Yutaka Kimura Speaks ~ Japanese City Pop Masterpieces 100: Ginji Ito -- Skylight ni Poplar no Kareha（SKYLIGHTにポプラの枯葉）

From Good Free Photos

 

(acoustic cover version)

Number: 046

Lyricist: Yukio Matsuo

Composer/Arranger: Ginji Ito

From Ito's 1983 album: "Winter Wonderland"

"Skylight ni Poplar no Kareha" (Autumn Poplar Leaves in the Skylight) is a sentimental medium-tempo tune with Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）providing the background chorus. For Ginji Ito（伊藤銀次）, this may have been during his Beat Pops period*, but whenever he reveals his romantic side, he is more charming than anyone else out there. His sweet vocal quality is also most excellent. As we get deeper into autumn each year, I pull out his record and I just listen to this song.

The above comes from "Disc Collection Japanese City Pop Revised" (2020).

Hi, J-Canuck here. This is another song that I hadn't covered before its appearance as one of the 100 songs on Kimura's list, and the reason here is that it's the first time since I began covering all of these masterpieces that I could not find a complete original version of the song as of this writing (considering that we are almost halfway through the list before hitting our first blank, so to speak, isn't too bad though). However, I was able to track down an excerpt which you can listen to here, and in fact, it sounds so cheerfully wintry that it may be downright Xmas. I was able to find the above video from YouTube which is, as mentioned, a lovely acoustic guitar take by YouTuber kompeitou7 from over a decade ago. Incidentally, according to Discogs, the official English title for "Skylight ni Poplar no Kareha" was supposedly "Autumn Scene".

*I have no idea what Kimura is referring to with the "Beat Pops" period. The only thing that I could find when I put in the term into Yahoo Japan search engine was a popular Japanese radio program from the 1960s. I can only assume that the journalist was talking about a time in the 1980s when Ito was perhaps handling more upbeat pop fare but if there are any Ito fans who can illuminate me, that would be greatly appreciated.