Takao Kisugi -- Akage no Rinjin（赤毛の隣人）

 

From time to time, I've heard the Japanese phrase "akage no..."（赤毛の）which means "the red-haired...". Now, I think that a lot of folks in Japan would immediately bring to mind "Akage no Anne"（赤毛のアン）which translates into "Red-Haired Anne" but is actually Lucy Maud Montgomery's famous "Anne of Green Gables". However, since I first knew Anne Shirley under the latter title, "akage no..." doesn't have me think of her first, but instead, the mysterious red-haired girl that Charlie Brown has loved from afar. I'm glad to hear that the round-headed kid finally got to give her that peck on the cheek.

And as such, when I first heard Takao Kisugi's（来生たかお）"Akage no Rinjin" (The Red-Haired Neighbour), a happy-go-lucky New Music tune, I couldn't help but feel that a similar red-haired girl and her family moved into the lyrics. Well, specifically, Kisugi's sister, Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）, wrote the words about that red-haired girl, Miss Daniel, and clan from abroad moving into a postwar Tokyo suburb, gaining the curiosity of at least one young boy as he wondered about life and people overseas.

It's a happy but somewhat poignant tune, composed by Takao and arranged by Katsu Hoshi（星勝）, which has me assuming that the boy never really got to know Miss Daniel all that well. But here's hoping that the sighting was enough for the lad to make good on his ambitions abroad. In any case, "Akage no Rinjin" was the second track on Kisugi's debut album "Asai Yume"（浅い夢）from October 1976, but a single version of the song was later released in August 1978.