Kazuhisa Okubo -- Fuumon（風紋）

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I had never heard of Hiroshima Prefecture-born singer-songwriter Kazuhisa Okubo（大久保一久）until very recently, but I've also read that he was a pharmacist. His music activities began when he got involved with Hiroshima Folk Mura（広島フォーク村...Hiroshima Folk Village）, a 1968 conglomeration of three folk music organizations which is said to have sparked the folk music boom in Japan proper. 

Okubo later joined the folk group Neko（猫...Cat） in 1973 and then would form the duo Kaze（風...Wind） with Shozo Ise（伊勢正三）of Kaguyahime（かぐや姫）. I've actually written about Kaze in KKP which means that I actually did hear of Okubo in the past but didn't remember his name. OK, well one Gibbs slap up the head later, the group did delve into both folk and City Pop as one of a number of examples of folk artists making the leap to something more urban but Kaze suspended activities in 1979 after which Okubo took the solo route.

One album came out in August 1979, "In My Life" with one of the tracks being "Fuumon" (Wind Ripples on the Sand). Written and composed by Okubo with Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）handling the arrangement, "Fuumon" is all about reminiscing back to an early romance and its eventual end with the guy realizing that he and his former paramour were just too young back then. He refers to the shifting sand patterns as symbols that things will never be the same but that the relationship was still a lesson in itself. The music also seems to shift among AOR, pop and City Pop with the addition of that harp perhaps representing the ripples, and then a sax to finish things on an urban beat.

Sadly, Okubo passed away in September 2021 at the age of 71 from heart disease.