Koutarou Yamamoto and Weekend -- Misaki Meguri（岬めぐり）

 

This very brief video of the famous Cape Erimo in Hokkaido by Kenji Hishiki shows off the epic and beautiful combination of land, ocean and sky in one shot. It's no wonder that in Japan, probably a lot of kayo had been created in tribute to this particular cape and other such natural structures all over the nation over the decades.

I managed to find another song devoted to all of the capes through "Misaki Meguri" (A Tour of the Capes), the debut single of Koutarou Yamamoto and Weekend（山本コウタローとウィークエンド）from June 1974. A refreshing and jaunty folk song written by Michio Yamagami（山上路夫）and composed by Yamamoto（山本厚太郎）himself, the arrangement by Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）reminds me a little of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" (1971) by the late John Denver. Reaching No. 5 on Oricon and ending up as the 17th-ranked single of the year, "Misaki Meguri" also became the band's biggest hit, selling around 400,000 records.

According to the J-Wiki article for the song, Yamagami had written the lyrics based on an overall image of the various Japanese capes. However, the people living around the Miura Peninsula in Kanagawa Prefecture adopted the song for its own since they believed it was based on their peninsula, something that Yamagami apparently didn't mind at all. In fact, between 2008 and 2017, "Misaki Meguri" had even been used as the approach song for trains entering the nearby Misakiguchi Station on the Keikyu Kurihama Line.

To finish off, we have another early Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）sighting to match that of his presence and participation in Ryuichi Sakamoto's（坂本龍一）"DAS NEUE JAPANISCHE ELEKTRONISCHE VOLKSLIED" track on The Professor's 1978 "Sen no Knife"（千のナイフ）. Drummer Yutaka Uehara（上原裕）and bassist Jiro Terao（寺尾次郎）who had also taken part in the recording of "Misaki Meguri" were also part of the rhythm section for Sugar Babe（シュガーベイブ）, and evidently, Tats himself helped bring in the drums so he was privy to the recording of "Misaki Meguri". No idea whether one of the masters of City Pop had also been asked to play the castanets but this information came via the J-Wiki article from an October 2012 episode of the radio variety show "Sakizaki Kounosuke to Yoshida Takuro no All Night Nippon Gold"（坂崎幸之助と吉田拓郎のオールナイトニッポンGOLD...Kounosuke Sakizaki and Takuro Yoshida's All Night Nippon Gold） on the Nippon Broadcasting System.

Ah, also have a look at another later creation by the band, "Shiawase no Kane"（幸せの鐘）.