Hiroshi Itsuki -- Tsuioku（追憶）

Yeah, dug this one up from the bowels of my cabinet underneath a bunch of Marvel comics and Myojo magazines. It's a programme from Hiroshi Itsuki's（五木ひろし）one-night concert in Toronto at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre back in June 1987. My parents and their friends were all looking forward to that one especially since performances by Japanese singers of any stripe, let alone enka, were very few and far between in Canada's largest city. It was probably due to some major lobbying and the fact that Itsuki had done a concert in New York City the previous night that the opportunity was grabbed for a one-off in this part of the Great White North.

As you can see inside the programme, Itsuki did the hits and I looked at some awe at the fellow who was holding the baton that night, composer and arranger Katsuhisa Hattori（服部克久）whose material I've become rather fond of over the past number of years. That was one swanky night, I figure.

Looking at the play list for Itsuki that night, I saw that Noelle and I had already written about a majority of his songs already here on "Kayo Kyoku Plus". However, there is one in the programme that I had yet to tackle, and that was "Tsuioku" (Recollections), the veteran singer's 67th single released just a few months before (April) his Toronto concert.

I've probably heard a ton of Itsuki's songs as the decades have passed and so this one was familiar to my ears, but I didn't remember the title and so I'd never gotten the opportunity to write about it until now. And man, "Tsuioku" is right up the vet's alley. I think the song features one of the largest amounts of heartrending kobushi that I've heard in one of his singles, and it seems as if the orchestra is basically mandatory when performing this ode to the tender aftermath of a romance.

As one commenter on YouTube put it, "Tsuioku" isn't a hard-right enka. I myself would put it in that intriguing category of European enka that has songs like Teresa Teng's（テレサテン）classic "Tsugunai"（つぐない）. I was even wondering if this could be classed as a Mood Kayo, but then I thought that there wasn't really that feeling of Akasaka bars or tours of the various regional cities. Love is often involved in Mood Kayo, but I think "Tsuioku" just takes the emotion out of the Japanese cities and has it float above a major metropolis in Europe such as Berlin or Rome.

In any case, it was a big hit for Itsuki and has the distinction of having its top Oricon weekly ranking actually score lower than its yearly one. Apparently, it peaked at No. 12 in the former ranking while ending up as the 9th-ranked single for 1987. Written by legendary lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composed by Takashi Miki（三木たかし）, it earned Itsuki a Gold Prize at the Japanese Record Awards that year and also a position as the final singer at the 1987 Kohaku Utagassen on NHK.

At the time that Itsuki came to T.O., I hadn't been so much for enka at the time although I heard enough of it at our old karaoke haunt of Kuri in Yorkville. If I had, I most likely I would have joined my parents at that memorable concert, but you know what they say about lost opportunities. C'est la vie!