Yukio Hashi -- Are ga Misaki no Hi da（あれが岬の灯だ）

 

I'd read about entertainer Yukio Hashi's（橋幸夫）intention to retire this May at around his birthday at the age of 80, and according to the press conference above, he actually had already made his announcement last year. Well, earlier on the NHK News, he also declared that he was now looking for his successor. Thinking along the lines of traditional entertainers such as kabuki actors and rakugo storytellers who inherit names from their masters and pass them onto their beloved acolytes, he posited about why couldn't a singer do the same thing. It would be setting a precedent since as far as I know, this had never been done before involving a singer from the kayo kyoku era.

The surprising thing was that I had assumed that the singer was using a stage name of Yukio Hashi which would have made things easier in terms of passing on a name. But looking at his J-Wiki profile, I found out that Yukio Hashi is indeed his birth name, although the second kanji for his first name Yukio（橋幸男）at birth is different from the one that has been used in his career. Maybe that was good enough for Hashi to treat the name that his fans have known all this time as a stage name. Regardless, Hashi is searching for that younger, tougher and more talented singer to become Yukio Hashi II (and again that special second kanji will be changing) to sing his old hits so that fans and others won't ever forget them. I wish him well.

Noelle Tham was good enough to cover Hashi's debut single "Itakogasa" (潮来笠) from July 1960, so I'm going with his second entry, "Are ga Misaki no Hi da" (That's the Light of the Cape) which was released a mere month following his debut. I believe that it was normal for the singles of new singers to come out strong and fast so not surprisingly, his third single "Okesa Utaeba"（おけさ唄えば...Singing in the Traditional Style） came out a little more than a month later in October.

It's been the case sometimes that I have to wonder whether a certain Japanese song is actually an enka or a straight ahead kayo kyoku or Japanese pop song. "Are ga Misaki no Hi da" has that somewhat emotional and slightly mournful tone that the traditional genre of enka is famous for, but Hashi's second single is also arranged through Western instruments and according to the J-Wiki article for "Are ga Misaki no Hi da", it's been categorized as a kayo kyoku. Well, I'll do my usual straddling of the genres here. 

Regardless, the song was created by veteran songsmiths, lyricist Takao Saeki（佐伯孝雄）and composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）. Hashi sings about a man relating a story to someone while on board a ship rounding a promontory and points out perhaps what could be a lighthouse or a beacon there. It just so happens that the man's home port is there along with the love of his life. It's uncertain whether the relationship is ongoing or is now in the past tense but just judging from the tone of the song and the usual kayo tropes, it could very much be the latter. However, Hashi sings in his last line that the woman has changed the man no matter what the status of the relationship is.

Through a book that Hashi co-wrote titled "Hashi Yukio Kayo Tamashi"（橋幸夫歌謡魂...Yukio Hashi The Soul of Kayo） and referenced on J-Wiki, he stated that because of the lightning-quick release of his early singles in the 1960s, although he personally liked "Are ga Misaki no Hi da", the hits of his first and third singles rendered his second single into a less venerated song. Still, it managed to sell around 100,000 copies throughout 1961 so it was no big flop by any means.

Getting back to the news of Hashi's retirement from the geinokai, I really felt that time has been going by since he will be leaving in a few months as a familiar face in entertainment and as one of the Ganso Gosanke（元祖御三家）. One other member of the trio, Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）, died almost a year ago, which would leave only Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）.