Yoshiaki Ohuchi -- City Kobe（シティ神戸）

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I've been to the city of Kobe three times in my life and one of my regrets is that out of those three times, I don't think I've ever taken any great pictures of the Kansai metropolis outside of some shots of the Portopia Hotel and Port Island. It is a picturesque city, though, with areas such as Sannomiya Station, Chinatown, Kitano Ijinkan and Kobe Port Tower.

It was only a little more than a month ago that I posted the late singer-songwriter Yoshiaki Ohuchi's（大内義昭）1990 "Zero de Hajimaru Number"（ゼロではじまるナンバー）, a City Pop/rock song. Well, he also put out something a little different around five years later in 1995 titled "City Kobe". According to his J-Wiki article, the song had already been ready to release on January 18th that year as this refined love song to the city, but then the preceding day, the Great Hanshin Earthquake wreaked havoc in Kobe and the surrounding area. That day was a day off for me from work and when I turned on the television, every station was focused on the devastation. At first, the grogginess from waking up had me wondering for several seconds about what the heck happened before it finally dawned on me that a major disaster had occurred a few hours earlier. It was such that I called up my relatives in Osaka to see if they were fine.

Getting back to "City Kobe", Ohuchi's song took on a more important meaning and outside of the first batch of singles, any future issues of the CD included some catchphrasing encouraging support for Kobe. "City Kobe" was written by Yoshiro Yashima（八島義郎）and composed/arranged by Ohuchi. For the most part, I would call it a refined New Adult Music creation with some underlying enka feeling and sophisticated pop strings but Ohuchi also decided to throw in some old-fashioned exotic kayo measures for good measure, perhaps to reflect the international nature of the port.