Do Do -- Miyakowasure（都忘れ）/Kyou mo Higurete（今日も日暮れて）

I've learned something when it comes to jidai geki（時代劇）or those historical dramas. After watching my first example of the Japanese television staple, "Mito Komon"（水戸黄門）, I had assumed that all of those programs were adorned by militaristic marches representing samurai warriors off to battle. However, from doing this blog over the past 9 years, I've discovered that the dramatic march form of jidai geki theme doesn't need to be used all of the time. Only recently I've found out through veteran actor Kotaro Satomi's（里見浩太朗）rendition of one of the theme songs for his own jidai geki, "Ōedo Sōsamō"（大江戸捜査網）, that such a song can be as congenial as a Mood Kayo based in some modern watering hole.

Though I couldn't find any evidence of this program on YouTube, there was a jidai geki with the very long title of "Jitte Muyo Kyuuchoubori Jikencho"（十手無用 九丁堀事件帖）that ran from for six months between October 1975 to the end of March 1976 on NTV. Unfortunately, I couldn't come up with a proper translation of the title but the synopsis of the show describes a team of Edo Era specialists which takes on the cases that the local magistrate can't solve. Perhaps it's the Japanese historical equivalent of "Criminal Minds"?

Anyways, to get back to the theme song, it's "Miyakowasure" by the female folk/New Music duo Do Do（ドド）which is pronounced like the extinct bird. From the pronunciation and the kanji, I had assumed that it meant something like "forgetting the capital" as in perhaps the main character has had to flee Kyoto or Edo due to some malfeasance that he's been unjustly accused of. In actual fact, though, miyakowasure is known to botanists as a species of Miyamayomena, a genus of East Asian flowering plants, according to Wikipedia. And indeed, there's something very calm and folksy with the song "Miyakowasure" as if the motley team within "Jitte Muyo Kyuuchoubori Jikencho" is simply taking a stroll along one of the many paths in the Kanto region, instead of chopping up the bad guys like firewood.

"Miyakowasure" is also the 3rd and final single by Do Do which came out in the same year as the show, and it was written by Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）and composed by Takeo Watanabe（渡辺岳夫）who also scored the series. Folk veteran Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）arranged the song, too.

In contrast with "Miyakowasure", the B-side "Kyou mo Higurete" (Today's So Short) is a fair bit bouncier in tempo. Created by the same trio behind the A-side, "Kyou mo Higurete" is interesting in that I hear a couple of songs that could have inspired the melody and arrangement. Not sure if that is a steel pedal guitar being utilized in there, but it seems to sound like the rhythm line from Ben E. King's "Spanish Harlem". Meanwhile, there is a passage between verses that the ladies softly scat out that reminds me of one part of Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite".

Do Do, which consisted of Yuko Shibuya（渋谷祐子）and Masako Kuriaki（栗秋雅子）only released those three singles. But then, Shibuya went solo from 1977 onwards and like a number of her folk singing contemporaries in those days, she decided to go downtown with her music and embraced her inner City Pop.