Saburo Kitajima -- Fubuki Nagare Tabi（風雪ながれ旅）

 

Back in my junior high school days, one of the few teachers that I actually got along with well was our gym teacher. This is rather ironic since I was frankly the laughingstock of gym class and if the opportunity presented itself, I would feign illness and sleep it off in the nurse's office. In any case, me and a couple of friends were in the jogging club, and our gym teacher was an avid jogger. He was a Bear Grylls type in that he could take on any physical challenge with gusto...probably knew every vintage of his urine.

Well, one day, he exhorts us after school to go out for a brief run. Usually he likes the long run but that day was special on account of there being a MAJOR BLIZZARD raging outside. We began uttering our reluctance but the teacher wouldn't hear anything negative so he threw all of us outside in our tracksuits and sweaters (the one example of winter clothing that he would allow on our person) and we went out battling the hostile elements of snow coming in like missiles and darts, slicing winds and accumulating white stuff that threatened to engulf us like quicksand. How we survived that (and how he survived not getting a lawsuit thrown against him) I have no idea but we somehow managed to slog through an hour of jogging (?) on the side streets.

I always think of that notorious afternoon in the late 1970s when I listen to Saburo Kitajima's（北島三郎）epic "Fubuki Nagare Tabi" (Trek Through Wind and Snow). To be honest, I got to hear the performance again by the legendary enka singer from northern Japan when I watched an NHK retrospective on the Kohaku Utagassen last night which was actually better in its 75-minute format rather than those more arduous multi-day pre-Kohaku warmups with loads of comedians and singers.

Created by veteran lyricist Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）and veteran composer Toru Funamura（船村徹） for Sabu-chan as his 37th single from September 1980, "Fubuki Nagare Tabi" has everything for a Kitajima song: strings which glide and stab, a veritable army of shamisen players, a grand arrangement by Masahito Maruyama（丸山雅仁）that reflects the tough journey up in the wintry north, and of course, the singer's clarion call delivery that exhorts and encourages at the same time. He not only sings about the various areas of the region such as Otaru and Hachinohe but he even mentions the instruments making the music and the sounds of nature as they come into some confluence. Enka fans from prefectures including Hokkaido and Akita probably shed a tear or two of pride.

The Kitajima signature song did OK by scoring a high of No. 28 on Oricon and it won the first Masao Koga Memorial Music Award（古賀政男記念音楽大賞）in 1980. However, what gave it immortality was his singing of "Fubuki Nagare Tabi" as the final performance on the 32nd edition of the Kohaku Utagassen at the end of 1981 (he had actually first sung it on the 31st edition). A battalion of shamisen singers was behind the yukata-garbed Kitajima as he sang his heart out but the piece de resistance was the largest and most intense indoor hurricane of paper snow flakes which threatened to engulf not only Sabu-chan but the stage and the audience (not sure whether the singer strangled the special effects guy or hugged him in gratitude). Even non-enka fans will probably remember Kitajima for that one scene even if they don't remember it as part of the Kohaku. He would sing "Fubuki Nagare Tabi" five more times in later editions. 

Unfortunately, the above video isn't from that Kohaku but I found something that is a less intense version.