Kiyoshi Toyoda -- Tasogare no Rendezvous（黄昏のランデブー）

 

Welcome to another start of a work week in our multiverse of mugginess. And for this Monday's crop of songs on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", we begin with one of those obscure singers who came and went. I'm glad that he hails from the 1970s due to the fact that it's been several days since I put up anything from decade.

So, there isn't any J-Wiki article on 1970s aidoru Kiyoshi Toyoda（豊田清）although there is such an article for another Kiyoshi Toyoda with the same kanji, a former professional Japanese baseball player and current first-base coach with the Seibu Lions. I've had to check a couple of sites to pull in some minimal information. For example, from this particular site, I found out that Toyoda the singer had been born in 1959 in Tokushima Prefecture, and he had only come out with four singles in 1978 and 1979 before disappearing from the scene.

His second single was "Tasogare no Rendezvous" (Twilight Rendezvous) released sometime in 1978. The kayo songwriters just loved to use the words tasogare and rendezvous for their titles, so I gather it was only a matter of time before the two got put together for a tune. Famed lyricist Yu Aku（阿久悠）and composer Takashi Miki（三木たかし）collaborated on this one which is a jaunty jumper of a song with some accordion in there to add a bit of exotic kayo taste. Meanwhile, Toyoda's delivery is light and heartwarming, perhaps showing the image of an innocent young traveler going through unknown but fascinating landscapes.

Not sure how any of his singles did on Oricon, but from one blog, I learned that his debut "Seishun Part 1"（青春 Part1...Youth Part 1）had been a hit. After his brief singing career had come to an end, though, Toyoda did become a professional after all, but not baseball. Instead he became a pro bowler and in fact, he started his own classes at a bowling alley. The blogger then admitted that being somewhat mi-ha, they even visited that alley to get Toyoda's autograph on their copy of "Tasogare no Rendezvous". The other piece of trivia that I got from the blog entry was that the singer has remained friends with fellow singers Kenji Ninuma (新沼謙治) and Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）.