Jiro Atsumi -- Yume Oi Zake（夢追い酒）

Enka still never fails to throw me a melody that I realize that I haven't heard in ages, and yet it's still so familiar.

The Top 10 singles of 1979 included Judy Ongg's exotic kayo anthem of "Miserarete"（魅せられて）at No. 2, Sachiko Kobayashi's（小林幸子）enka comeback hit "Omoide Zake"（おもいで酒）and Hideki Saijo's（西城秀樹）immortal cover of "YMCA" under the title of "Young Man"（ヤングマン）at No. 7. However, the No. 1 single of the year was another enka song, "Yume Oi Zake" (Dream-Chasing Drinking) by Jiro Atsumi（渥美二郎）.

Noelle introduced Atsumi onto the blog through his 1983 hit "Busan Ko e Kaere"（釜山港へ帰れ）, a song that I heard quite often in karaoke, both during my university days here and also in the karaoke boxes of Gunma and Tokyo over the decades. But strangely enough, I don't think that I ever heard "Yume Oi Zake" all that often sung by friends or other amateur warblers for some reason.

And yet, that gentle melody by Minoru Endo（遠藤実）struck me as a most comforting enka presence although Eiichi Hoshino's（星野栄一）lyrics relate a fellow at his local watering hole drowning his sorrows in drink due to being dumped. I gather that from the arrangement by Michiyasu Tadano（只野通泰）, it's a most beautiful and Japanese way to suffer from romantic heartbreak, although one's liver may disagree vehemently. As for the meaning of the title, now that the protagonist with his head on the bar is no longer attached, he's free to follow his other dreams despite the possibility that they may seem much smaller now that the biggest one has flown the coop.

Released as Atsumi's 5th single in February 1978, "Yume Oi Zake" started off rather slowly in sales but the singer's dogged promotion throughout the nation over the next several months started to pay off although the single finished in 91st place at the end of the year. But going into 1979, sales really launched to the point that it finally hit its top spot of No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies, and Atsumi even won the Long-Seller Prize at the Japan Record Awards. By the end of 1979, it was the No. 1 single and as such, NHK invited him to sing at the Kohaku Utagassen that year for his lone appearance. Even at the end of 1980, "Yume Oi Zake" ranked in at No. 68. All in all, his most famous song sold approximately 2.8 million records.

As for Atsumi, he was born in 1952 in Tokyo's Adachi Ward and made his debut in 1975, initially under his real name of Toshio Atsumi（渥美敏夫）. Up until 2017, he has released 40 singles but only 1 original album. Noelle did mention that he had suffered from cancer in the late 1980s but he has since recovered fully.