Remioromen -- San-gatsu Kokonoka（3月9日）

 

Well, after that weird shortened broadcast from last week, NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）was back doing its full episode tonight, and I was delighted to get a bit of City Pop via young singers Little Black Dress and Ms. OOJA covering Junko Ohashi's（大橋純子）"Simple Love" and Yasuha's（泰葉）"Fly-Day Chinatown"（フライディ・チャイナタウン）respectively. I swear that LBD was pretty much channeling Ohashi in those 1970s.

However, the beginning of the show, true to March in Japan, had its tribute to graduation season and I got to hear Kaientai（海援隊）and Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）do their tributes to the students getting their diplomas with all of the happiness and tears so I'm gonna be covering those songs tomorrow. In the meantime, though, before I forget to do this one and since it is technically March 9th in Japan now, I'll be starting off the graduation-themed songs with this one.

"San-gatsu Kokonoka" (March 9th) is the third single by rock band Remioromen（レミオロメン）, naturally released on March 9th 2004. My last article on the band was on New Year's Eve covering "Ohmisoka no Uta"（大晦日の歌）which translates to "Song for New Year's Eve", so I guess that Remioromen can be that group to commemorate holidays and events. The strange thing, though, is that although "San-gatsu Kokonoka" has been used to celebrate the diploma-receiving season (and for singing competitions), songwriter-vocalist Ryota Fujimaki（藤巻亮太）had actually created the song originally for the band to sing at a friend's wedding reception on March 9th 2001! Even the music video mostly has wedding footage although there are also some scenes of one teenager played by actress Maki Horikita（堀北真希）going through her school's graduation ceremony.

However, according to the J-Wiki article on "San-gatsu Kokonoka", when an Internet survey was conducted with 1000 people in their teens and twenties back in 2007, this particular song hit No. 1 when asked what the quintessential graduation song was. It hit No. 11 on Oricon going Double Platinum and was placed as a track on Remioromen's 2nd album "ether" which came out in March 9th 2005 and peaked at No. 2 on the album charts, itself going Platinum.

For those who may be graduating this month in Japan, my congratulations to you! 🎓