Gosanke: Tanokin Trio -- Kimi ni Okuru Kotoba ~ After School（君に贈る言葉 (アフター･スクール)）

tanokin.main.jp

The above poster was something that I saw splattered all over the place in Tokyo and Osaka when I was on that graduation trip in the summer of 1981, the summer when I got into Japanese popular music in earnest. It was for the movie "Blue Jeans Memory"（ブルージンズメモリー）starring the male teen aidoru in the form of Masahiko "Matchy" Kondo（近藤真彦）, Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）and Yoshio Nomura（野村義男）. At the time, it was going up against "Superman II" in the theatres, but I have a feeling that Matchy, Toshi-chan and Yotchan actually won over the Man of Steel (don't cry, Clark...I saw the movie five times!). In any case, I kinda thought those three looked a little young to be cops.

Of course, the theme song for "Blue Jeans Memory" as performed by Kondo was a huge hit and in terms of the our humble blog, it was the first song connected to the Tanokin Trio（たのきんトリオ）that I wrote about and back in March 2012, I did give a description of what was up with that group name which I'll repeat here:

This was the Tanokin Trio（たのきんトリオ）, the name being derived from the first characters of the boys' last names: Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）, Yoshio Nomura（野村義男） and Masahiko Kondo（近藤雅彦）...the first character in Kondo's name can also be read as "Kin". All three of them came from the huge talent agency Johnny & Associates（ジャニーズ事務所）, who represent the current (not-so-)boy bands SMAP and Arashi. The Trio was never the official name since they didn't so much perform together musically but first appeared together in the high school drama "San-nen B-Gumi Kinpachi Sensei" (３年B組金八先生....Mr. Kinpachi of 3B）and then just stuck together in a few more projects before "Blue Jeans" came along. According to J-Wiki, the boys' image was meant to evoke memories of the previous generation of Johnny's boy idols: Hiromi Go（郷ひろみ）, Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹） and Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）who were known collectively as the Shin Gosanke (新御三家...The New Big Three).

From a September 2019 feature on the Japanese news site "News Post Seven"（NEWSポストセブン）via the J-Wiki article on the Tanokin Trio, I've also found out that it was indeed the founder of Johnny's himself, Johnny Kitagawa, who had come up with the name for the boys back in 1980 (apparently it was based on the abbreviated form of the name of the kayo group Tonosama Kings or Tonokin), although at the time, the teen girl fashion magazine, "Seventeen", noted that there already had been a fair number of nicknames for them such as Warugaki Trio（悪ガキトリオ...The Bad Boy Trio）, Shin Shin Gosanke（新々御三家...The New New Big Three） and Kinpachi Trio（金八トリオ）. Apparently, the name Tanokin Trio didn't initially go all that well with the fans since many of them called it lame, and even the reporters were exclaiming "This gotta be a joke, right? Who thought up this one?". Even the mighty Johnny wouldn't fess up as the originator by simply saying "Yeah, I wonder who came up with the name...". He probably whistled suspiciously, too.

But obviously the name eventually stuck although Matchy, Toshi-chan and Yotchan for the most part didn't perform together and had their own music careers (with Yotchan helping form up the 80s band THE GOOD-BYE and coming up with his first solo single, "TOKYO", in 1993). However, there were their roles together in the aforementioned "San-nen B-Gumi Kinpachi Sensei", and then "Blue Jeans Memory" along with at least one big concert together as you can see above. There were also a handful of songs that the three recorded together.

Instead of putting up the usual videos of the three individual efforts that I've done for the previous Gosanke representatives, I will include one of those joint efforts by the Tanokin Trio. In fact, this is supposedly their first one together in the recording booth, the B-side to Tahara's 1980 debut single "Aishuu Date"（哀愁でいと）, "Kimi ni Okuru Kotoba ~ After School" (Words I Give to You). 

Written by Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）and composed by Tomo Miyashita（宮下智）, it's the aidoru rock n' roll that I've often associated Matchy and Toshi-chan with since their early years, and it shares space with intervals of all of the guys spouting their cool phrases to wow the girls. To be honest, listening to it now, it sounds somewhat cringeworthy and I've got a feeling that if this were to be played at an retrospective interview with the now middle-aged Trio, they may beg it to be stopped. I also think that the title itself was a riff off of Kaientai's（海援隊）"Okuru Kotoba"（贈る言葉）, the theme song for "San-nen B-Gumi Kinpachi Sensei".