Bin Uehara ft. Kinuyo Tanaka -- Shunkoden (春香伝)

Having picked up the fact that many ryukoka from the prewar era centred around China, I thought that "Shunkoden" was one such song. Uncovering it during one of my deep dives into Bin Uehara's (上原敏) discography when I was getting into his music, the combination of three kanji characters that didn't seem to sound Japanese was also what contributed to the assumption. Its theatrical sound, courtesy of shrill strings, made it feel as though I was transported back to ancient China. The main characters, Shunko (春香) and Muryu (夢龍) looked like they were Chinese names too. And yet, when I consulted Mother for her opinion, she insisted it didn't sound like it was inspired by the middle kingdom. That gave me the impetus to look up "Shunkoden" on Google Sensei, though I wasn't expecting much to come from it since I knew it wasn't one of Bin-san's smash hits. How wrong I was, from the start and down to that very moment. 

As it turns out, "Shunkoden" was actually an extremely well-known Korean romantic folk tale from way back in the day. I guess the music was possibly Korean-inspired, then. Called "Chunhyangjeon" in the original language, this story mainly revolves around Chunhyang (Shunko), a musical entertainer's daughter, who caught the eye of Mong-ryong (Muryu), a magistrate's son. Through the latter's persistence, the former eventually fell for him and they lived happily ever after. No, they didn't. Not yet. Not before a series of unfortunate events: Mong-ryong couldn't marry her because he need to pass his magistrate exams first; Mong-ryong's father moved to Seoul, so his son had to follow, but only after promising his beloved he'd come back; in the place of the father, a bad governor took over and targetted Chunhyang; she refused and got thrown to jail. That went from a zero to a hundred. But, of course, things worked out in the end as Mong-ryong, successful in his endeavours, comes back in the nick of time to save Chunhyang and kick out the bad egg of a magistrate. Now, they live happily ever after. You can check out a comprehensive rundown of the story via this article on Korea.net.

Coming back to Bin-san's interpretation of the widely adapted story and switching back to the Japanese pronunciations, the lyrics by Yoshio Yuzawa (ゆざわよしお) seem to highlight Shunko and Muryu's separation. Playing the role of Shunko was famed actress Kinuyo Tanaka (田中絹代), who wonderfully expressed Shunko's heartbroken state through dialogue in a wistful manner. Bin-san's parts seemed to act as a response to this. Rather than narrating the story through singing, it sounded as though he was conveying Muryu's own sadness and resolve to reunite with Shunko through his tender vocals. It's been a while since then, but I'm fairly certain that the moment he did the line, "Sadameshi kimi wa tada hitori", I decided that he be Husbando 3 despite my reservations.

"Shunkoden" was one of Bin-san's later-day works from 1939, and complementing Yuzawa's words was Itsuro Hattori's (服部逸郎) musical composition.