Yesterday, I found out that veteran actor, emcee and tarento Tadao Takashima（高島忠夫）had passed away in the last few days at the age of 88. He was a very familiar face on Japanese TV, and my first experience of seeing him was as the congenial host of Fuji-TV's "Golden Youga Gekijo"（ゴールデン洋画劇場...Golden Western Movie Theatre）, one of the regular movie programs of the week showing off Hollywood flicks.
Basically, his whole family was on television, it seems. For nearly 30 years, Takashima and his wife, actress Hanayo Sumi（寿美花代）, hosted a cooking show on NTV called "Gochisousama"（ごちそうさま...Thank You for the Meal）. Also, their two sons, Masanobu and Masahiro（高嶋政伸・高嶋政宏）, have also become very famous actors.
As I've mentioned in past articles, it used to be the usual thing for anyone who entered the big time in the geinokai, no matter which particular area, to get some songs recorded. Takashima released quite a plethora of them between 1954 and 1960 with his final one in that period being "Banana no Uta" (The Banana Song) released in May 1960.
This was a duet with fellow actress Yukiji Asaoka（朝丘雪路）that became the theme song for the movie "Banana"（バナナ）for which I'm assuming that both appeared in. Written by Shuntaro Tanikawa（谷川俊太郎）and composed by Toshiro Mayuzumi（黛敏郎）, it's a cute little Latin piece which has me wondering if there were some inspiration from songs by folks such as Perry Como and Harry Belafonte. Mind you, near the end, the back-and-forth male and female choruses sounded somewhat kabuki-ish.
In any case, another television legend has left the spotlight. All my condolences to the Takashima family.
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