Masa Takagi -- Hodoukyou（歩道橋）

 

I've provided a few Masa Takagi（高木麻早）songs since I first wrote about this singer-songwriter back in May 2016, and for at least one of them, I've mentioned how she has been through the kayo spectrum in terms of what she has sung. There is her 1973 debut single "Hitoribocchi no Heya" (ひとりぼっちの部屋) which has that gentle country feeling while a decade later in 1983, she sang some J-AOR through "Anata ni Say Goodbye" (あなたにSay Goodbye).

Well, almost right down the middle of that time period, there was her September 1977 6th studio album "Dream On" and one of the tracks is "Hodoukyou" (Pedestrian Bridge), and perhaps like that bridge spanning over a main thoroughfare of Tokyo, this particular song seems to be stretching between genres. Written and composed by Tomoko Fueki（笛木智子）, I've listened to "Hodoukyou" a few times now and I've picked up a mélange of genres: some swinging folk, City Pop through that synthesizer "Haze" effect and the serious piano rumbles, New Music and just plain kayo.

Speaking of that serious piano, the arrangement seems to be reflecting some of those lyrics of stormy seas in a relationship that may be on the verge of breaking apart, and the jagged rocks on the shoreline are represented by perhaps the titular bridge. I gather that along with airports and the Tsugaru Strait, bridges have also been the settings for key points in romances...their beginnings and their endings. Methinks that with "Hodoukyou", it's the latter.