Hideki Saijo -- Boomerang Street （ブーメランストリート）

Early in my kayo kyoku collecting career, I borrowed an old VHS tape from a friend which contained a Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹） concert. The tall and lanky guy sang all of the fan favourites including this one, "Boomerang Street", his 20th single from March 1977. At the time, I was still getting a hold on trying to understand Japanese lyrics (not too successfully), so a lot of what Hideki was singing was flying over my head.

However, I did get one word into my head loud and clear. Saijo started going into his next number by rotating his long arm over his own head and yelling, "Boomerang, boomerang, boomerang, boomerang....!" Of course, the crowds went wild. "Boomerang Street" was written and composed by a couple of the big songwriters of the era, Yu Aku and Takashi Miki（阿久悠・三木たかし）, and has Saijo singing very confidently about the return of that former love back into his arms just like that Australian toy/weapon. With that dynamic melody and the singer's shouts of "Boomerang", I probably did wonder if this had been a theme song for a tokusatsu series starring a hero by the name of The Boomerang. But it turned out to be a love song of sorts.

"Boomerang Street" managed to get as high as No. 6 on the Oricon weeklies while becoming the 63rd-ranked song of the year. The song also got onto his 5th anniversary album, "Go-nen no Ayumi"（５年の歩み...A Walk of 5 Years） which came out in April of the same year.