Hibari Misora -- Hibari no Madorosu-san（ひばりのマドロスさん）

Tonight's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）reminded me that today is the birthday of the Queen of Kayo Kyoku, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）. I think this may be the very first time that I have ever written a song on the blog about Misora that actually landed on her birthday. She would have been 81 years old today.

Well, let's go with a good one. I looked up her article on J-Wiki and found the song that she performed on her first NHK Kohaku Utagassen appearance in 1954 which was the 5th annual show. "Hibari no Madorosu-san" (Hibari's Sailor) was a song released in May of that year, and according to the J-Wiki article, this particular number itself is a special one in that it has been treated as the very first of the "madorosu" kayo (didn't know that there was such a sub-genre). Apparently, Misora would release some more of those sailor-themed tunes along with other singers.

Lyricist Miyuki Ishimoto（石本美由起）and composer Gento Uehara（上原げんと）created "Hibari no Madorosu-san" as a fairly gentle but cheerful song about Misora admiring her favourite sailor on the ship. Considering that the singer was born in the port city of Yokohama, the song was a good fit for her.

According to Nippon Columbia, the recording company responsible for the song, as of 1998, "Hibari no Madorosu-san" sold around 900,000 records. Misora's final appearance on the Kohaku was in 1979 in a special guest capacity, and she performed that very song as the first in a medley. As for the expression madorosu, it originated from the Dutch or Flemish word matroos.