Less than an hour ago, I saw the TV Asahi variety show "Sekai no Mura de Hakken! Konna Tokoro ni Nihonjin"（世界の村で発見!こんなところに日本人...Discovered in the World's Villages! A Japanese in This Sort of Place） in which a celebrity is dispatched to some place on the planet that isn't in Japan to search for a Japanese national who's living there and find out the details. Well, in the episode that I saw tonight (originally televised on March 26th 2019), it was Yoshi who was sent out to Ethiopia to search for a woman living and helping out in a small village, probably under the aegis of JICA (Japan International Cooperation Society). Unfortunately, I couldn't find the video on YouTube but have put in another video of him in a similar NHK show.
Now, even though I think that most of a trip on this show is planned right down to the letter, Yoshi still managed to pull some rabbits out of his hat such as bringing the fixins to make Japanese chicken curry for the lucky young lady, Chihiro Saga, because he was worried that she hadn't eaten some good ol' home cooking for many months. But even before that, when he was on that 7-hour bus ride to the village, he not only sang one of his hits but also a song that he had created years before which had something to do with Ethiopia (including incorporating some of the native language into the lyrics), possibly due to his friendship with the then-Ethiopian ambassador to Japan. Then at a stopover, he even treated everyone on the bus to lunch at the restaurant! By the end of the trip, he was pretty much good buddies with everybody. And of course, at the end of the bus ride and at the end of his time with Chihiro (I think that he saw her as a surrogate daughter), he was tearing up something awful. The man's a good guy!
Researching things, I discovered that this was Yoshi's first single under his second stage name. He was born as Yoshihito Kamata（鎌田善人）in Aomori Prefecture, and when he first started off as an aidoru in the early 1970s under his first stage name Eiji Yamaoka（山岡英二）, he didn't go too far.
Well, according to the man himself, when he was later making a living by singing around the various nomiya with his guitar, the singer created this "Ore wa Zettai! Presley" and a staffer at a record company just happened to hear it (perhaps while drinking at one such establishment). With the staffer tickled pink by the comical sense about a country bumpkin proudly proclaiming himself as the local Elvis in the local dialect, one thing led to another, and the song got recorded under the new name of Ikuzo Yoshi (which apparently was decided upon by record company staff without the singer's input).
Nope, it wasn't enka. It was just Yoshi, a lone jangly guitar, a Chinese temple block and a lot of jolly brio. And the song peaked at No. 25 on Oricon after its release in November 1977. The ironic thing was that the singer hadn't known anything of Elvis Presley's discography before he made "Presley", but on hearing of the original King of Rock n' Roll's death earlier that year in August, Yoshi simply opted to create a song with his name in the title.
"Ore wa Zettai! Presley" is the second song that I've written about based on an episode from "Sekai no Mura de Hakken! Konna Tokoro ni Nihonjin". About a month ago, I also noted a song by Yuko Asano（浅野ゆう子）due to her appearance on the program. Perhaps I could have continued to lean on the show like I have for "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, etc., but alas as I mentioned in the Asano article, the program finished its run earlier this year.
Thank you💐
ReplyDeleteHello there. You're welcome. You are not Mr. Yoshi, are you?:)
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