Kazushi Inamura and Dai Ikkan Dai Hyakusho -- Go-Youjin（御用心）

 

Last month, I discovered the late Kazushi Inamura（稲村一志）and his band Dai Ikkan Dai Hyakusho（第一巻第百章...Volume 1 Chapter 100）through his light and mellow song "Ni-gatsu no Nioi"（二月の匂い...The Smell of February） which doesn't sound or smell anything like February at all. On the contrary, the senses activated here are the ones for July or August.

Inamura was known as a folk singer-songwriter but listening to "Ni-gatsu no Nioi", I'd say that the song lands more in the J-AOR or even City Pop file. However, I found another Inamura song that happily takes things further down the urban contemporary rabbit hole with "Go-Youjin". This one is an even more interesting specimen since according to the HMV website, this particular song had never been put onto any of Inamura's albums, but it did get onto the B-side of his 1982 solo single "Frozen Heart".

This very kakkoii tune reminds me of Boz Scaggs (notably "Jojo") and perhaps TOTO. It's got that slow funky beat and some wonderful keyboard stuff which has me thinking of going down the highway in a car at sunset. As for the meaning of the title, I went to Jisho.org and found the definitions of "care", "caution" and "precaution". But the way that Inamura coyly sings out the title, I feel that perhaps "Take Care" might be the translation as if he were warning the listener that there are wolves everywhere out in the big bad city. Well, it might be a dangerous metropolis out there but dang, I like the soundtrack for it.

"Go-Youjin" has also come out as a coupling song for a posthumous release of "Koi wo Suru nara"（恋をするなら...If You're Gonna Fall in Love） which was released in December 2018, almost 5 years following Inamura's passing in January 2014. "Koi wo Suru nara" was originally a track on the band's 1977 album "Free Flight" and a reissue of that album now has "Go-Youjin" as one of five bonus tracks. It has also appeared on a compilation series known as "Wamono A to Z"（和モノA TO Z...Japanese Things A to Z）, specifically on the December 2020 album titled "Wamono A to Z Presents Blow Up Trio Hen"（和モノA TO Z PRESENTS“BLOW UP"TRIO編...Blow Up Trio Edition）. So, for anyone who has fallen for this song, they now have some options.