Issei Okamoto -- Coat ni Sumire wo（コートにすみれを）

 

As a present from one of my students years ago, I was given a small sheaf of gift certificates worth about 10,000 yen that I could spend at just about every department store that was in existence in the Tokyo and Chiba areas. Well, I decided that I could just walk the ten minutes from my humble abode in Ichikawa to the neighbourhood Daiei store, and it was there that I spend the whole wad on this long black trench coat that I thought would look pretty good over a suit. And it did! I'm also happy to note that this coat that I got well over a decade ago is still hanging in my closet in fine condition. For that matter, the coat doesn't flinch from the usual frigid temperatures in Toronto.

To be honest, I forget which brand my coat represents. Maybe it's a Sanyo coat that seems to be getting the lion's share of praise as this trench coat brand. The company has been around since 1946 and I've got a feeling that it doesn't really have anything directly to do with the more famous Sanyo brand for appliances.

I was remarking to the uploader, Yoshio Takemoto（竹本善雄）, how much I loved the swing jazz intro and overall arrangement of this particular song "Coat ni Sumire wo" (A Violet in the Coat). There's nothing that says a classy night out on the town than some swing jazz, and in this case, singer-songwriter Issei Okamoto（岡本一生）was behind this whole ball of wax with Chinfa Kan（康珍化）handling the lyrics. Instrumentalist Naoya Matsuoka（松岡直也）took care of the arrangements.

Okamoto has been known for his City Pop material in the late 1970s and early 1980s such as his Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）-reminiscent "Midnight Station Hotel" (1980), but he also had his jazzy stuff right from his 1978 debut single "Moonlight Singing"（ムーンライト・シンギィング）. I guess that I can say that he is Japan's version of Bobby Caldwell? Anyways, "Coat ni Sumire wo" , Okamoto's March 1982 third and final single, was meant as the commercial campaign song for Sanyo Coats to stress the class and timelessness of their products. I certainly wouldn't mind traipsing down Omotesando to a dinner party while wearing my dress coat bought through gift certificates and listening to this one.