Yujiro Ishihara & Aki Yashiro -- Wakare no Yoake（別れの夜明け）

Of course, the NHK music shows are in reruns and we got to see the final "Songs of Japanese Spirit" for 2019 earlier this afternoon. I heard a lot of good kayo and was hoping to write about some of them, only to find out that I had already written about them. When I've been writing articles on the blog for over 8 years, some of them will eventually slip my mind. That included Yujiro Ishihara's（石原裕次郎）"Kita no Tabibito"（北の旅人）; wrote that all the way back in 2014.

However, I really wanted to get The Tough Guy back up and running on the blog once more, so I went to a source on J-Wiki. There's a list there which originated from the August 2005 issue of "Kamzine" magazine and it gives the Top 20 Ishihara singles in terms of sales. No. 16 happens to be a duet between him and enka singer Aki Yashiro（八代亜紀）called "Wakare no Yoake" (Parting at Daybreak) from 1974.

Once again, this is one of those kayo that to me kinda straddles the line between enka and Mood Kayo as Ishihara and Yashiro lovingly exchange those final words of tender love before making that necessary separation. Something about that arrangement and the fact that it's Ishihara singing has me thinking the quintessential Mood Kayo scenery of a lonely guy in a bar, and yet, the tenderness of the bare melody by Yukihiko Ito（伊藤雪彦）reminds me more of an enka ballad. Mitsuo Ikeda（池田充男）provided the bittersweet words. I don't know how "Wakare no Yoake" did on Oricon but it did sell 620,000 records, around the same amount as his earlier hit as a much younger man "Arashi wo Yobu Otoko"（嵐を呼ぶ男）from 1956.

(empty karaoke version)