Shigeko Orii -- Yoru ga Waratteiru（夜がわらっている）

I mentioned in a previous article that I had caught a 90-minute kayo program last Saturday afternoon. Well, one of the other tunes that I was happy to hear for the first time was "Yoru ga Waretteiru" (The Night is Laughing) and on that show, it was performed by enka singer Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）.

Originally recorded in 1958 by the late Shigeko Orii（織井茂子）, "Yoru ga Waretteiru" was written by Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）and composed by Toru Funamura（船村徹）as a delicate and mournful enka ballad about a romance gone sour. The woman in the lyrics is now trying to drown her sorrows in drink at some watering hole although she admits that she hates the booze but needs it to get rid of the pain.

For Orii, this was another hit song alongside her even bigger blockbuster "Kimi no Na wa"（君の名は）from 1953. "Yoru ga Waretteiru" sold around 900,000 records and it earned the singer her 3rd invitation to the Kohaku Utagassen at the Shinjuku Koma Theatre at the end of 1958. Speaking of Ichikawa, though, here she is (though on a different program) singing the song. It seems that these later performances have taken on an even more enka feeling than the original which kinda mixes the enka and kayo aspects.