Koji Kobayashi -- Tokyo no Yane（東京の屋根）

 

Earlier today, when I was writing up the article for "Minuet"（メヌエット）by Chika Ueda（上田知華） + Karyobin, I also noted that Ueda herself had performed the song on a 1978 episode of a relatively long-running TBS drama called "Sannan Sanjo Muko Ippiki"（三男三女婿一匹...Three Sons, Three Daughters and One Son-In-Law） starring thespian Hisaya Morishige（森繫久彌）. Well, seeing out of curiosity that "Minuet" hadn't been used as the theme song for the show, I decided to see what was used.

For the second season (in each of the three seasons, different songs were utilized), the opening theme was singer-songwriter Koji Kobayashi's（小林幸司）1978 single "Tokyo no Yane" (The Roof Over Tokyo). Composed by Yasuo Higuchi（樋口康雄）, the music strikes me as being a tune describing a new optimistic morning coming to greet Japan's capital city. It has elements of folk and rock so it was rather easy for me to place it into the New Music category (and there's even a part of it which had me thinking of Elton John's "Tiny Dancer"). The star of "Sannan Sanjo Muko Ippiki" himself, Morishige, provided the lyrics which also describe the wonder and good vibes of waking up in one of the largest cities on the planet.

As for Kobayashi himself, there are some videos of his music up on YouTube but there isn't much of a profile on the man. The blog where I found out about the songwriters behind "Tokyo no Yane" only noted his husky yet high-tone vocals, although I have to admit that his voice does indeed remind me of the voice of later pop star Hideaki Tokunaga（徳永英明）. The only other information that I could get on him was that he was briefly a vocalist in 1980 for the duo Buzz（バズ）which had come up with the big hit of 1973, "Ken to Mary ~ Ai to Kaze no yo ni" (ケンとメリー〜愛と風のように〜) .

Still, it is nice to unearth this little gem.💎