Goro Noguchi -- Musashino Shijin（むさし野詩人）

 

I caught this Goro Noguchi（野口五郎）single on an episode of "Yoru no Hit Studio"（夜のヒットスタジオ）a few weeks ago. To be honest, I didn't pay too much attention to it when he sang it on stage, but listening to the original recorded version paid some more dividends to me.

"Musashino Shijin" (The Poet of Musashino) was Noguchi's 22nd single from January 1977. Written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, composed by Noguchi's older brother Hiroshi Sato（佐藤寛...not to be confused with the late City Pop keyboardist and singer） and arranged by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, it starts out for a few seconds sounding like a rock tune but then slides into something more wistful and perhaps approaching the feeling of a City Pop song. Actually, the story of the song was based on Inokashira Park which straddles the districts of Musashino and Mitaka in Tokyo, so I guess with that in mind and along with that funky beat, perhaps it can be a City Pop song. Noguchi was heading in that direction anyways.

Strangely enough though, according to the J-Wiki article on "Musashino Shijin", Matsumoto's lyrics actually refer to Musashino Park located in another area of Tokyo. I can only gather that the name of Musashino sounded better to Matsumoto than Inokashira. Regardless, his lyrics refer to the titular poet as a young man who began, experienced and ended a love affair around the park, and he's rather dramatically dressing it up as a song, poem or scene from a movie. Quite the drama king, isn't he?

"Musashino Shijin" made it all the way up to No. 2 on Oricon, eventually becoming the 33rd-ranked single of 1977. The video below shows Inokashira Park in all of its glory. I only went there once myself during my days in Tokyo. I'm sure that the park is always buzzing with people during cherry blossom season.