The Japan Tokyo song chart

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Song chart Japan Tokyo

Japan is the second largest music market in the world, but obtaining reasonable historic chart data is really quite difficult. This is a weekly top 100 chart from 1988 to 2008 for Tokyo (source //www.j-wave.co.jp/original/tokiohot100/ cgi-bin/top100.cgi).

We have to rely on automated translation tools (our Japanese is not good enough), these have some issues with converting artist names and song titles that are not in Latin text. In addition there are inconsistencies between the names of the same songs from one week to the next. We have tried to make the names consistent and map them as best we can, but there are more corrections to be made.

We would be glad to hear from anyone who can tell us where to get validated charts for Japan from before 1989.

Atributes

The attributes we use from this data are:

  • artist: The artist
  • name: The name of each song
  • position: The peak position the song reached in the weekly chart
  • date: The month in which the song first entered the chart
  • weeks: The number of weeks the song was in the chart

artist

There are a wide range of ways to assign scores to artists in order to work out which artists are most significant. Here is one listing, of the top five artists of each half decade within this chart. This has been calculated using a score that combines the position and the number of weeks in the charts.

Half Decade Number 1 Artist Number 2 Artist Number 3 Artist Number 4 Artist Number 5 Artist
1985 - 1989 Richard Marx Janet Jackson Bobby Brown Phil Collins Madonna
1990 - 1994 Mariah Carey Madonna Janet Jackson Prince Wilson Phillips
1995 - 1999 Jamiroquai Celine Dion Mariah Carey Madonna Eric Clapton
2000 - 2004 M-flo Misia Chemistry Janet Jackson Madonna
2005 - 2009 Exile Def Tech M-flo Crystal Kay Bonnie Pink

If we want to compare artists across the whole duration of this chart we need to remove the systematic bias that comes from the different chart dynamics for different eras. We can do that by first ording all the songs by success within a given year and then using this order to define a score (for example assigning 1.0 to the number 1 song, 0.5 to the number 2 and so on).

# Artist Entries Biggest Hit Year Year Position
1 Misia 29 Everything 2000 1
2 Janet Jackson 38 Doesn't Really Matter 2000 2
3 Bette Midler 9 From A Distance 1990 1
4 Diana King 7 Shy Guy 1995 1
5 The Beach Boys 4 Kokomo 1988 1
6 Franz Ferdinand 3 Do You Want To? 2005 1
7 Madonna 49 Hung Up 2005 3
8 Enya 15 Anywhere Is 1995 2
9 Bon Jovi 25 Born To Be My Baby 1988 3
10 Def Tech 12 My Way 2005 2
11 Phil Collins 21 Two Hearts 1988 2
12 M-flo 33 Come Again 2000 3
13 Stevie B 3 Because I Love You (The Postman Song) 1990 2
14 Wilson Phillips 10 Hold On 1990 3
15 Eternal 9 Power Of A Woman 1995 3
16 Mariah Carey 37 It's Like That 2005 9
17 Whitney Houston 22 I'm Your Baby Tonight 1990 5
18 Rick Astley 8 She Wants To Dance With Me 1988 4
19 U2 22 Desire 1988 8
20 Speech 10 What's Going On? 1995 4
21 Amerie 6 1 Thing 2005 4
22 The Backstreet Boys 11 Shape Of My Heart 2000 5
23 Sheena Easton 12 The Lover In Me 1988 5
24 Scatman John 6 Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop) 1995 5
25 Oasis 20 Go Let It Out 2000 9
26 Coldplay 5 Speed Of Sound 2005 5
27 The Cardigans 9 Carnival 1995 6
28 Craig David 10 All The Way 2005 7
29 Stevie Wonder 16 For Your Love 1995 8
30 Tahiti 80 11 Heartbeat 2000 7

name

A number of song titles have been hits for more than one artist. Here are the twenty titles that have spent the most weeks in the Tokyo charts.

# Song Title Total Weeks Num Versions
1 Smile 129 15
2 Everything 120 10
3 Heaven 120 12
4 Believe 100 10
5 Crazy 98 11
6 Free 93 11
7 I Want You 93 10
8 Stay 90 9
9 Without You 90 8
10 Music 88 8
11 I'll Be There 85 9
12 Angel 80 9
13 Life 80 7
14 Change The World 74 4
15 I Beg Your Pardon (I Never Promised You a Rose Garden) 73 1
16 One 73 9
17 Kirakuni 72 1
18 I'm Not In Love 70 7
19 Real Love 69 8
20 Runaway 68 6

position

The peak position that songs reached in the Tokyo charts.

date

The month in which a song first entered the Tokyo charts.

weeks

Tokyo weeks

The number of weeks that the average song spends in the Tokyo chart has changed quite dramatically over the years. We have no good idea why this should be.


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8 Aug 2022

Oricon annual charts+

Hello would you add annual single/album charts on Oricon from 1945-2019? Butall the songs here were shown in Japanese, such as Hey Jude - Beatles at no.48 in 1968 https://entamedata.web.fc2.com/music/hit_music1968.html

As is mentioned in the text our Japanese is not good enough to translate this data. If there is an English version somewhere we would consider it.