Ichiro Fujiyama -- Sake wa Namida ka Tameiki ka（酒は涙か溜息か）

 

Welcome to the first weekend of February 2024. After getting through one of the grayest Januarys on record, we Torontonians are now bathed in brilliant sunshine. We could use a lot of that Vitamin D!

Therefore, it must seem a tad ironic that I'm starting this weekend session of KKP with an old kayo that's quite melancholy in verse and melody. And, true to my age and aging memory banks, I can't quite remember how I found out about Ichiro Fujiyama's（藤山一郎）"Sake wa Namida ka Tameiki ka" (Is Drinking About the Tears or the Sighs?). I very much doubt it was another discovery from the Weather News segment and the song hadn't been listed on the playlist during last week's episode of "Uta Con"（うたコン）.

Regardless, it's a good song to place onto the blog since it was a huge hit for the legendary Fujiyama after its release in September 1931 and probably one of the landmark examples of Showa era kayo kyoku. On J-Wiki, it's been designated as a form of ryukoka（流行歌）, which literally means "pop song", as well as a kayo kyoku (same meaning). However, despite coming to realize over the years through working on this blog and learning from fellow co-administrator Noelle that the genre of enka hadn't actually originated until the 1950s after the war, I still couldn't help but categorize "Sake wa Namida ka Tameiki ka" as a retrofitted enka tune because of the sound and the people involved in its creation.

For one thing, it was Masao Koga（古賀政男）, an up-and-coming composer at the time, who came up with the contemplative melody (powered by that famous guitar playing of his), something that has been a characteristic among that section of kayo kyoku known as the Koga Melodies (and you can get plenty of those through Noelle's Creator articles on the man himself at Part 1 and Part 2) although he has also been capable of jaunty tunes as well. Kikutaro Takahashi（高橋掬太郎）, who was also a newspaper reporter in Hokkaido, wrote the lyrics of heartbreak and loneliness. From the title, I'm assuming that the heartbroken lad in the song was trying to drown his sorrows in drink but not altogether successfully.

According to a 1997 issue of the "Kobe Shimbun"（神戸新聞...The Kobe Newspaper） via that J-Wiki article, "Sake wa Namida ka Tameiki ka" became a huge hit for the classically-trained crooner Fujiyama while the world was struggling through a major economic tempest. In fact, 800,000 records were sold which outpaced the sales of phonographs that year in Japan by a ratio of 4:1. In a foretelling of 1950s/1960s movies based on hit kayo, a couple of movies were inspired by Fujiyama's hit.