Koichi Morita/Kiyohiko Ozaki -- Seiun no Uta（青雲のうた）

 

I took my share of photographs of everyday things and food with my old Casio digital camera when I was living in Ichikawa. Unfortunately, one shot that I didn't get was of a package of incense that I'd bought at Tokyu Hands. Over here, we've got all of those Febreeze sprays and plug-ins, and Japan is selling those, too. However, there is the somewhat more traditional method of incense or senkou（線香）.

Unlike the one shown above by YouTuber Kodo The Way of Fragrances, the incense in my old apartment wasn't in the form of joss sticks but in these tiny cones of compacted powder. All I had to do was light the tip of the cone in a small plate and then a second later, wave off the flame, and let the slow combustion do the rest in sending that intoxicating fragrance into the air. Well, it worked very well in my small 2K apartment. Let's say when I regained consciousness a few minutes later, I had to open the windows to lessen the olfactory impact.

The brand that I bought wasn't the most famous one. That label would probably go to Seiun（青雲...Blue Sky）, an incense brand that has been manufactured by Nippon Kodo（日本香堂）since 1965. One reason that I put up the YouTuber's video a couple of paragraphs back was that just showing the commercial here for Seiun wouldn't have revealed what the product was. A lot of Japanese commercials love to be enigmatic that way.

In any case, "Seiun no Uta" (The Blue Sky Song) has probably insinuated itself into everyone's brain in Japan. Originally created by lyricist Akira Ito（伊藤アキラ）and composer Koichi Morita（森田公一）, the latter himself sang the folksy 30-second jingle as something that could hint at old-fashioned Japanese houses in the countryside with that fragrant smell emanating from the ancient wood. I was actually surprised that "Seiun no Uta" had actually been recorded in 1981; it sounds like something from at least a decade further back.

Not sure what the relationship between kites and incense is, but I'll just let it go. Anyways in 1991, the resonant and comfortable vocals of the late Kiyohiko Ozaki（尾崎紀世彦）took over for Morita in the singing of the famous "Seiun no Uta".

I used to hear the jingle and watch the commercial all those years without really knowing initially what the product was all about. However, what got me to write up this article was on witnessing rakugo storyteller Taihei Hayashiya（林家たい平）, someone that I usually see weekly on NTV's "Shoten"（笑点）, do his version of "Seiun no Uta" on the show himself. His fellow rakugo-ka good-naturedly chided him to not make fun of the sponsor. And I don't think he was because he actually got to perform his 30 seconds with the accompaniment of a whole orchestra for Nippon Kodo itself.