Akira Matsudaira -- Yoru no Ame (夜の雨)

On a recent trip to Fukushima, I visited famed ryukoka composer Yuji Koseki's (古関裕而) museum, and on display were some of the composer's own home videos. One of such Koseki "vlogs" was essentially a "Day in the Life at Columbia Records 1937" and featured the song recording process. This was an extra sweet treat as it allowed me to see some singers and composers in motion for the very first time. I momentarily died upon seeing some of it, but that's okay... Dramatic reaction aside, without a doubt, Akira Matsudaira (松平晃) was in the footage - Koseki sensei filmed his rehearsal session. I figured that I've now come to enjoy Akira-san's presence quite a bit since I couldn't stop a grin from forming while watching his part. 

That grin I did kinda looked like the one above, actually.

One of the songs that made me warm up to Akira-san further was "Yoru no Ame" (Night rain/Rainy night). I just happened to pick this at random when going through the singer's best albums not too long ago. Perhaps I was curious as to how this one went because the title looked similar to "Minato no Ame" (港の雨), his early-day piece that I've come to like very much. But while titles looked similar, their sounds have never been more different. "Minato no Ame" sounds more like Japanese kayokyoku of the early enka (艶歌) style, whereas "Yoru no Ame" sounds as jazzy and Western as you can get. It'd be of no surprise if it'd been an imported Western piece he covered, but we'll get to that discussion in a bit.

Considering the jazz bug hit the early kayo industry in the 1930s, especially at Columbia Records, I shouldn’t be surprised that Matsudaira dabbled in jazz songs. And by “jazz songs”, I don’t necessarily mean just American jazz, but the umbrella term the record industry used at the time to basically refer to any foreign Western song brought into the Japanese market. Anyways, perhaps it's because of Akira-san’s hits being mostly koya mono (曠野もの... A genre of songs featuring Manchuria/inner China/Mongolia that were hot in the early to mid-30s after the 1931 Manchuria Incident and the later creation of the Manchukuo puppet state) and darker-sounding kayokyoku, so I never equated Akira-san to the more Western side of things. It's also probably because my image of male Japanese jazz singers of that time from Columbia and other record companies was wildly different from the image I had of our man himself. So, hearing something like "Yoru no Ame" from him was quite the surprise. 

"Yoru no Ame" kicks off with some ominous-sounding strings that feels as though you got caught in a gnarly storm in an old Disney film, but quickly clears into an oddly cheerful ditty. It gives off a similar bright tone to "Singin' in the Rain", as even though our downtrodden protagonist has grey clouds over his heart, he revels in the night's downpour which washes away all his worries. We can feel our protagonist becoming lighter, having been cleansed of his troubles, when the music swells after the first chorus. In Akira-san's booming delivery in the second chorus, one can sense a feeling of liberation, especially when he's egging on the rain to soak him through and through. (Noelle from 18/6/24: I think one could also interpret the rain as tears/crying. In that sense, the protagonist may have gone to a quiet sob to bawling his eyes out, but the relief he gets from letting out his emotions allows him to finally feel liberated/at peace.) 

On the note of Akira-san's singing, a thing I had with it was that I thought his tenor with a slight nasally twang tended to be on the stiff side and not showcased much emotion nor vocal prowess - compared to his music school-trained contemporaries, at least. But here was where I finally felt that I got the full extent of what Akira-san was capable of.

That said, I’m actually unsure of a number of stats on “Yoru no Ame”. For one, I don’t know who composed it. According to the Showa Museum (昭和館) archives and Spotify, stated as the lyricist was a Tsuneharu Fukuda (福田恒治), which was Matsudaira's real name. The composer was not shown, but the arranger was: Takio Niki (仁木他喜雄), who was renowned for creating and arranging many a jazz song from Columbia throughout the 1930s. It could be that it was a cover of a Western song and the original composer wasn't really known. Or maybe I'm just overthinking and that Akira-san also did the music. (Noelle from 12/4/24: J-Canuck mentioned that "Yoru no Ame" is a cover of Fats Waller's "Ain't Misbehavin'" from 1929, its score written by Waller and Harry Brooks. So, it is, indeed, a Jazz song. I'll put the Waller's version below.)

That brings me to my next puzzle, which was when this song was released, as the above sources and the 78Music website garnered no results. I attempted to look up the song in the JASRAC database, but it produced no such song by Akira-san, which is strange considering it has a record label number. I might try looking it up at the National Diet Library’s physical archives when I have the time. But if it really doesn’t draw up anything either, I wonder if it's like Akira-san’s version of “Hōrī Jun Zairai” (何日君再来), it was recorded but never reproduced or released after recording, but dug up decades later to be digitalized. It's very possible. A theory I have if, indeed, this scenario was the case, I wonder if the song was made in the late 30s/early 40s, but shelved because of the Pacific War and the domestic battle against all Western music come 1940, and never saw the light of day until now... But then again, even the once shelved “Hōrī Jun Zairai” is logged in the JASRAC website... "Yoru no Ame" is a strange one. (Noelle from 14/4/24: Early Showa culture enthusiast Tadaaki Kitagawa (@anakuro69) from the Twitter grapevine noted that the record number of "Yoru no Ame" makes it very likely that it was released some time between December 1939 and January 1940.)

Akira-san singing "Yoru no Ame" is at the 1:16 mark.

Noelle from 14/6/24: Akira-san appeared as a minor character (the music teacher of one of the main characters) in the film "Junjou Nijuusou" (純情二重奏) from August 1939. He even showed up in the very first scene playing the piano while crooning "Yoru no Ame." I've never heard him speak until this very scene, and his voice was way higher and softer than I imagined it to be.

Source: 帝國ノ犬達 (Ameba)

Finding more songs of his I enjoy was a major factor in allowing me to see Matsudaira in a better light. But I think calling him "Akira-san" and that kinda awkward/goofy smile (that’s honestly pretty cute) of his helped considerably.