Junichi Inagaki -- Toki no Kishibe（時の岸辺）

 

Allow me to provide a touch of melancholy and bittersweet for your Monday evening, and there are very few better to express that in Japanese pop than Junichi Inagaki（稲垣潤一）.

In October 1992, Inagaki released what would probably be his most famous song to the public at large and one of the most popular J-Xmas tunes ever made, "Christmas Carol no Koro ni wa"（クリスマスキャロルの頃には）. Well, believe it or not, despite the monstrous popularity of that song, there was a coupling song recorded onto that CD single.

Titled "Toki no Kishibe" (Shores of Time), Inagaki gives his familiar crooning delivery to a story of moving on from a romantic relationship that has most definitely gone beyond the period of that sentence. Thanks to those keyboards, there is plenty of sadness but perhaps there is also some hope expressed in the refrain. Either now-ex-partner has probably sniffed away their final healing tears and have decided to take those strides into a better future.

Written by Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and composed by Masayuki Kishi（岸正之）, the coupling song has been given the added information of it being a "New Version", so I wondered what the original was like and where it came from.

Well, I didn't have to go too far back along those shores of time. "Toki no Kishibe" was also a track on Inagaki's 8th original album "EDGE OF TIME" from April 1988. There are fewer synths involved here and a piano to start things off and the overall arrangement reminds me a tad of Carly Simon's "Nobody Does It Better" from the 1970s. Both versions have that wonderful but brief electric guitar solo near the end.

"EDGE OF TIME" hit No. 1 on Oricon and became the 37th-ranked album for 1988.