The band Off-Course（オフコース）has had a CD compilation series with songs representing each of the four seasons, but when it comes right down to it, I'm always going to see Kazumasa Oda（小田和正）and his group of the 1970s and 1980s as an autumn thing. Frankly, it does have some part to do with the fact that their wonderful "Aki no Kehai"（秋の気配）was the first song that I had ever heard by them, but they tended to create and record a lot of music that often was sad and contemplative which was also a common theme with autumn-based kayo.
Ironically, Off-Course's 8th single "Hitori de Ikite Yukereba" (If I Live On My Own) was actually released in the spring...May 1976, to be exact. However, the sadness and contemplation are still baked in this song by Oda. The story here deals with a man who has left everything and everyone behind, including his girlfriend, to start a new life of work in Tokyo which would in a way make "Hitori de Ikite Yukereba" a New Music version of those chestnuts of the 50s and 60s kayo of trying to make a life in the big city away from the warmth of home and hearth out in the countryside.
Not surprisingly, the man is filled with trepidation for this big and lonely step, and he asks for strength in his time of life change. I think that many of us have been through this including myself when I left home for the first time back in 1989 to start my teaching career on the JET Programme. "Hitori de Ikite Yukereba" is also a track on Off-Course's November 1976 4th original album "SONG IS LIFE" which peaked at No. 34 on Oricon. That tenderhearted guitar and the harmonica really hit home.
For that first trip, it was just for a month so I only got a taste of life but it was enough for me to move it into the Japan direction. That second voyage in 1989 was more meaningful although for most of it, I was up in the Japanese Alps.
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