Akai Tori/Kaori Kawamura -- Tsubasa wo Kudasai （翼をください）

Some time ago, I wrote an entry on the song "American Feeling" by vocal group The Circus. The song was one of the mainstays during that part of the junior high school year known as "Gassho Konkuuru"（合唱コンクール....Chorus Group Competition) Season. During my 2 years teaching in my 2 junior high schools in northern Gunma, I would always hear the kids, led by the music teacher, sing in serious harmony as they prepared for the inter-school contests. Along with "American Feeling", another go-to song in the contests was "Die Moldau", one of the six symphonic poems created by Czech composer Bedrich Smetana in the late 19th century.

But there was one other popular song that had the students in Japan singing, and that was "Tsubasa wo Kudasai". The title literally means "Please Give Me Wings", but apparently it's more known as "Wings to Fly". This song was originally created in 1970 by lyricist Michio Yamakami （山上路夫）and composer Kunihiko Murai（村井邦彦） as an entry in a music festival contest in Mie Prefecture. However, the folk group, Akai Tori（赤い鳥）, asked if they could sing it just 2 hours before its recording. I guess the meaning of "wings"in the title was not lost on this new band since its name means "red birds". And it was also a good match in that the group gave the song that optimistic lift which would later be emulated by later generations of uniform-wearing students.　In 1971, it would release the song as the B-side to another song in February 1971.

Akai Tori will always be known as the leading group for this much-covered song. And even after it disbanded in 1974, its members branched out into their own successful projects. Vocal Junko Yamamoto（山本潤子） and bassist Shigeru Okawa（大川茂） started the vocal group Hi-Fi Set along with Yamamoto's husband, Toshihiko（山本俊彦）, who was also a guitarist in Akai Tori. Meanwhile, two other members would start up another group called Kami Fuusen（紙ふうせん）.

After hearing the song so much from the teachers' room that it took up permanent residency in my head, it was a pleasant surprise to hear this rock version one night near the end of my stay in Japan in 1991. Sung by the late Kaori Kawamura（川村かおり）, this fresh take on what had been given the anthemic approach was as if a few of those kids snuck out during rehearsal and treated it their own way. The song became a hit for Kawashima as it sold close to 300,000 copies.

But everyone has covered it over the decades....from Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里） to Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）. Even the Susan Boyle has given her own rendition.