Happy Monday! And it's a regular Monday here but I had been wondering why the Jme TV schedule was all different today. For instance, we only had a half hour of NHK's "News at 9" broadcast instead of the usual one hour and as it turned out, that was due to the fact that it was the third Monday of July, the national holiday known as Marine Day in Japan. So, I figure that everyone was out at the beach or on the water today. Then again, I figure that everyone has been out at the beach or on the water every weekend during this blistering summer.
Well, I thought about putting up something ocean-based as a kayo kyoku today and it didn't take me long to find this one called "Showa Kitamaebune" (The Northbound Ships of Showa) which was enka singer Ichiro Toba's（鳥羽一郎）14th single from May 1987. Crustily sung by Toba, the kitamaebune even has an English Wikipedia entry which talks about Edo Era and Meiji Era merchant ships which went along a route from Osaka all the way up to Hokkaido while stopping off at ports along the Sea of Japan. However, with the advent of railroads on land, the kitamaebune had soon been tossed onto the transportation heap of history before the end of the Meiji Era.
Written by Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）and composed by Toru Funamura（船村徹）, I'm assuming that the kitamaebune depicted in this muscular enka number was talking more of a manly man's farewell to his younger sister as she joins her new husband up further north sometime in the Showa Era (1926-1989). The song might have that feeling of a tough Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）song but the lyrics reveal more of the tender side of a bittersweet goodbye and good luck to a beloved family member.
The above video comes from NP-office and it silently shows a typical kitamaebune.
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