Ichimaru -- Tenryu Kudareba （天竜下れば）

Referring to the most recent episode of "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, the theme for last night was water, and I think the old kayo liked to pay tribute to Japan's fair share of waterways ranging from rivers to oceans.

The name Ichimaru（市丸）popped up again last night on the NHK program. Some months ago, I wrote an article about this interesting synthesis of shamisen and swing music called "Shamisen Boogie-Woogie"（三味線ブギウギ）that had originally been sung by the geisha-singer when she was entranced by American jazz in the postwar era.

Well, the song that was performed last night was one of her earlier hits, "Tenryu Kudareba" (Going Down The Tenryu River). Released in 1933, this song is pure enka in which Ichimaru pays tribute to this flowing waterway that passes through Nagano, Aichi and Shizuoka Prefectures. It may have had some special meaning to the singer since she was born in Nagano.

One of the other reasons that I decided to put this song up was that I recently spoke with my old university buddy who, along with her daughter, has been practicing Japanese dance for many years. She informed me that some of her friends in dancing have actually been taking a look at this blog, presumably for some of the enka songs that could be performed through odori. And I think "Tenryu Kudareba" may fit into that category. So if any of you see this, thank you for your patronage and please give Laura a shoutout. I'll be seeing her in a couple of weeks anyways to catch "Wonder Woman" with her family.

"Tenryu Kudareba" was written by Mikihiko Nagata（長田幹彦）and composed by Shinpei Nakayama（中山晋平）.