Hibari Misora -- Minato Machi Jusan Banchi (港町十三番地)

Hello, Hibari.

Fune ga tsuku hi ni sakaseta hana wo (A flower allowed to blossom on the day the ship docked)

Fune ga deru yoru chirasu kaze (A scattering wind on the night the ship leaves)

If I had 100 yen for every time these couple of lines ran through my head between September and December 2022, I'd probably be able to purchase at least 10 bromides. At least. I listened to their source so much that I ended up going from simply appreciating its presence to actually liking it, making it the first song I used for academic purposes to gain this accolade... That felt weird to say.

For posterity.

To give some context, my undergraduate thesis featured enka (of course, it did), and in it, I studied (or, at least, I attempted to study) how social inequality and class differences could’ve been perpetuated through the lyrics of popular enka songs from the Showa era. I set myself up to pick and study tunes (22 in total) that revolved around certain themes including poverty, blue-collar jobs, and an itinerant lifestyle. Since I stated “popular enka songs”, it’d be a crime if I left out the biggest star of that period and the Queen of Kayokyoku: Hibari Misora (美空ひばり). Sifting through her dozens of smash hits and skimming through their lyrics, I finally found the one that fit my criteria: “Minato Machi Jusan Banchi”. It’s an enka featuring the sailor life, it was one of her hits, I actually knew it - perfect. Honestly, that search gave me a bigger headache than I was expecting. 

First released on 10th March 1957 and posthumously on 1st July 1991, “Minato Machi Jusan Banchi” was written by one of the songwriting power duos of the early Showa era, Miyuki Ishimoto (石本美由起) and Gento Uehara (上原げんと) - my impression is that a hatoba (wharf) or madorosu (sailor) tune by them likely turned out to be a banger. According to the J-Wiki, the Japan Record Association's magazine "THE RECORD", it was ranked as Colombia Record's (the company Misora belonged to) No.1 best-seller of the year in a rankings chart that featured the year's best-selling records per record company. 

The original version. That plucky banjo really screams madorosu kayo.

On top of that, this well-loved sailor number became tangible to fans and train commuters when a whole entire train station was dedicated to it. As this Sponichi article from 2013 stated, the renewal of the Keikyu Daishi Line's almost century-old Minatocho station had been centred around “Minato Machi Jusan Banchi”. Now aptly nicknamed the "Hibari Eki" (Hibari station), it has the full works: At the South entrance sits its music plaque (her 8th song plaque nationwide) with a 148cm life-size model of the spunky singer and her to-scale handprint where you can also play one chorus's worth of the song to your heart's content; the station's jingle is the song; one of the platforms has its musical score with a cute illustration of a harbour view. It's every fan's dream. I'm more than inclined to agree with Hibari's son, Kazuya Kato (加藤和也), in saying that his mother would be amazed to see that this much thought had been put into representing a song she seemed to have personally enjoyed in the area so significant to her (she's a Kanagawa native). 

The creation of "Minato Machi Jusan Banchi" was an interesting one too. For starters, it features the earlier mentioned industrial port town of Minatocho. This town was also where the Japan branch and record-making factory of Colombia Records were first established in 1910, and it was intended for its location on block 9 (kyu banchi) to be the song's setting. Ishimoto, however, decided to go with block 13 (jusan banchi) as it rolled off the tongue better. As a quintessential go-touchi song would, this jaunty romp into the Kawasaki-Yokohama area also included subtle nods to places like Yamashita Park and Bashamichi.  

The jazzy twist in this recording (from the 70s?) makes it my favourite version.

Earlier this year, I decided to do a song plaque pilgrimage to the Minatocho station since, as talked about at the start, Hibari's cheery madorosu tune was quite a significant part of the biggest project I'd done thus far. Plus, it was comparatively nearer to my home base than others, so it'd only be natural to pay it a visit. While Hibari had been more of a figure I respected than truly loved, this and a later experience at her house-turned-museum in Tokyo's Meguro did cause quite a bit of a shift in that dynamic. It's hard to describe, but seeing her beaming right at me after the approximately 1.5-hour journey to Kawasaki and hearing "Minato Machi Jusan Banchi" right there and then, I felt accomplished (?) 

"Minato Machi Jusan Banchi" had been covered by countless singers over the decades, but I thought it'd be nice to round off the article with a lovely collaboration between Hibari and Sabu-chan. Sabu-chan's rustic delivery really added that grassroots flavour to the tune.