Takuro Yoshida -- Soto wa Shiroi Yuki no Yoru（外は白い雪の夜）

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I'd been hearing about this big snowstorm that was about to engulf the Kanto region all yesterday, but as of Sunday night (Monday morning in Japan), nothing had materialized on the ground or in the air. However all that changed when I woke up and watched "NHK News at 9". Looks like even Tokyo got hit with a few inches of the white stuff and there may be more coming in the next several hours. Not surprisingly, transportation systems have been paralyzed. Well, it appears as if my old stomping grounds got the snow that would usually be hitting my hometown at around this time but hasn't this year.

Entering this week, obviously I don't want to particularly celebrate the fact that people are being inconvenienced by Tokyo's Big Snow of 2024. However, I did think about putting up a kayo kyoku associated with the precipitation and I found an interesting one: Takuro Yoshida's（吉田拓郎）"Soto wa Shiroi Yuki no Yoru" (It's a Snowy Night Outside).

Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Yoshida, it's definitely a folksy number lasting more than six minutes with that mandolin and even Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）was helping out on the original recording by playing the accordion. The sweet melody is presenting a bittersweet story of a romance that has run its course as a woman calls a man to meet at the restaurant where they first met. As soon as the man realizes the meeting place, he knows that the time has come for the breakup. And the tone from Yoshida as he sings it feels like a "That's the way life goes" elegy.

"Soto wa Shiroi Yuki no Yoru" was a track on Yoshida's November 1978 album "Rolling 30"（ローリング30）which hit No. 8 on Oricon. There's an anecdote on the J-Wiki article for the song which involves Yoshida's one and only appearance on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen in 1994. At the time, I'd been just several weeks into my second stint in Japan and I had friends over at the apartment for a hot pot party on New Year's Eve. I did have the Kohaku on for a little bit on my tiny television but hadn't been aware that Yoshida was one of the participants.

Anyways, Yoshida's lone appearance had him sing "Soto wa Shiroi Yuki no Yoru" and when I first read the J-Wiki anecdote, my assumption had been that he could no longer stand the song and no longer performed it. That was absolutely wrong...I read it a couple of more times and realized that he actually disliked being on the Kohaku and would reject any further invitations by NHK, according to a 2016 interview. Well, at least I'm happy that he still likes the song.

Please be warm and safe, citizens of Kanto!