And of course, graduation songs will be sung or played. Yup, kayo kyoku has a seasonal subgenre. Whenever March comes....well, marchin' in....there will be many pop songs with those wistful lyrics of parting and heading into the future (....of overtime and potential bouts of alcoholism and power harassment...yeah, I know I'm a bastard, hee hee).
Probably, the most famous of these songs is "Okuru Kotoba"(Words of Sendoff). It was sung by a folk group by the name of Kaientai (海援隊）which means "Maritime Support Group". The lead vocal of the group is Tetsuya Takeda（武田鉄矢）, who is now more known as a veteran TV and movie actor and commercial pitchman. And it was on the TV show that he's most famous for "3-Nen B-Gumi, Kinpachi Sensei"（３年B組み金八先生...Mr. Kinpachi of Class 3B）, that "Okuru Kotoba" was the theme song. Since then, it's almost a capital crime NOT to play this song at any graduation ceremony. When I was on the JET Programme, the reaction was almost Pavlovian when that guitar started strumming those famous chords.
The song was released in November 1979. By April of the following year, it had been at the No. 1 spot on Oricon from March 10 to April 14, not surprisingly, well into the graduation season. It also became the 6th-ranking song of 1980, and Takeda won a writing award at the Japan Record Awards for that year.
I'll be doing more of these graduation songs over the next few days or so.
Let me thank J-Wikipedia for the data.
My favorites from Kaientai are Sketch Book and Song for You
ReplyDeleteHi, this is J-Canuck. Thanks for replying. I don't know about Kaientai outside of "Okuru Kotoba". Which one of the two songs would you recommend more?
DeleteCan you tell me about their[Kaientai] song 'Omoeba tooku e kitamonda" and the english lyrics of the song.
ReplyDeleteHi, Ranawaka. Thanks very much for your comment and I will try to explain about "Omoeba Tooku e Kitamonda". In fact, after listening to the song on YouTube, I was so charmed by it, I've decided to do an article on it tonight. Look forward to it!
DeleteI knew this song from SMAPxSMAP (wonder if any old song I knew didn't tie to SMAPxSMAP ha ha). I love his singing in 2019 video too.
ReplyDeleteHi, May. Good to hear from you again. I didn't watch SMAPXSMAP all that much but I figure from their singing segments, the guys probably covered some of the old stuff as well.
Deletefor sure SMAP used to have SMAPxSMAP ending song segment, and one of them was Respect 70's - I found many kayo kyoku songs there. I'm glad you are still running this blog. I moved to wordpress years ago but still come here occasionally to look up songs I can't find English info else where : )
DeleteYeah, the Japanese still have a lot of nostalgia for those old kayo which is great. As for SMAP x SMAP, when I did catch it, it would usually be for their SMAP Bistro cooking segments.
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