Hiroshi Itsuki/Chiaki Oka -- Yume Shizuku（夢しずく）

 

Well, sure enough, enka singer Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）will be making another appearance on NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）later tonight I will see what he has in store in terms of any new songs or one of his past hits. My parents have always tended toward the old traditional music, so I'm always relieved when one of the veterans shows up on the show.

I guess then that this enka, Itsuki's 51st single from October 1985 "Yume Shizuku" (Dream Drops), reflects the sweet pain of love. Written by Yurio Matsui（松井由利夫）and composed by Chiaki Oka（岡千秋）, the veteran singer does his usual heart-on-a-sleeve best expressing how the emotion can be fleeting at best; two ships passing each other in the night and all that. Tsuneo Saito's（斉藤恒夫）arrangement pretty much brings together a scene of either two lovers under the cherry blossoms a couple of centuries back exchanging some final words before parting for good or a contemporary pair doing the same thing in an old out-of-the-way bar.

"Yume Shizuku" ranked in at No. 17 on Oricon and it ended up as the 75th-ranked single for 1986. Parting is such sweet sorrow indeed.

Although I couldn't find out when this version came out, Oka himself tackles his own creation here. The sparer arrangement and the composer's crustier vocals makes the protagonist sound even more forlorn and lonely.