Furudokei -- Kisetsu Hazure no Soumatou（季節はずれの走馬燈）

 

I realize that a lot of Japanese folk songs from the 1970s have that streak of melancholy wistfulness, but this one is perhaps even sadder. The folk duo Furudokei（古時計...Antique Clock） is a group that I only found out about within the last few weeks, but they were together for about four years in that decade.

"Kisetsu Hazure no Soumatou" (Life Flashing Before My Eyes Out-of-Season) was Furudokei's 2nd single from October 1976 and as one commenter below the video pointed out, it's the ideal song for early autumn. Written by singer-songwriter and actor Toshio Nakamura（中村俊男）and composed by Furudokei member Hirokazu Ohba（大場弘一）, it's about a young man thinking of his beloved mother who left this mortal coil far too early as the autumn festival preparations are happening.

Furudokei started up when Ohba, who hails from Ishikawa Prefecture, met Masahiro "James" Nishida（西田昌弘）from Wakayama Prefecture at a folk music circle in Kyoto Sangyo University in 1974. For the first couple of years, their act was called Kageboushi（影法師...Silhouette） before they made their major debut in early 1976 under the revised name of Furudokei with "Roadshow"（ロードショー）, a song that made a huge splash critically and publicly as it sold around 600,000 records and earned the duo a few awards including a Golden Disc Award for Best New Artist. Up to the middle of 1978, they released four singles and three albums. 

I'm not sure how "Kisetsu Hazure no Soumatou" did on the charts but considering how well "Road Show" did, I can believe that it must have made some headway up Oricon. Also, the song got some television exposure because it was used as the theme for the late 1976 NTV drama "Himawari no Michi"（ひまわりの道...Sunflower Street）. The video below has Nishida performing the song at a gig in 2022.