Toshinobu Kubota -- Eien no Tsubasa（永遠の翼）

 

Although as I've come to realize over the years that R&B had been infusing into examples of Japanese music for many years before, at the time when I first heard the song stylings of the one-and-only funkster Toshinobu Kubota（久保田利伸）as a university student, I thought that the fellow was a first battering ram of the genre hitting the charts with his groove, looks, moves and charisma. There was one music show (can't remember which one it was) back in the 1980s when he just literally strutted his stuff on the floor, and I came away thinking that Kubota was gonna be a bona fide star. And he did become one going well into the 1990s, especially with one particular hit.

I'm surprised that this song hadn't been released as a single since it is a melodic version of a really kakkoii dance sequence. The way that Kubota trips the light fantastic singing his "Eien no Tsubasa" (Eternal Wings) like a modern-day Fred Astaire is probably the reason that I've seen the term tensai（天才...genius） written in one of the comments under this video. He makes it look easy and unsurprisingly so, since he is also the one behind words and music. It's a joyful R&B tune about finding that love and using those eternal wings to fly both him and his significant other.

As I said, "Eien no Tsubasa" wasn't an official single. It was instead a track on his 2nd album "GROOVIN'", released in April 1987, and although it didn't crack the Top 10 on the Oricon album chart, it did reach a respectable No. 14. The song was also used a few years later for a JAL Okinawa campaign commercial. Good choice!