Hiroyuki Sanada -- Sabaku no Machi ni（砂漠の都会に）

 

I've just watched the first episode of NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）for 2022 and I discovered that lyricist Makoto Kitajo（喜多條忠）had passed away from cancer on November 22nd last year at the age of 74. Beginning his career in 1973, he's had a long list of songs right up to 2021 whose words he provided to many acts including the lyrics for the folk classic "Kandagawa"（神田川）as recorded by the band Kaguyahime（かぐや姫）in which Kitajo was a member.

Another song that he created didn't become anywhere as famous as "Kandagawa" but it's quite the soothing ballad sung by actor/singer Hiroyuki Sanada（真田広之）who's become rather famous in Hollywood over the past couple of decades. Sanada's 6th single was "Sabaku no Machi ni" (In A Desert Town) from March 1982. May I say that was quite the head of hair that Henry was sporting back then; in a dictionary under the term "blow-dry", that single cover would be the photo.

Composed by folk singer Takuro Yoshida（吉田拓郎）as this appropriately folksy lone-wolf-on-a-journey song, Kitajo's lyrics have that lone wolf singing about the devastated young lady she's left behind, bereft of her paramour in that small desert town. And yet, I think that it's really the lone wolf who's suffering while he rationalizes his feelings by throwing them on her.

However, before anyone thinks that Sanada was singing about love and life in the Old West, "Sabaku no Machi ni" was actually as the ending theme for a jidaigeki epic on Fuji-TV called "Kage no Gundan III"（影の軍団III...Shadow Warriors III）. So it wasn't exactly guns being drawn here but katana and shuriken, and I gather that from the ending credits above, the show did also have its fair share of humour. If I'm not mistaken, Sanada is the third character to show up in the credits.

The full name for the entire early 1980s TV franchise was "Hattori Hanzo ~ Kage no Gundan"（服部半蔵～影の軍団）with the late great Sonny Chiba（千葉真一）as the star who played different ninja in each of the four seasons of the TV franchise including different generations of the legendary Hanzo Hattori.

I guess Chiba and Hattori were not done with each other even into the 2000s. The more you know, eh?