Hiroshi Uchiyamada & Cool Five -- Minato no Wasuregusa（港の忘れ草）

 

Stay classy, Kiyoshi Maekawa（前川清）and Cool Five. Yes, I know that the official name is Hiroshi Uchiyamada & Cool Five（内山田洋とクール・ファイブ）, but Maekawa is the lead vocalist here. Anyways, they do look spiffy in their formal wear as they should be a premier Mood Kayo group.

Over here in the thumbnail for the above video, they look more like intrepid police officers from Japanese television. They still look plenty shibui. The setting of the harbour is fine, though, since the song for this article is their 33rd December 1977 single "Minato no Wasuregusa". Now, a little more information on that last word of the title since it does describe two different examples of flora. Wasuregusa can mean daylilies or tobacco, according to Jisho.org. 

Y'know, I'd probably go with the latter since when it comes to Mood Kayo, the singers and the characters do tend to pop out the cigarettes for that pensive smoke which would mean that "Minato no Wasuregusa" can be Cigarettes of the Harbour. I was also thinking about daylilies as well since lilies have been used to signify death, but according to Wikipedia, daylilies aren't really lilies.

Even for vocalist Maekawa who can wear plenty of heart on his sleeve, "Minato no Wasuregusa" is particularly drenched in the lacrymal fluid as he sings about a fellow who is absolutely devastated over the pending death of a romance. In fact, he uses the analogy of that harbour not as safe shelter but as a dark corner to curl up in a fetal position for the foreseeable future.

Written by Takao Yamada（山田孝雄）and composed by Keisuke Hama（浜圭介）with arrangement by Kei Wakakusa（若草恵）, I'm not sure whether the lyricist meant to do so but when Mae-Kiyo wrenches out those desperate words of "kurai, kurai no minato no you ni..."（暗い、暗いの港のように...like the dark, dark harbour）, I also think that perhaps there is some clever interlingual homonymic play between those first two words and "cry, cry". I would like to raise my Roget's Thesaurus in tribute. Anyways, "Minato no Wasuregusa" got as high as No. 76 on Oricon.