJapan, such as wildly expressive gesticulating and even outright showing sadness or other emotions onstage.
* VillainProtagonist: Tends to play these, and his natural charisma and good looks result in his characters becoming a DracoInLeatherPants more often than not.
* VocalEvolution: Over time, his vocal register has deepened significantly, but not to the point where his older hits are unsingable.
* VisualKei: Essentially went into the territory fashionwise in the 90s, with his makeup and clothing in the mid-90s making him resemble HidetoMatsumoto to some degree.
[[/folder]]

[[folder: Tropes describing The Tigers:]]
* AscendedExtra: Shiro Kishibe was originally musical advisor to Watanabe Productions, The Tigers's production company, and specifically told them to disband around the time HeavyMetal and PsychedelicRock became big in the US, but ended up as the replacement for Katsumi "Toppo" Kahashi, ironically.
* Music/TheBeeGees: Covered a large amount of their library, and Barry Gibb wrote "Smile For Me" and starred in one of their JukeboxMusicals.
* BaroquePop:A lot of their later stuff, ESPECIALLY 1968's ''Human Renascence'' can be seen as this, with most tracks especially the ones composed by Koichi Sugiyama, having elaborate orchestration almost to the point of being egregious. [[GenreKiller This had consequences for the band]]. The songs proved to be a nightmare to perform live coherently, and critics bashed the album for being far too pretentious.
* BandOfRelatives: On bass and vocals, Itou Kishibe. Later, on lead guitar and vocals, Shiro Kishibe, a NewAgeRetroHippie with a knack for American culture, and Itou's brother, would replace Toppo.
* BassoProfundo: Ittoku "Sally" Kishibe
* BreakupSong: Solitude In The City, sung by Julie about him walking alone in a crowded metropolis reflecting on a lost love.
* CrowningMomentOfHeartwarming/ TearJerker: In 2011 the band had a reunion at Kenji's solo concert. Guitarist Taro returned, and midway thru the show, a wheelchair bound Shiro Kishibe was brought out to sing a song. Shiro, despite looking old and sickly from a brain aneurysm that he managed to recover from miraculously, managed to pull off an incredibly effective vocal performance.
** Happened again 2013, this time with both Taro and Toppo, making all six tigers on stage for the first time ever.
* CoverVersion: Have covered TheZombies "Time Of The Season" and several Music/RollingStones, [[Music/TheBeeGees BeeGees]], and Music/TheBeatles standards, with Ittoku singing "Tell Me", and Julie singing "Nowhere Man".
* ReplacementFlatCharacter: Although Kishibe Shiro possessed almost as much prowess vocally as Toppo, his guitar playing skills weren't nearly up to par, and most of the guitar parts he played on the two albums were rhythm picking, and actual melody playing was left up to Morimoto Taro.
* FaceOfTheBand: The band actually passed this designation around during the sixties. When the band was first formed, Sally was the leader, then passed it on to Toppo, and Julie ended up being the defacto face.
* GenreKiller: Despite popularising GS, they can also be blamed for killing it. 1968's Human Renascence proved to be a disaster for Watanabe Productions, with the orchestral compositions being so complex it made most of the album next to impossible to perform live. That and the critics bashed the album for being too pretentious.
* GriefSong: Nageki(Grief)
* GodIsLoveSongs: Love, love, love seems to be this judging from the rather spirtual lyrics
* HiddenDepths: Shiro Kishibe, despite being the least musically fluent of The Tigers, having been taught guitar by Taro rather than learning himself and playing tamborine and singing before actually being able to play guitar like he was brought in to do, is the most English proficient of the band, a very talented writer, and a seiyuu, voicing Mammoth Nishi in AshitaNoJoe.
* ImpossiblyCoolClothes: The white jumpsuits the band wears on stage, and the knightly robes they wore in some photoshoots and lives.
* KansaiRegionalAccent: Sally sings in an exaggerated one in "The World Goes Round" and "The Train For freedom"
* KeepCirculatingTheTapes: Good luck finding the Tigers pre-Kenji Sawada material from when they were an instrumental band.
* LastNoteNightmare: "The Broken Earth" has Julie letting out a guttural wail as the song fades out.
* LeadBassist: Sally is a type A & B, singing lead on quite a few songs as well as being admired for his rather strong bassklines by even John Paul Jones of LedZeppelin.
* LongRunner: First debuted in 1966, disbanded in 1971, reunited in 1981, disbanded again in 1983, had a mini=reunion in 2011, are reuniting again December of 2013.
* MetalScream: Toppo pulled off a few of these doing the band's cover of "I Put A Spell On You"
* MohsScaleOfRockAndMetalHardness: Ranges from 1-2 generally, with a few songs off their later albums going into 4-7, particularly the Jimi Hendrix esque "The Broken Earth" which has vocalist Sawada screaming throughout.
* MisogynySong: Covered UNDER MY THUMB....
* MyRealDaddy: Though record producer and percussionist Yuya Uchida discovered the band, it was largely Koichi Sugiyama and Kunihiko Murai who propeeled the band into bigger success, along with extroverted drummer Minoru "Pea" Hitomi.
* NewSoundAlbum: Human Renascence was the most ambitious effort by the Tigers, shifting them into total Baroque Pop territory. Their next three albums led by new guitarist/vocalist Shiro Kishibe took the band in a more PsychedelicRock direction, with a bit of dabbling in BaroquePop still. Their reunion album in 1981 had a very {{New Wave|Music}} feel too it similar to Sawada's solo material at the time.
* StageNames: In addidtion to the VisualKei UnbuiltTrope of costuming, the Tigers also used stage names most of the time(Which most VisKei bands also do), with Kenji Sawada going by Julie, and guitarist Katsumi Kahashi going by Toppo.
* SurprisinglyGoodEnglish: Kenji Sawada and Toppo, both fluent in English, managed to sing the band's few English songs with very careful pronounciation.
** Although the crowning award of best English of the4 group goes to Shiro Kishibe, who lived in America for years before becoming Toppo's replacement, and you can see what an impact his studies had, as his English is relatively free of any accent on most songs he sings, especially "Lalena".
* StepUpToTheMicrophone: Shiro Kishibe, brother of Itou "Sally" Kishibe, eventually became the bands new lead guitarist after Toppo left the band.
* TakeThat: In a meta sense. "The Blue Bird" was written by lead guitarist Morimoto Taro as a counter to the claims by rival bands' fans that The Tigers were purely a manufactured band.
* TroubledProduction: ''Human Renascence'' was originally meant for another band entirely, but they quickly said no to the project, and Watanabe Pro gave it to the Tigers. The album sold well, but reportedly according to various accounts, the album proved near impossible to do live. The fallout from everything caused Toppo to leave the band in annoyance.
* TrueArtIsIncomprehensible: Largely the negative reception of Human Renascence was due to the rather "out there" lyrics.
* UncommonTime: Love, Love, Love's intro and verses switch time signatures, and the outro is 6/7 live.
* VocalTagTeam: Usually rhythm guitarist Katsumi "Toppo" Kahashi or Kenji Sawada would be on lead, but occasionally bassist Ittou Kishibe would StepUpToTheMic.
* TheVoiceless: Lead guitarist Taro Morimoto, who never sang lead on a studio album song but lots of backing, and Minrou Hitomi has only a few vocal interjections on "Seaside Bound" as far as studio cuts.
* TheWoobie: Kishibe Shiro, the Tigers second rhythm guitarist and tag vocalist and Osami "Sally" Kishibe's younger brother. His life story is a real tear jerker. His first wife divorced him after he went bankrupt, and when he was 52, his second wife of 7 years died at the age of 43 without warning, causing him to be in a catatonic state for many days. In 2011, he had a brain aneurysm, and like TaijiSawada, it ended up changing his appearance, making him appear much more frail than he actually is, and he needed a wheelchair for a while Although the good thing is, like Taiji, his skill never faded, as his voice is still almost as powerful as it was in the 1980s and 1970s.

