Frank Nagai -- Moonlight In Yokohama（ムーンライト・イン・横浜）

 

Dang, that Frank Nagai（フランク永井）! He was quite the natty dresser when he was younger, wasn't he? I'm not sure but I think this is the only Nagai single in the family collection.

That single happens to be "Moonlight in Yokohama", the fifth of six singles that were released by him in August 1964 alone! It must have been quite the assembly line for his recording career during his peak. But that's not only the interesting observations for this particular song written by Seiichi Ida（井田誠一）and composed by Yoichi Suzuki（鈴木庸一）. 

For one thing, after listening to the song, I have gotten the impression that it's somewhere between Mood Kayo and a regular kayo kyoku. However, as I was looking at the lyric sheet in the record, both it and its B-side have the label ryukoka（流行歌）written next to them. Ryukoka has been seen as the preceding name for kayo kyoku in the Taisho and early Showa eras in the early 20th century and it also means popular music. 

Another point is the fact that it's been given that title of "Moonlight in Yokohama" with the first two words in katakana to transcribe those English words into Japanese script while the city remains written in kanji form. Obviously, I'm merely speculating but the song title could easily have been the wholly Japanese "Yokohama Gekkou"（横浜月光）with the same meaning. I kinda wonder what Ida, Suzuki and Nagai (and the other powers-that-be within the record company) were thinking about when coming up with the title. Had they wanted to show the international nature of Yokohama? One last thing was how the verses in "Moonlight in Yokohama" were in a minor key only to jump up into a major one once the chorus arrives perhaps to add a little more depth to Ida's lyrics about having gained and lost love in the famed Japanese port. Maybe the protagonist is alone again but there are no regrets about the affair itself. After all, as the Alfred Tennyson saying goes, "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all".