Well, I did mention yesterday about St. Patrick's Day today and so young Kayo has decided to take part in the annual St. Patrick's Day parade somewhere on Earth. And rest assured, she is old enough to enjoy a pint of Guinness at some Irish pub though the bartender may ask her for ID. She might even be flattered by the request.
It's a bit of a tall ask but I was looking around to see if there were a kayo kyoku associated with the Irish holiday, and sure enough, I couldn't find anything. Then I searched for any Japanese songs that had a connection with Ireland itself. Once again, I got nothing. So, next I made the trek for any song title that had the word "green" or "midori".
Happily, it was there that I got the hit. Let me introduce you to "Midori no Uta" (The Green Song or The Greenery Song) which was released in 1948 and it is a duet between the legendary Ichiro Fujiyama（藤山一郎）and children's song vocalist Aiko Anzai（安西愛子）. Written by Riki Nakamura（中村利器）and composed by Yuuji Koseki（古関裕而）, "Midori no Uta" is a typically Koseki upbeat march, this time celebrating the verdant land surrounding the citizenry. It was still the early days of recovery from the war so I'm not sure whether all involved with the kayo kyoku were reflecting on home and hearth in the regional towns and villages while the younger generations were toiling away in the factories in the big cities. Perhaps Tokyo had some greenery in patches where people could visit and relax.
There's not much of a writeup on Anzai but on J-Wiki, she was born in Tokyo in 1917 and after her singing days, she became a Lower House member for the Liberal Democratic Party for three terms. She also had high status in a few organizations including one as vice-chairperson for the ultra-conservative Japan Conference lobbying group. She passed away in 2017 at the age of 100.
With as much as Japanese like beer I would think there would be at least one song about green beer. This is a mystery
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