Yoshimi Tendo -- Showa Katagi（昭和かたぎ）

 

It was a pretty good night on "Uta Con"（うたコン）. One of my favourites, Masayuki Suzuki（鈴木雅之）, was there and there was a segment of the singers covering some old kayo kyoku. I was surprised and then not surprised to hear the late great Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）covering the recently departed Shinji Tanimura's（谷村新司）"Subaru"（昴）. If anyone could do additional justice to the song besides the original singer, it would be the Queen of Kayo Kyoku. 

Speaking of whom, veteran enka singer Yoshimi Tendo（天童よしみ）, someone that members of my family have dubbed the heir apparent for Misora, made her appearance. She did her own cover of Kenji Sawada's（沢田研二）1975 "Toki no Sugi Yuku Mama ni"（時の過ぎゆくままに） and it was nice to hear her tackle a non-enka tune.

However, enka is her realm after all so later on in the program, Tendo featured her newest release "Showa Katagi" which was made known to all a week ago as her 81st single. With that proud melody by Hideo Mizumori（水森英夫）spearheaded by that sharp trumpet, I had assumed that with the title, the song was a tribute to the Showa era, something that has been done by other singers over the past few years. 

But actually, when I looked up the second word katagi in the language banks, I found out that the term means "person in a respectable occupation" or "honest, decent". Looking through the lyrics by Reiji Mizuki（水木れいじ）, it's about a woman in love with her man in some small village or town. The trade that the man is involved in isn't known but he's putting in a hard day's work each and every day and perhaps the song is just as much about the impression of a Showa era guy: decent, hard-working if taciturn. I gather that the song title can be translated as "A Hard-Working Showa Man". 

Kinda taking off in another tangent here but in recent years, whenever I think of the typical Showa era guy, I'm often reminded of Komi-san's father although seeing that the anime is based in contemporary times, he's really a Heisei era guy. Maybe he would have spent his earliest years as a kid in Showa. As he has been depicted so far, he hasn't exploded in rage either.