Kenji Sawada -- Namida to Hohoemi（涙と微笑み）

 

It's a bit hard to believe but it's been over a year since the passing of songwriter and actor Asei Kobayashi（小林亜星）on May 30th 2021 for which I paid tribute via a Creator article some days following his death at the age of 88. I was given a reminder of Kobayashi when NHK's whimsical foodie "Sarameshi"（サラメシ）show on people and their lunches dedicated the last five minutes of a particular program to him and his favourite restaurant in Tokyo, a place which specializes in German cuisine. The owner there described Kobayashi as being the complete opposite of his most famous acting role as the ever-furious Kantaro Terauchi from the popular mid-1970s TBS drama "Terauchi Kantaro Ikka"（寺内貫太郎一家...Kantaro Terauchi's Family）. Unfortunately, I couldn't find that particular "Sarameshi" episode on YouTube, and it's hard enough to find any "Sarameshi" on the platform, but there are plenty of Kobayashi commercials to be found such as the one above.

Anyways, to give a one-year anniversary tribute to the songwriter, I was looking for one of his creations, and so I found this one that he composed for Kenji Sawada（沢田研二）. Sawada was behind the lyrics for "Namida to Hohoemi" (Tears and Smiles) which, on first listening, struck me as something that had to have been made in the 1980s just from the contemporary arrangement including the keyboards. The bossa infusion is something that has been around kayo almost ever since its genesis in Brazil in the late 1950s, though.

Well, as it turns out, I was off by almost a couple of decades. Actually "Namida to Hohoemi", a tale of loving an already attached woman from afar with a taste of bitterness and jealousy toward the lucky other guy, was created as the final track for Sawada's 36th album "Ii Kaze yo Fuke"（いい風よ吹け...Blow Good Winds） which was released in August 1999. Still, Sawada's heart-on-a-sleeve vocals have been maintained after all those years, and in a way, I thought that the song could also be covered by someone like Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）of Anzen Chitai（安全地帯）fame. "Ii Kaze you Fuke" managed to hit No. 86 on Oricon.