Hachiro Kasuga -- Namida Machi (なみだ町)

Hachiro Kasuga's (春日八郎) voice was often described as a beautiful, resonant or strong high tone, but also sad. The "sad" quality, I've come to realise, is what can put people off his songs. 

I once heard a Michiya Mihashi (三橋美智也) fan say that as much as they tried to like Hachi, they simply couldn't - the more they listened to him, the more depressed they got. Hachi had depressing quality to his voice. Oddly enough, that's exactly how Michi's voice is to me, but that was the first time I'd heard such a critique of Hachi and I found it rather intriguing. And then, I recently got a book "Enka no Tatsujin" (演歌の達人) (2001) by Rinichi Sato (佐藤稟一), and the author described Hachi's style in a similar way, albeit with intense vocabulary that tested my painfully average reading skills to the limit. Sato described Hachi's voice as "bukimi" (不気味… eerie, ominous, unearthly), chilling to the heart, and akin to taking a peek into the depths of despair. The lyrics in his songs all tend to have a hollow loneliness to match those dark vocals. Sato did mean this in a relatively positive way, though.

I certainly agree that Hachi's vocals were often tinted with a shade of melancholy and longing, and they can cast a heavier atmosphere on his already sad songs. But I never felt like I was staring into a pit of despair when his delicate voice hit my ears. When I'm down, his voice, even when relaying some of his most melancholic works, doesn't make me feel worse or like a hollowed-out husk. Rather, it feels like he's sharing the pain and crying with me. That, ironically, makes his songs comforting (to me).

“Namida Machi” is the first song in this compilation.

One of those instances where this was felt was when listening to "Namida Machi" (Street/Avenue of Tears). Released in February 1969, I would describe as a pleasant, albeit orthodox (oh, geez, it has come to this*) bluesy Mood Kayo. The mid to late 1960s into the early 1970s was when Mood Kayo, particularly of this sort, was all the rage considering the explosive popularity of the husky-voiced Mori Shinichi (森進一) and Fuji Keiko (藤圭子) and their jazz-inspired numbers. Behind many of these anguish-filled hits like "Onna no Tameiki" (女のためいき) was the composer of "Namida Machi," the renowned Kosho Inomata (猪俣公章). So, it is of no surprise that his composition for Hachi here was of such a style. But unlike the likes of Mori and Fuji, Hachi doesn’t sound angry and upset. His sadness is the quiet sort, which his voice conveys.

The whine of the tenor saxophone creates a rather cold and lonely atmosphere in Inomata’s composition. Accompanying that is a languid rhythm reminiscent of a slow step: you're tired and don't feel like walking, but you still push yourself forward with feet dragging. And then we have Hachi's quiet-sad vocals. To Hachi’s frequent collaborator Hiroshi Yokoi's (横井弘) words, Kasuga relays pain and of a man alone after letting go of his lover; he tries to perk himself up at the local bar district, but to no avail, and instead ends up in the titular “street of tears.” Yet, seen in the last stanza, he still holds on to hope for a better tomorrow. I think Hachi expresses this forlornness to a T, his use of the falsetto only accentuates the mix of emotions, and it almost sounds like the main character is trying to hold back his tears. His vocals are what takes this pretty good... orthodox... Mood Kayo up a notch.

Hachi's songs, are by far, the ones that pull the most emotions out of me, generally through the message of encouragement. But I think "Namida Machi" is the song where there isn't the message of, “You can do it!" from Hachi, but more like "It's okay to be sad and cry sometimes." 

And I really feel that.

 

P.S. Okay, I know I didn't do a proper Hachi article for July, but I did talk about Hachi, his relation to one of the great Showa era composers Yoshi Eguchi (江口夜詩) and one of his covers in the article featuring Akira Matsudaira's (松平晃) "Isoge Horo Basha" (急げ幌馬車)  I shall assume that Hachi is fine with the arrangement.

*For some reason, the King Records staff, particularly lyricist and creative director Ryo Yano (矢野亮) loved using the word "orthodox" (written in katakana) to describe Hachi's songs in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The word used to rile me because of how frequently it was peppered into the singer’s album liner notes. But after being inundated with phrases like “orthodox enka” while working on a project, it’s beginning to enter my own lexicon and I am slightly worried.