Yujiro Ishihara & Kei Marimura -- Sayonara wa Hirusagari（さよならは昼下がり）

 

Getting warmer out there but still sunny and pleasant. We may be looking at a summery weekend with a Humidex, though. 

I'm gonna have to give my thanks to commenter James Noah for this scintillating duet. Actually, he'd asked me if I knew the footage from the above video and after quickly scrolling down the comments, I found out it was from the 1969 Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）movie "Eikou e no 5000 Kilo"（栄光への5000キロ...5000 Kilometres to Glory） which looks like a flick about racing. I dutifully told him the results but then I had to also listen to the lovely song that adorns the video (sorry but that video has been taken down although I've replaced it with the trailer for the movie).

The song has nothing to do with "Eikou e no 5000 Kilo" but it is a duet with The Tough Guy and jazz chanteuse Kei Marimura（真梨邑ケイ）titled "Sayonara wa Hirusagari" (Goodbye in the Early Afternoon) which was released as an Ishihara single in December 1985, one of his final singles before his untimely death in 1987. Written by the late Rei Nakanishi（なかにし礼）and composed by Koumei Sone（曽根幸明）, the song still does hearken back to the 1960s in terms of how Mancini-and-martini it all sounds with the elegant and languid bossa jazz arrangement. It just makes me feel that the setting for this song has to be somewhere in the Mediterranean on a cruise ship or in some stylish restaurant on the coast. Must give a tip to the saxophonist.

One other notable thing is that the sweet-sorrow parting in the lyrics is hinted through the title that it takes place just past the noon hour. Usually when it comes to romantic breakups in kayo, I've gotten used to the idea that such things happen late at night or in the early morning after one more night of lust. I would usually feel sorry for the wait staff in the restaurant if they had a couple breaking up right after the lunch rush, but in the case of Ishihara and Marimura, I'm sure everything was done with a lot of class. No remonstrations or regrets...just appreciations of the good times now stored into memory.