Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

Mitsuo Sagawa & Yukari Ito -- Oh!! Gentle Life

 

Wow! Japan even does Kleenex commercials with style.

Although the above ad has nothing to do with this song, according to one commenter for "Oh!! Gentle Life", this apparently had been used as a jingle for a brand of tissue. To be honest, I can very easily imagine the catchphrase of such a tissue being the title of this duet number between Mitsuo Sagawa(佐川満男)and Yukari Ito(伊東ゆかり).

What rather solidifies the possibility that the 1970-released "Oh!! Gentle Life" was used for that tissue commercial is that the song doesn't show up in either of the J-Wiki discographies for Sagawa and Ito, so perhaps it was one of those one-off projects that was popular enough to merit a single record being produced and sold. Another point to observe is that when I saw Sagawa's name, I remembered him as that fairly dour fellow in full beard and moustache who sang that sad 1968 ballad, "Ima wa Shiawase kai"(今は幸せかい).

Well, that cover above shows him completely clean-shaven, happy and awfully close to Ms. Ito. Then I re-read my article for "Ima wa Shiawase kai" and re-discovered that he and Ito would get married the following year for five years before filing for divorce. But getting back to the oh-so-cute "Oh!! Gentle Life", the late legendary composer Kyohei Tsutsumi(筒美京平)was responsible for this melody punctuated by a clarinet that sounds so blandly pleasant and domesticated that I'd assumed that it was a theme song for some half-hour TV home comedy on Wednesday nights (I was close enough, though). Meanwhile, Haruo Hayashi's(林春生)lyrics pretty much describes some of that domestic bliss. To think that tissue may have been the tie that bound Sagawa and Ito, if temporarily.

1 comment:

  1. Glad that both are still active. Maybe they are still good friends which would be nice.

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