Takeshi Kitayama -- Ame no Uramachi（雨の裏町）

 

Hopefully, the subject matter of this enka ballad wasn't reflective of Takeshi Kitayama's（北山たけし）real life since the lyrics deal with a man grappling over the loss of his significant other due to possible neglect and taking her for granted.

Especially when Kitayama's father-in-law just happens to be enka legend Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）himself, I can only gather that marital bliss is paramount. Anyways, his "Ame no Uramachi" (Rainy Back Alleys) is a single that was released back in September 2012, and the protagonist in this song is spending his rainy days and nights probably in the older section of town filled with guilt and self-flagellation and perhaps even an excess of alcohol. Indeed, as the title hints, when it rain it pours.⛆⛆☂ The music is appropriately melancholy with what sounds like a forlorn clarinet and a synthesized version of an accordion.

I've already written a fair bit about Kitayama over the years and often was the case when Kitajima, under his pen name of Joji Hara（原譲二）, would create singles such as "Tsugaru Otoko Bushi"（津軽おとこ節）and "Byakuya no Ohkami"（白夜の狼）for his son-in-law. However in the case of "Ame no Uramachi", it was lyricist Toshiya Niitani（仁井谷俊也）and composer Tetsuya Gen（弦哲也）who created the song which peaked at No. 16 on Oricon.

The video below has a shortened version of "Ame no Uramachi" with Kitayama himself in the video.