Takuro Yoshida -- Senkou Hanabi（せんこう花火）

Holiday Monday here with it being Victoria Day today. Normally, there would be the usual fireworks display down at Ashbridges Bay to highlight the first unofficial summer long weekend, but of course, as with many events now and for the foreseeable future, there won't be any of that tonight. Did hear some individual firecrackers going off last night somewhere in the neighbourhood, though.

Fireworks are part and parcel of the Japanese summer festival experience so I am wondering what will become of events such as the Sumida River Fireworks Festival and similar happenings this summer in Japan, although things seem to be improving quite nicely over there. The quintessential scene of anything summery on television and movies whether it be poignant dramas or anime is family and friends dressed in yukata holding those sparklers at home while the professionals launch the big boys into the night sky.

Sparklers are known as senkou hanabi in Japanese, and I managed to find this Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）song with that very title last night. Located in his 3rd album "Genki desu."（元気です。...I'm Fine.）from July 1972, "Senkou Hanabi" and some of the other tracks there definitely have that summer theme in mind. The thing about this particular song is that it has nothing of the usual festival music of traditional instruments such as taiko drums or shamisen involved. Instead, it has more of a North American folksy flavour with the banjo and a flat mandolin played by Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）.

Yoshida provided the melody while novelist Nobuko Yoshiya（吉屋信子）wrote the lyrics to "Senkou Hanabi". "Genki desu." hit No. 1 on Oricon, and was not only the 2nd-ranking album for 1972, it was also the 4th-ranking album of 1973.