As promised when I wrote up on his lone solo album "Secret Love" back on Thursday January 21st a few days ago, I'm bringing you here a Creator article on the works of very prolific arranger Mitsuo Hagita. I actually saw what he looked like for the first time on a variety show not too long ago and I also found this cute ad above featuring him and singer Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）for some live event that he was to appear in.
But man, it was difficult narrowing down the examples of what he has arranged for this article since he's been behind so many famous kayo over the years. And even with myself, I had to react "Hagita arranged THIS?!" a number of times because until recently I had the temerity to not include the names of arrangers in either the articles or the Labels, once thinking that the composer and the lyricist were enough. Not anymore, especially since he's come in at No. 3 as one of the Oricon Top 5 Most Commercially Successful Arrangers. So I'm doing a lot of catch-up on articles these days to include his name.
In terms of background for Hagita, according to a book on his life via J-Wiki, he was born in Fukushima Prefecture in 1946 but moved to Saitama Prefecture and their parents had a house in Tokyo. His family ran an electronics parts business and though his father wasn't into music, his mother played the koto and his older brother created his own phonograph to which young Mitsuo listened to Beethoven and Mozart. There was also a piano in the home on which his sister practiced but he himself didn't touch the instrument in his younger years.
However on entering junior high school, Hagita entered the brass band club in which he was in charge of percussion but then moved onto tuba. During university, he joined the classical guitar club. Having all these musical influences during his formative years had him decide that music was his future, and at the age of 22, he entered a songwriting contest sponsored by a music journal in which he won top prize. Furthering his education, he wanted to get involved with orchestras so at 24, he began studying composition and arrangement at the Yamaha Music Foundation.
The debut of his arranging career started with this 1973 song with the country swing lilt:
Masa Takagi -- Hitoribocchi no Heya (ひとりぼっちの部屋)
Now, as I hinted earlier, it was hard to stuff the Hagita hits in here since for one thing, my Labels won't allow any more than 20 items. But I will try my best. The thing is that even though with his "Secret Love" album, he was dabbling into funk and jazz, it looks like the arranger took on pretty much everything excluding enka and Mood Kayo. His J-Wiki article listed his genres as aidoru, New Music and pop.
For example, Hagita arranged a lot of the aidoru in the 1970s and 1980s including Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, Hiromi Ohta, Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹） and Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）each with their own different sounds. He could do wistful and snarly.
(1975) Hiromi Ohta -- Momen no Handkerchief (木綿のハンカチーフ）
(1977) Hideki Saijo -- Boomerang Street （ブーメランストリート）
(1977) Momoe Yamaguchi -- Imitation Gold （イミテイション・ゴールド）
(1979) Hiromi Go -- My Lady （マイレディー）
In 1975, Hagita won for Best Arrangement at the Japan Record Awards for Akira Fuse's（布施明） "Cyclamen no Kaori" （シクラメンのかほり）.
Into the 1980s, he also handled some City Pop including a Junko Ohashi（大橋純子）tune that has had fans from all over the world remember a certain series of numbers.
(1981) Junko Ohashi -- Telephone Number
Hagita also was in charge of arranging a song that not only adorned an 80s anime but has since become a heartwarming classic for graduations.
(1983) H2O -- Omoide ga Ippai （思い出がいっぱい）
(1985) Akiko Kobayashi -- Koi ni Ochite (恋におちて）
Hagita may have enjoyed his funk and stuff but as the above two show, he could also help shape some of the marshmallow-soft ballads. But as I said, there are so many of his works even on this blog that I would just scroll through his KKP file. However, you can also check out the list at J-Wiki.
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