Takao Horiuchi -- Kotoba ni Naranai Okuri Mono （言葉にならない贈り物）

I have to say that the fellow above just gives a lovely rendition with his guitar and voice. Mind you, he is not Takao Horiuchi（堀内孝雄）, the original singer of "Kotoba ni Naranai Okuri Mono"(A Present That Can't Be Put Into Words), but he acquits himself well here. Usually I would try my darndest to find the original song and put it up in the blog, but since the Horiuchi original is so wonderful (if unavailable on the Net) and this fellow does such a great job, I thought I just had to get it up there in some form.

The songs that are very precious to me are often the ones that I don't have copies for on my shelves or in my hard drive or on the Net but sometimes exist in very rough form somewhere else. In this case, my only proof that "Kotoba ni Naranai Okuri Mono" exists in my consciousness is through one of my first tapings of "Sounds of Japan" in 1982. I have a very scratchy episode in there which includes Horiuchi's beautiful performance of this song which starts with this fragile-sounding piano descending gingerly down the keys. And then Horiuchi comes in softly and modestly with this musical present to his love. The intimate melody by him and heartfelt lyrics by his professional partner, Shinji Tanimura（谷村新司） from their duo, Alice（アリス）, make this a classic to me, and for those musically inclined Japanese boyfriends ready to pop the question.....well, you got your song right here.

Horiuchi's official debut single, the jaunty "Kimi no Hitomi wa Ichi-man Boruto" （君のひとみは１００００ボルト）, didn't come out for another 3 years, but his first album which was also titled "Kotoba ni Naranai Okuri Mono" was released in October 1975. That title track fades in and out and scratches a lot on that old Canadian Tire tape, but I can still hear the various genres melding in the song: the gentle lull of folk but with a breezy saxophone during the bridge that rather gives the song a City Pop feeling of being on the roof of an old brownstone apartment in New York. The whole song has this ethereal and grounded feeling that is sung in Japanese and yet doesn't quite sound like a Japanese pop song of its time.

If, somehow, you can find a copy of this album, then grab it just for the title track alone. Otherwise, if you are at a Horiuchi concert and he is willing to take requests, by all means, ask for this one.