Yuri Harada -- Tsugaru no Hana（津軽の花）

 

I gather that I'm going to have to travel to the Tsugaru area up north in Japan someday. My anime buddy has far more traveling experience in the Tohoku region than I do, and I would be interested in visiting Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture...but most likely not in the winter.

Spring is more my thing (autumn is fine, too) and I have to say that Tsugaru seems to be one of the favoured sites for enka songs for some reason. Maybe the most famous enka about that area is Sayuri Ishikawa's（石川さゆり）"Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyu Geshiki"（津軽海峡・冬景色）for example, but on last week's "Uta Con"（うたコン）, I was also able to hear another Tsugaru-themed enka by Yuri Harada（原田悠里）.

Released in February 1999 as her 24th single, "Tsugaru no Hana" (Flowers of Tsugaru) was indeed a creation in the Heisei Era but there is something about the arrangement by Tatsuya Nango（南郷達也）that makes it sound so Showa. It's quite the jaunty piece delivered by Harada's sprightly vocals about love taking bloom in the spring in the titular area which makes for a nice change of pace when taking into consideration the theme behind "Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyu Geshiki". Lyricist Koyomi Asa（麻こよみ）and composer Chiaki Oka（岡千秋）were behind the song.

The elementary school music teacher-turned-enka singer, born in Kumamoto Prefecture as Yoshimi Harada（原田よしみ）, debuted in 1982 and had a million-seller with her 1985 single "Kisoji no Onna"（木曽路の女...Woman of the Kiso Valley）. However, it would be another 14 years before her "Tsugaru no Hana" brought her another bona fide hit. On Oricon, it went up as high as No. 42 but it stayed up on the charts for a long time, resulting in sales of 600,000 copies. The song would also earn Harada a Japan Record Award and an invitation to the 1999 Kohaku Utagassen for the first of three consecutive appearances.