[[/folder]]

* GriefSong: From PYG, "Flower, Sun, Rain", "The Days Already Past" (grief over past loves) "No Longer On The Earth" and "Jeff" the latter a grief song directed towards a dog.

* BadassBaritone: In his older age, his speaking voice is nearly one.

* SympathyForTheDevil: A LOT of the characters he plays tend to be evil guys with tragic pasts and bishie looks, Ryo from Akumayouno Aitsu, Shiro Amakusa....

* CoverVersion: Have covered TheZombies "Time Of The Season" and several RollingStones BeeGees and TheBeatles standards, with Ittoku singing "Tell Me", and Julie singing "Nowhere Man".

* ConceptAlbum: The Tigers 1968 album "Human Renascence" was the first use of the trope in Japan.

* SynthPop: His early eighties work, specifically ''Onnatachiyo'' which had Sawada in full on Mr. Fanservice mode once again on the cover and featured mostly synthezied instruments and Sawada's voice reverberating through layers of synthesizers.

* LongRunner: First solo album was released in April 1969, his latest solo single was released spring 2013.

* GenreShift: Went thru many. Like DavidBowie, his shifts reflect that of popular music in the country he came from as a whole was like at the time. Going by the Julie Special GreatestHits alone, he went thru EasyListening,PowerPop, SynthPop, NewWave, and in the late seventies, early eighties thru a proto VisualKei period, with the album S/T/R/I/P/P/E/R featuring heavily distorted, blazing guitar and bass and very sexualized lyrics, and after the 90s, his output almost became BruceSpringsteen like, with a greater focus on traditional pop-rock anthems, and a much more tame, almost socially aware feel to the lyrics.

* NewWave: Sawada's main genre from the mid-late 1970s until the 1990s.

* NewSoundAlbum: Human Renascence was the most ambitious effort by the Tigers, shifting them into total Baroque Pop territory. Their next three albums led by new guitarist/vocalist Shiro Kishibe took the band in a more PsychedelicRock direction, with a bit of dabbling in BaroquePop still. Their reunion album in 1981 had a very NewWave feel too it similar to Sawada's solo material at the time.

* UncommonTime: Love, Love, Love's intro and verses switch time signatures, and the outro is 7/7 live.

* UncommonTime: Love, Love, Love's intro and verses switch time signatures.