Well, it's been a pretty good couple of weeks when it comes to new music coming out from Japan. Last month, Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）and Kirinji（キリンジ）put out some of their fine latest material, and now I'm hearing that the mellow and groovy Tomita Lab（冨田ラボ）released his seventh album on June 29th, appropriately titled "7+". As has been the case throughout his career, he's collaborating with a number of other artists and the album includes one song that I have already written about, "Yogisha"（夜汽車）featuring rapper BASI & guitarist kojikoji.
Arguably, the biggest name among his collaborators in "7+" is the Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）for the track "Kemutagararete" which I will translate here as "Getting Smoked". When I checked out the root form（煙たがる）of the verb on Jisho.org, I found out that kemutagaru meant "to be sensitive to smoke" or "to consider (someone) a burden or nuisance". Assuming that the title is showing the passive voice of the verb, I did think that this was about someone being shooed away.
Sure enough, Takaki Horigome's（堀込高樹）(aka Kirinji) lyrics are a plaintive cry from an incorrigible smoker looking for someone...anyone...to just join him for small talk and maybe a puff or two in a Japan that is supposedly no longer all that friendly to Marlboro men or women. To be honest, I think that my old home-away-from-home is still more accepting of smokers than over here in Canada but I also realize that things have been changing over the past couple of decades in Tokyo at least with proper non-smoking sections being installed in the restaurants and cafés.
I've heard from Come Along Radio's Rocket Brown that Hosono is a long-time smoker who has somehow managed to avoid cancer, so I'm wondering if his humourously forlorn delivery in "Kemutagararete" is showing his real feelings and experiences of not being able to light up in the office or the café anymore. Perhaps he's also feeling the true pain of not having anyone willing to sit beside him as he does his best impression of a chimney stack.
Yet, there is Tomita Lab himself in the music video gloriously savoring his ciggy at a classy coffee house, speaking of whom, he was indeed the composer for the song. It starts somewhat weirdly before things soon settle down into an old-style jazz-pop vocal piece (maybe not so much Steely Dan as it is more along the lines of Donald Fagen). Joining Hosono in his nicotine dream as backing vocals are Isono-kun（磯野くん）from YONA YONA WEEKENDERS, AAAMYYY from Tempalay, musician TENDRE and vocalist Sara Yoshida（吉田沙良）from Mononkul（モノンクル）.
Before I finish off, let me mention that Hosono will be celebrating his 75th birthday in a few days on July 9th. All my best wishes to him.
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