Ichiro Fujiyama -- Nagasaki no Kane（長崎の鐘）

Currently with the adapted biography of composer Yuuji Koseki（古関裕而）being televised as the NHK morning serial drama "Yell"（エール）, the network has also been providing 5-minute vignettes of some of Koseki's work. The themes for the Hanshin Tigers baseball team, "Rokko Oroshi"（六甲おろし）and everyone's favourite heroic moth, "Mothra", have already been given their due in the vignettes.

Another song that has been featured is the elegiac "Nagasaki no Kane", inspired by the January 1949 Takashi Nagai（永井隆）book of the same name with the translation of "The Bells of Nagasaki", which referred to the bells of Urakami Cathedral in Nagasaki. The song itself was released as a single later in July with Koseki providing the melody while Hachiro Sato（サトウハチロー）was behind the lyrics.

Veteran kayo singer Ichiro Fujiyama（藤山一郎）was the first to record "Nagasaki no Kane", and in the vignette, singer and TV personality Akihiro Miwa（美輪明宏）noted that the song was perhaps one of the first kayo to feature a combination of major and minor chords to reflect both sorrow and hope with the additional help of a women's chorus. That was a pretty noteworthy point Miwa made since I've often heard Japanese pop songs from way back that had that similar pattern of sad-and-happy melodies.

According to the J-Wiki article on the song, "Nagasaki no Kane" never made any direct reference to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki itself but referred to all those who suffered because of the war. Lyricist Sato himself had lost a brother in the Hiroshima bombing.

It would be years before I realized how much of an association Fujiyama had with NHK's Kohaku Utagassen because of his traditional role as the orchestra conductor when it was time to wrap the show up with the annual playing of "Hotaru no Hikari"（蛍の光）. I've also now learned that Fujiyama was one of the performers at the very first edition of the Kohaku on NHK Radio back on January 3rd 1951 in which he sang "Nagasaki no Kane". He would perform the song again on the 1964, 1973 and 1979 editions.