What happened to piano music in j-dramas

[auroragb]

From my recollection, piano was a strong element of the early 90's romance j-dramas. Particular of note is that they played a strong part in making classics like Long Vacation and Tokyo Love Story work.

What happened to using piano? I don't recall any j-drama in the past year using strong piano themes. Why not? Don't they want romances to work as well as LV and TLS did?

[fastat3m]

Didn't Nodame Cantabile have a piano player? I didn't watch it but I thought it did. Times change though, and i'm sure it'll come back eventually.

[CJH]

well don't know any dramas which have pianos in them recently *cough the only one i can think of is 101st marriage proposal cough*

but.. i have to say i find pianos and strings of any kind to be VERY romantic
and i'm hoping for a comeback too ^^

[groink]

Because the anime/manga generation have taken over live dramas, the music is a lot more up-beat that it was during the 90s, when piano music was important in setting the romantic or melodrama-like moods. I think setting romantic moods is not as important today as it was in the 90s simply because the romance is totally different. And it doesn't fit the context like it did back then. Most of the romances you saw during the 90s were post-college people or people over the age of 22. Being 22 or older during the 90s, you would appreciate those types of romantic moods. But nowadays, when two people have a romantic moment, they're much younger and I really don't see the piano music working for the scenes.

Another reason: based on your examples, as well as the many examples running through my head, many of the great music composers like Hinata Toshifumi no longer write music for TV dramas. Hinata-san was THE MAN! They're still around - they're just not writing for Fuji TV.

There are still some great piano music being introduced in dramas, although most of them are not during prime-time. NHK still uses a lot of it in their morning dramas, such as Churasan (Blue Lagoon, Best Friend), FIGHT, and especially Junjo Kirari.

--- groink

[CJH]

have to agree with your analysis there let one of my uni friend listen to one of my favorite piano tracks and he was like..."whats this junk...." sad....

on a more off topic err topic, any good composers to recommend sadly i never did get into the habit of chasing down particular composers(just downloaded OSTs of stuff i liked... or games ) so yeah anyone who could point me to some good composers gets a cookie though it's going to have to be an e-cookie cause i don't have any physical ones with me *gets shot for being lame*

[gryzze]

I think that groink is right that romance today is totally different. Think about it - not only the piano music of the 90s is gone but the good romance dramas seems to have disappeared with it.

When Tatta Hitotsu no Koi aired a few seasons ago I had high expectations since it was screenwritten by Kitagawa Eriko who's written many of my favourite dramas (including Long Vacation). It turned out to be a great disappointment but I guess the younger generations still liked it.