Fubuki Koshiji -- Bara Iro no Jinsei（ばら色の人生）

From Good Free Photos

 

Supposedly, we're only a month away from the Paris Olympics, so I guess this can be considered a tribute article to the major sporting event. However what got me to write about this song wasn't the Games.

Yesterday, we got to see NHK's "Uta Con"（うたコン）for the first time in a couple of weeks on June 25th. Actually, the show hadn't been pre-empted on the source network on the 18th but when I saw the hosts announce on the 11th that the episode on the 18th would have a Disney theme, faster than the NHK copyright troll yelling, "No Uta Con for you!", I knew that we wouldn't be getting an episode for that week. For the past couple of years, the general rule on TV Japan and now Jme has been that Disney songs simply can't be heard via NHK.

Let me just stop the rant there, though. The theme for the show yesterday was the genre of chanson and overall French pop which has had its fans for decades now. So, of course, it was also an indirect theme for the late chanson singer Fubuki Koshiji（越路吹雪）who had given her covers of songs such as "Sans Toi M'amie"（サン・トワ・マミー）and "Hymne A L'Amour". At first, I'd assume that I could do an article on "Les Champs-Élysées", but I had already done so all the way back in 2016.

However, I didn't give up there. Although the song hadn't been presented on "Uta Con" last night, there was the famous "La Vie en rose", the 1945 classic by Edith Piaf, and sure enough, Koshiji did cover it via her 1968 album "Chanson no Subete"（シャンソンのすべて...All Chanson） under the translated title of "Bara Iro no Jinsei" with Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）as the lyricist for the Japanese words. Considering how iconic it is as one of the representative songs of the City of Lights, I was surprised that it didn't get its due on the episode. It's a gorgeous cover with a brilliant jazz trumpet reflecting the late night of Paris. In an odd way, despite the volume, I can also treat it as a lullaby.