Ayumi Ishida -- Otokotachi（おとこたち）

 

The closest that I ever got to becoming a regular in a refined establishment in Tokyo was the tea room just around the corner from one of my schools. I got my usual tea and tuna sandwiches (yes, I know the matching was a bit weird but it worked for me) there and met up with a few students after class. I never got the opportunity to become a jouren（常連）at a traditional neighbourhood bar with an immaculately dressed proprietress serving me tokkuri of sake. For one thing, I was never a big drinker and for another, I would never become a big spender on libations for the social aspect. 

(Unfortunately the video has been taken down
but you can take a look at an image of the scene.)

At 4:24 in the above video, you can see enka singer Aki Yashiro（八代亜紀）acting the role of the proprietress in such a bar serving the late actor Bunta Sugawara（菅原文太）through a retrospective special of "Enka no Hanamichi"（演歌の花道）, the longtime kayo program. From the comments for the video and the reaction in the video itself, it sounds like Sugawara's appearances on anything other than a movie, a TV drama or the occasional commercial were quite the rare thing. I could never imagine being in Sugawara's place so watching these scenes play out on TV was the nearest experience.

Excerpt on D Music

Another celebrity that I could see (and probably did see on television) as an owner of that local Japanese pub is singer/actress Ayumi Ishida（いしだあゆみ）. She always struck me as elegant and cordial with that layer of steel under her which would be perfect for the job description. And that was just from seeing that picture above which was the cover for her 1981 album "Ayumi Ishida".

I found a track from that very album called "Otokotachi" (Men). Nope, the song isn't enka or Mood Kayo at all, although folks could have made that assumption from seeing the cover. Instead, it's a relaxed and sultry City Pop number that has Ishida singing flirtatiously about men coming to see her; she could be that nomiya owner, a club hostess or a lady with a nice apartment. The rhythm hints at that feeling-good phase of drinking a few slugs of something...Sapporo, Hakkaisan or Old Parr...feel free to name your poison.

There was no information about the source of "Otokotachi" at YouTube, so I checked her singles list on her J-Wiki article but there was nothing there so I surmised that it was an album track. From the City Pop feeling of the song, I then wondered if it were a track from Ishida's collaboration with Tin Pan Alley "Our Connection"（アワー・コネクション）back in 1977, but finding the website with the description of that album showed nothing of "Otokotachi". The only other choice was to go forward in time and the only other album that she made following "Our Connection" was that 1981 self-titled release; in fact, it is her final studio album thus far according to J-Wiki. Sure enough, the track was there according to this page from Tower Records.

Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）was responsible for the words while Ken Sato（佐藤健）took care of the music. You may want to have "Otokotachi" for your next City Pop-related pub crawl. Just make sure you have the yen.