Saburo Kitajima -- Bungacha Bushi （ブンガチャ節）

I was watching "Kayo Concert" the other night and it was down to a reduced guest list: Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）, Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）and Yoshimi Tendo（天童よしみ）. The theme for the evening was the debut singles for the four singers along with their more recent numbers.

Saburo Kitajima may have retired from the Kohaku Utagassen (the environmentalists must have celebrated knowing that there will no longer be trees sacrificed for all that confetti), but he was still finishing up the show on Tuesday. As requested, he performed his debut single from 1962, "Bungacha Bushi" (Bungacha Melody), but before he did, he gave a little background on the release of the song way back when. I couldn't quite get all of what he said but I did make out the part where he said that after the song was broadcast on TV 3 times, it was summarily banned from further televised performances. He didn't go into the reason behind its banishment.

Well, when I looked up his J-Wiki entry, I went to the paragraphs surrounding his debut and found that reason. First off, going back to the performance, Sabu-chan's "Bungacha Bushi" was written by Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）, and he included a fair bit of onomatopoeia such as "kyu, kyu, kyu..." and the titular "bungacha-cha, bungacha-cha...". Apparently, the problem was there. The song was about one man going nuts for that young woman, and from that point, the powers-that-be thought that the "kyu, kyu, kyu..." was too reminiscent of bed springs getting a little too much exercise one night. Thus, one week of TV exposure later....it was gone. Kitajima didn't speak about when it was alright to perform the song on the telly again, but I certainly hope Tuesday's performance wasn't the first time.

As it was, I frankly thought all that onomatopoeia was just that romantic heart going "ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump...". And Toru Funamura's（船村徹）lightly bouncy (maybe I shouldn't be using "bouncy") music is a pretty happy-go-lucky thing about an innocent lad skipping down the road, a bit buoyant because of his head-over-heels feelings. Listening to the original song, I thought that "Bungacha Bushi" wasn't a purely enka song with that laddish chorus in the back and the comical horns, but there was enough of an enka-like formality (for lack of a better word) in the arrangements that perhaps it makes for a nice little hybrid.

Kitajima was around 26 years old in 1962, so I'm not how sure he was feeling when he found out that the song he was starting out his career with was given the hook from the airwaves (maybe it was given a reprieve on radio).  But he didn't need to worry for long. His second single, "Namida Bune"（なみだ船...Ship of Tears）, which came out in June of that year and was created by the same duo for "Bungacha Bushi", became a million-seller.