Akira Inoue -- Island

 

I didn't know it until I watched the news in the past hour that today was Toronto's 189th birthday. Apparently for the next couple of weeks, there will be various activities in Nathan Phillips Square in front of City Hall to commemorate the occasion. I did my own thing for Canada this morning, actually, by renewing my passport which will be expiring later this year. Despite the 90-minute wait, the process wasn't too painful.

Let us extend our Canadiana on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" tonight by going over to another province in eastern Canada, Prince Edward Island. I haven't been there in over forty years but I do remember the potatoes, the lobsters and yes of course, the famous "Anne of Green Gables" story by Lucy Maud Montgomery. More importantly, I remember that the Japanese at one point absolutely adored Anne Shirley and her hijinks on the island.

And it certainly appears that musician and songwriter Akira Inoue（井上鑑）had his own Anne moment in the late 1980s. Considering how prolific he has been, his songs for other singers have frequently piled onto the blog over the years, but the last time that he appeared as a name on the byline for a KKP article was three years ago when I featured his "The Beat of Pollution", the eclectic New Wave-ish first track on his 1985 4th album "Kakuu Teienron"（架空庭園論...Imaginary Arboretum）.

Well, going forward to the end of the 1980s, Inoue came up with his 6th album in September 1989 titled "Yume Miru Anne no Shima ~ Prince Edward Tou no Hikari to Kaze"（夢見るアンの島〜プリンス・エドワード島の光と風〜...Dreaming Anne's Island ~ Prince Edward Island's Light and Wind）. I'm unsure whether the songwriter actually traveled to Canada's smallest province but evidently he was charmed enough by the island to create an album around it. Once again, as I did with "Kakuu Teienron", I have taken a look at the first track.

For such a long-named album title, the first track is very simple: "Island". And this instrumental couldn't be any more different from "The Beat of Pollution". It's about as organic as granola in arrangement with a country-folk feeling led by a twangy guitar that is so calming and neighbourly that it might as well come with an apple pie and a welcoming smile by Anne herself. I think that it could fit any promotional video for PEI, Japanese or Canadian.

Not sure whether this love for Anne and Prince Edward Island from halfway around the world has lasted but I notice that the Japan Travel Bureau did upload a video on its YouTube channel about the place only a year ago.