Masao Kikuchi/Teruhiko Saigo -- Furusato wa Souya no Hate ni（ふるさとは宗谷の果てに）

 

Over eight years ago, KKP contributor and specialist on the early Showa Era tunes, Noelle Tham, introduced the late singer Takuya Jou（城卓矢）and his huge hit "Hone Made Aishite" (骨まで愛して) from 1966.

As Noelle mentioned in that March 2015 post, Jou was born Masaki Kikuchi（菊地正規）and when he debuted in 1958, he took on the stage name of Masao Kikuchi（菊地正夫）with just that small alteration of one kanji. One of his notable songs under that pre-Jou name was his September 1962 kayo kyoku, "Furusato wa Souya no Hate ni". (My Home is at the End of Souya).

To further explain, Souya is the name of a cape in Hokkaido which is the northernmost point of all of Japan. The song was written and composed by Jun Kitahara（北原じゅん）who happened to be Kikuchi/Jou's older brother, and for both brothers, "Furusato wa Souya no Hate ni" was in all likelihood a very personal song for them. It's a gallant tune with a bit of a country twang but it's also a kayo about lamenting the fact that neither Kikuchi nor Kitahara could go back to the land of their birth because they had been born on what was known as Karafuto Island（樺太）but it's currently known as Sakhalin after the Soviet Union had taken it over at the end of World War II. I'm not sure how the song did in the pre-Oricon era but I figure that there was nothing like a furusato kayo kyoku to get people into a sentimental mood and hitting the record shops.

Certainly, the fact that "Furusato wa Souya no Hate ni" was covered by a number of other singers and bands in the years since is probably a good sign at its popularity. For example, just when Kikuchi made that re-debut as Takuya Jou, Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）covered the song in 1966 as a tune belonging more in the Mood Kayo vein thanks to the chorus and that bluesy saxophone. Saigo also gave his vocals a more elegiac tone.

To finish off, I've embedded a video from Kuga's Travel, one of the channels that I subscribe to. A year ago, he made his own trip to Souya.