Gosanke: Shin Gosanke（新御三家） ~ Goro Noguchi, Hideki Saijo & Hiromi Go

 

Last week, I began the Gosanke（御三家）series because Japanese music among other entities had its generous share of trios consisting of singers put together by media or management companies or others in the hopes that the synergy would provide lasting popularity and attention onto the singers themselves. 

With the formation of the Ganso Gosanke（元祖御三家...the Original Big 3） consisting of Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）, Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）& Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）in the 1960s, the powers-that-be a decade later thought about putting together a new trio of heartthrob aidoru to gather all the love from ardent fans. And so, the Shin Gosanke (the New Big 3) was born with Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）, Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）& Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）. From J-Wiki via a YouTube video (that has since been taken down) involving an interview with Noguchi, the singer said that he had made his debut in 1971 with Saijo and Go following a year later. However, at Saijo's management company, it was then proposed there that Saijo and two others from the same company would form this new trio but somehow Saijo's manager ended up putting his client and Noguchi and Go together despite being from different companies. Apparently, the three of them often found themselves meeting each other on various programs and perhaps there was a certain camaraderie and synergy that was observed which gathered more fans.

The J-Wiki article regarding the Shin Gosanke had some interesting tidbits in there including the observation of this merger of a song-and-dance boy who could act (Go), a dynamic performer in rock and pop (Saijo) and an enka hopeful (Noguchi) with the attraction of fans from different bases. As for me, I always saw Go as the cute and cuddly little brother back in those days while Noguchi came across as the quiet and studious middle sibling and Saijo was the rough-edged big brother who would always protect the other two.

Goro Noguchi -- Aoi Ringo （青いリンゴ）

Hideki Saijo -- Kizudarake no Lola （傷だらけのローラ）

Hiromi Go -- Otoko no Ko, Onna no Ko (男の子女の子）