Yoshio Tabata/Hachiro Kasuga -- Furusato no Toudai（ふるさとの燈台）

 

Heard this one last weekend on NHK's "Songs of Japanese Spirit" and I later found out that the original version of this song was by the late great Yoshio Tabata（田端義夫）.

I think this particular version up here is a later recording of "Furusato no Toudai" (The Lighthouse of Home), I wasn't able to find the original recording which was released in July 1953. Still, Tabata and his characteristic guitar give an emotional performance about memories of the old hometown and the family by the ocean with the titular lighthouse as the main landmark. It would have been nice to have compared this version which sounds so epic and clean with the original take. My impression is that the original would have sounded more rustic and closer to that home because of the arrangements back then and of course the age of the record itself. 

Tabata had a couple of old colleagues help him out here. Lyricist Minoru Shimizu（清水みのる）, who had written "Shima no Funauta"（島の船唄）for him in 1939, and composer Yoshiji Nagatsu (長津義司), who had come up with the melody for Tabata's "Otone Tsukiyo" (大利根月夜) in that same year, joined forces to help create "Furusato no Toudai".

Some two decades later in 1973, Hachiro Kasuga（春日八郎）covered "Furusato no Toudai" in his own venerable voice for his album "Kasuga Hachiro Enka Hyakusen"（春日八郎 演歌百選...Hachiro Kasuga's Enka Selections）. After listening to this cover and Tabata's version, I found that both were fine renditions but I'll leave the comparisons to any discussion between myself and Noelle Tham, who I believe is the resident expert at KKP on all things Tabata and Kasuga. 😉