Hiroyuki Okita -- Fuyu no Lion（冬のライオン）

 

The news came out about a couple of days ago but with the 2026 World Cup being played out in multiple cities all over North America, two of those cities happen to be Vancouver and my hometown of Toronto, Canada. 

Unsurprisingly, the soccer-loving crowd here in Toronto went nuts and everyone was thinking about the possibilities in four years (although we've yet to know how many games will be played here), especially after coming out from under the clouds of the pandemic. My city is one of the most multicultural metropolises on the planet with its own ethnic neighbourhoods including Little Italy which went absolutely bonkers when Team Italy won the whole ball of wax in the 2006 World Cup. Incidentally, the area is having its first annual festival in a few years, so people should be especially buoyant this weekend.

So I figure that a little soccer-based Japanese song might be in order. Back in 2018, I wrote about the theme song for the 1983 manga-based anime "Captain Tsubasa"（キャプテン翼）, and that was in commemoration of the World Cup that year in Russia. Of course, I also mentioned how hyped Torontonians got during that tournament.

This time, though, it's all about the ending theme, the first of three for the series, the rocking "Fuyu no Lion" (Winter Lion). And as was the case with the opener "Moete Hero"（燃えてヒーロー）, it was sung by the late Hiroyuki Okita（沖田浩之）and written by Osamu Yoshioka（吉岡治）. Takayuki Baba（馬場孝幸）came up with the funky melody arranged by Hiromoto Tobisawa（飛沢宏元）who was the overall music producer for the show.

"Fuyu no Lion" was released in November 1983 as Okita's 11th single. I don't know how the song did on Oricon, but compared with "Moete Hero", I got the impression that Okita was sounding a bit more like Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）here.