Hachiro Izawa -- Ahh, Ueno Eki （あゝ上野駅）

Ueno Station in Tokyo played a couple of roles for me. When I was living up in the mountains of Gunma Prefecture from 1989-1991, this was the welcoming station for me when I took the Joetsu Shinkansen from Jomo Kogen Station whenever I had that need to have some city under me. From Ueno, I could decide whether I took the Ginza Line down to Ginza Station or took the JR Yamanote Loop over to Shinjuku. And then when I started living in the Tokyo area from late 1994, Ueno Station was the closest station to my first school, the Ueno branch of NOVA. It was and still is a huge cavern of a stop (although not quite as massive as JR Shinjuku Station) with the masses flowing to and fro.

Ueno Station has also been a nostalgic post for generations before me, a point that has been encapsulated within the kayo kyoku, "Ahh, Ueno Eki"(Ahh, Ueno Station). Written by Yoshiaki Sekiguchi（関口義明）and composed by Eiichi Arai（荒井英一） in 1964, young enka singer Hachiro Izawa（井沢八郎） sang this tune as his 2nd single, and it became his biggest hit. In fact, the song has become somewhat of a musical touchstone for a lot of folks who had come to Tokyo straight from graduating from school in the outlying prefectures to find their fame and fortune in the big city. Izawa (real name Kinichi Kudo) himself came to Tokyo from Aomori Prefecture after graduating from junior high school, so the song probably had some deep meaning for him as well.

The lyrics of "Ahh, Ueno Eki" come from the point of view of someone who has already established himself and is now looking back with a content sense of nostalgia about those early days. Izawa sings that Ueno Station is the station of his heart, something that probably a lot of those older generations can agree with. Still, despite its role as a encouraging song to succeed in the metropolis, there is also a spoken-word interlude which acts as a fond postcard to his parents back home in which Izawa promises to come back and visit, and massage their backs until they're sick of him.

The song has become so famous as one of the great postwar kayo kyoku that a monument was erected in 2003 at the station in tribute to it, and just a week ago, in commemoration of the station's 130th anniversary, Platform 13 began using an excerpt from the song as the departure melody.

Izawa himself passed away in 2007 at the age of 69. At a press conference addressing his death, his daughter, actress Yuki Kudo (from "Snow Falling on Cedars" and "Memoirs of a Geisha") mentioned that her father had left a wonderful treasure in the form of this song, and declared that she would continue singing "Ahh, Ueno Eki".

In the last number of years, Ueno Station has gotten a facelift of sorts, thanks to an addition of an Atre shopping mall complex, built into the station itself. It's become the place for young people once again.