Considering that January 30th is the anniversary for the blog, I think this song is pretty appropriate, and it just happened to fall into my lap.
On last week's edition of NHK's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, one of the guests performed this happy tune titled "Arigato no Uta" (The Thank You Song), and I found out that it had been originally performed by none other than Kiyoko "Cheetah" Suizenji（水前寺清子）. Listening to the original single (her 33rd) from May 1970, the song fits Suizenji's onscreen and onstage personality: brassy, cheerful and larger-than-life. Hiroko Ohya（大矢弘子）wrote the lyrics while Gendai Kanou（叶弦大）provided the music.
I was in grade school when the second "Arigato" series aired in Hawaii in the early 1970s. Was one of my main Japanese TV favorites before tokusatsu henshin heroes took over later in the decade. The third series also aired here.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently watching a new drama co-starring Ishizaka Koji, who played the love interest for Suizenji in all iterations of "Arigato." This led me to go search a few topics online and came across a (to me, anyway) wild and wacky fact about "Arigato no Uta" from the J-wiki site: the song was a lyrical rewrite of an old Suizenji song called "Sawayaka no Uta." It's almost identical, save for a few line changes. I'm still tripping out over this.
Anywell... I don't believe we ever got this song on any vinyl release. I was able to get a 8-cm CD single released in the late eighties. I'm sure the song is recognized by Generation X'ers like myself who were saturated by all the J-pop culture here in the islands at the time.
Hello, Saburo. I never got to see the "Arigato" series myself. All of my knowledge about Suizenji was through her music and appearances on music shows.
DeleteI'm quite envious that living in Hawaii, getting all that access to Japanese music wasn't too difficult. Not so much the case here in Toronto back in the day.
Hello! I also watched Arigato in Hawaii 🤙🤙🤙 when I lived there from 1977-1982 on KIKU channel. I remember season 2 and 3. I remember in season 3 they were trying to arrange omiai dates for Kiyoko's character. I enjoyed it also because my mom's cousin owned a shoe store in Nishi-Hachiōji and the reminded me of that neighborhood. So I found your blog as I was recently trying to find info for the Arigato show.
ReplyDeleteI am hafu, or hapa. I also enjoyed the samurai and anime shows on KIKU. My favorites are Yagyuu Conspiracy and Captain Harlock. I spent a couple summers in Japan in '74 and '78, and also New Years '79/80, and 3 weeks in '81. I've been trying to find several japanese movies and tv shows recently and so you may see me comment on some of your other posts.
Hi, SamuraiX47 and thanks for your comments. It must have been great living in Hawaii. I have a friend who used to write for the blog who lives in Honolulu. He's a big fan of the old stuff including the jidai geki and the cop shows of the 1970s and 1980s.
DeletePlease feel free to peruse and comment on any of the articles you've seen. I used to live in Gunma Prefecture between 1989 and 1991 and then did the big stay in the Tokyo area between 1994 and 2011. By the way, nice X-Men outfit! 😊
Thanks! The jacket was a 10$ thrift store find and I glued yellow ribbon to look like the movie costume. My Blogger profile is so old. I'm at @gmail.com now. My sister was in Hiroshima '89 to '99.
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