Gosanke: Ganso Sannin Musume（元祖三人娘）

 

We're into the third entry for the Gosanke（御三家）series, and with the first two, we've had the Ganso Gosanke（元祖御三家...the Original Big 3）from the 1960s and last week's Shin Gosanke（新御三家）of the 1970s. Those trios were all male, but I did forget that there were female trios as well with one even predating that original Gosanke of Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）, Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）& Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）.

Mind you, the term Gosanke wasn't used for these three ladies. The term that was used for the grouping of Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）, Chiemi Eri（江利チエミ）and Izumi Yukimura（雪村いづみ）was the Sannin Musume（三人娘...The Three Girls or The Three Bachelorettes）, and it started for them as of 1955. In fact, there is a kayo that I wrote about back in October 2016, "Suteki na Rendezvous" （素適なランデブー）, a theme song sung by them for a movie, "Janken Musume"（ジャンケン娘）, which proved to be the cinematic debut for the trio. Unfortunately, the J-Wiki article for "Sannin Musume" doesn't definitively illustrate how the powers-that-be brought together these particular three although it does mention that all three were born in 1937.

Along with the hit "Janken Musume", Misora, Eri and Yukimura also appeared in subsequent movies together and also showed up partially and totally on several editions of NHK's Kohaku Utagassen such as in 1954, 1957 and 1965. I'm pretty sure that the Sannin Musume also showed up in various television programs, too. As was the case with the original Gosanke, the Sannin Musume witnessed other female trios making their debuts in the decades to come, so although the three have still been called that original name, they've also gotten the moniker Ganso Sannin Musume (the Original Three Girls) or Shodai Sannin Musume（初代三人娘...the First-Generation Three Girls）.

Hibari Misora -- Yawara (柔）

Chiemi Eri -- Tennessee Waltz (テネシーワルツ)

Izumi Yukimura -- Omoide no Waltz （想い出のワルツ）