Yukari Ito -- Koi suru Hitomi（恋する瞳）

 

This could go down as one of the longer and more curved preamble rambles that I've ever written to lead up to the song of the article, but please bear with me.

In the last half-hour or so, I encountered the "List of longest-running television shows by category" on Wikipedia and apparently at the top of this list is the "Lord Mayor's Show" on BBC. I've seen my fair share of BBC shows in my life such as "Doctor Who" (which is also on the list), but I'd never heard of this televised special that's been going on for 80 years, and the spectacle that's shown on screens has been one that has existed since the 13th century.

Japan has its own entry in the list with NHK's "Nodo Jiman"（のど自慢）amateur song contest show existing for 68 years. Even my humble Canada has one which is "Hockey Night in Canada" which has been around for 70 years. 

The Sanremo Music Festival is Italy's contribution to the list and it's an annual music spectacular that has been on television since 1951. Well, at the 15th edition at the end of January in 1965, there was a performance of a song, created by Vito Pallavicini and Gorni Kramer, titled "L'amore ha i tuoi occhi" (Love Has Your Eyes). Back then, according to the contest rules, each and every song had to be performed twice by two different singers or bands, and "L'amore ha i tuoi occhi" was performed by Bruno Filippini and young Japanese singer Yukari Ito（伊東ゆかり）.

It didn't take long for this Italian ballad to race across the continents to Japan since in March of that year, Ito had herself another new single which was a cover of the song she sang at Sanremo but given the Japanese title of "Koi suru Hitomi" (Eyes in Love) with Osamu Shouji（東海林修）handling the old-fashioned orchestral arrangement. The Japanese lyrics were provided by Hiroshi Arakaha（あらかはひろし）which was really a pen name for someone at the record company who had to come up with the words. Still, the song wasn't entirely in Japanese; Ito also sang the last half of "Koi suru Hitomi" in Italian.

All of the above was done simply because I knew that the Little Italy neighbourhood in Toronto was having its annual "A Taste of Little Italy" festival this weekend, and I was looking for a kayo kyoku as a tribute.