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I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Sunday, January 29, 2023

Kirinji -- Ieji(家路)

 

Hope you folks are having a good weekend out there wherever you are. Here in Toronto today, it's been messy with a lot of wet and heavy snow hitting the ground. Growing up in this city, commutes home on snow days can have the arduousness of climbs up Mount Everest. I remember one night making my way home from university in which a bunch of us had to wait 40 minutes standing in a bus bay in -25-degree Celsius weather. I figured that if I can survive that...

That meteorologically-based opening is there to segue somewhat into this song by Kirinji(キリンジ)titled "Ieji" (The Road Home). Nope, it's not a cover of Hiromi Iwasaki's(岩崎宏美)classic 1983 tune, but it is a pretty peppy number. Put out as Kirinji's 9th digital download single, it was also the last part of a gimmick in which the guys were releasing a single every month on the 25th during the second half of 2007 (every 25th being known as "Kirin-day"), so "Ieji" was the final and Christmas Day release. All of those affected singles ended up on the duo's March 2008 album "7~seven".

Initially, I thought that the first several seconds of "Ieji" sounded like the fanfare for a contemporary cop show but I realized that the blasting synth-horns have a certain Burt Bacharach-influenced pattern (maybe even a bit of Chicago). However, I wouldn't place the song as a Shibuya-kei song at all. Apparently, the Kirin-day singles were also used as themes for a "Kirinji TV" series. There is a Kirinji TV YouTube channel but it has nothing to do with the band.

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