Hiroshi Murai -- Hikigane（鉄爪）

 

I would just like to clarify that the double-decker bus doesn't cost 2,500 yen. By coincidence, I happened to take the picture when it was driving by a parking lot sign with that rate. 😝

Anyways, YouTuber Island Fantasia (aka HRLE92 here on KKP) posted this video up on his channel a couple of years ago. I never heard of singer-songwriter Hiroshi Murai（村井博）and his description on J-Wiki consists of merely the fact that he is a singer-songwriter with his five singles and three albums who was active in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Even the great kaz-shin of the Japanese music blog "Music Avenue" mentions that there is very little information on Murai.

On his third and final album "Natural" from June 1990 is his track "Hikigane" (Iron Nails) which is a new way of pronunciation of those two kanji together since I've never seen the "kun" or "on" readings depicted in that way for those two kanji before. However, kaz-shin states that this is the proper reading for the title and that's been seconded by Discogs. But getting back to brass tacks (instead of iron nails), "Hikigane" is a pretty funky number arranged by Greg Mathison or Mathieson with that nostalgic 90s sound. There's some discrepancy, though, between J-Wiki and "Music Avenue" about who the songwriters were, but since the JASRAC database agrees with kaz-shin, I'll go with the lyricist Mami Takubo（田久保真見）and composer Ichiro Hada（羽田一郎）.

Actually, putting in the hiragana reading of hikigane（ひきがね）into Jisho.org brought the definition of "gun trigger" which would make sense since Murai sings about being either the hunted or the hunter. However, the kanji form of the word（引鉄）is different.