Japanese tunes by guitar bands in the 1970s

Section: Entertainment
Hello!
In the '70-'80s in the Soviet Union, some people greatly enjoyed taped recordings of traditional tunes played by electric instruments. The perfomers used keyboards, guitars, a saxophone and drums, rarely (female) vocals. I don't know the genre nor the names of bands, but want to enjoy this great music again. Can you help?
Many thanks!

Just a wild guess (since I have no way of knowing what music was being played in the Soviet Union back then), could it have been Kitaro? Here's a link to some info on the band on Last FM: http://www.last.fm/music/Kitaro

They were the only Japanese band whose CDs were readily available in my country 20 years ago, so I have a hunch they may be the one you're thinking of. Not exactly a guitar band though, more like restful zoning-out music, very pleasant. Hope this helps!

I do not know about it, but as usual, I googled.

ソ連で人気のあった日本のバンド

I found a Wikipedia page.

http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/寺内タケシとブルージーンズ

In this page, Takeshi Terauchi and Bluejeans took USSR tours in 1976, 1981 and 1984. It is called "electric band エレキバンド" and played some Japanese traditional tunes including Tsugaru Jongara Bushi. You can hear their play on Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgnjDzmZik

Thanks for responses!
Kitaro is a master of New Age music.
Takeshi Terauchi was a tip towards Japanese surf music (Eleki), it's electric guitar music, so it's closer. Basically, I seek traditional Japanese tunes played by electric guitars, keyboards, drums, some with saxophone, rarely (female) vocals. Could anyone guess at least the genre from the sample - http://rghost.ru/42767524 (440KB)?

Max,

Unfortunately, I do not know the name of the tune you linked, but I guess it might be categorized into "ムード歌謡" (mood music) which was played in night clubs. Sorry but I am not familiar with night clubs, so I can not say anything about it. But I can say, this type of music have never been the mainstream in Japanese music scene. It is very interesting some foreign people noticed this kind of music :).

I asked my father who was studying russians back in his youth, and he said the popular musicians during the 60~70's was Ai George (Ishimatsu Jorgi). I googled him and found out that he and his band "Ai George and the Japanese" toured in Moscow in 1967.

He was a guitarist and did jazz/mambo and even troika. Could it be him?