Kotaro Satomi -- Hohoemi wo Suteru Toki（微笑みをすてる時）

 

Whenever I think of the actor Kotaro Satomi（里見浩太朗）, I automatically think of the long-running "Mito Komon"（水戸黄門）, the jidaigeki featuring a virtuous Vice Shogun and his special vagabond team traveling throughout Japan to right any wrongs. However, Satomi has apparently starred in other jidaigeki playing similarly heroic warriors. You might say that he's the historical equivalent of Yujiro Ishihara's（石原裕次郎）cop characters in the 1970s.

One such show that I found is "Ōedo Sōsamō"（大江戸捜査網）that ran from 1970 to 1992 and had the English titles of either "Oedo Dragnet" or "Ōedo Untouchables", so there's no denying that the show had some love and respect for Joe Friday and Eliot Ness in terms of their granite-jawed relentless pursuit of justice. According to the Wikipedia article on "Ōedo Sōsamō", the team here consisted of ninja acting as skilled secret agents working under a samurai who supposedly had a direct line to the Shogun himself, and the head agent happened to be played by the stalwart Satomi.

As was the case with the famous theme for "Mito Komon", "Aa, Jinsei ni Namida ari" (ああ人生に涙あり）, Satomi also lent his baritone voice to the ending theme song for "Ōedo Sōsamō" which was "Hohoemi wo Suteru Toki" (When You Smile). I kinda found the title rather unusual for a historical drama with its regular katana slashes and shuriken flashes, but attempting to parse the lyrics by Shinichi Ishihara（石原信一）, the story of the song may be about treasuring those exchanges of pleasantries since they may be one's last, so perhaps leader Satomi may be warning one of his new young charges about the job.

Koji Ryuzaki's（竜崎孝路）melody isn't quite as strident as the "Mito Komon" theme but it's also very comforting to hear, which might strike some as being a rather strange way to describe a song for a jidaigeki. I'd say that it's even Mood Kayo in aspects because of Satomi's velvet vocals and an arrangement by Mitsuru Kotani（小谷充）which sparks of nights in an Akasaka bar. Quite an interesting contrast between theme and content.