Yukio Hashi & Ritsuko Abe -- Kon'ya wa Hanasanai（今夜は離さない）

 

Yup, I finally saw the moment of Season 3 of "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai"（かぐや様は告らせたい）last week, and though I heard that there was some controversy regarding the scene, I thought that most viewers reacted with varying levels of satisfaction. And as it turned out, there was a reason for that blue heart balloon to hide things. However, as strange as it may be, I'm not going to be using this particular scene as the analogy here for this song although I will be using the franchise.

So, let's imagine a slightly older Kaguya and Miyuki in 1980s Tokyo out in some swanky nightclub in Ginza or Akasaka. They are actually still engaged in their battle of wits and romance with the former turning on some ice while the latter is blowing the torch during a literal dance on the floor. That would describe what is happening lyrically in the July 1983 "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" (I Won't Let You Go Tonight), a Mood Kayo duet between Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）and kayo singer Ritsuko Abe（安倍里葎子）.

From my feeling of its arrangement by Tatsuya Nango（南郷達也）, I'm gathering that Mood Kayo during the high-flying 1980s was fun, footloose and fancy-free with a touch of Latin. Kensuke Fujinami*（藤波研介）was the lyricist while the melody was composed by Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）, the same fellow who would come up with similarly happy tunes for the group Junretsu（純烈）many years later.

According to J-Wiki, Ritsuko Abe hails from Sapporo, Hokkaido and though she has been singing professionally since 1970, it was with "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" that she finally got some of those accolades for a hit tune. Although she had thought that she could now go it alone and actually left the recording company behind the song, Abe apparently found the need to do the duets once more, so she worked with other singers such as Hiroki Matsukata（松方弘樹）. In fact, at one point, she was even called the Queen of Duets.

For Abe, "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" was her 24th single while for Hashi, the song would be his 149th single. Over 300,000 records were sold and it earned a Japan Cable Award.

*I couldn't find definitive proof that the lyricist's first name is indeed Kensuke despite giving an educated guess. Even Jisho.org doesn't have the name in its files.