Hachiro Kasuga -- Tokyo Sakaba (東京酒場)

I've been doing a lot of thinking. Well, maybe a bit too much because I think I'm beginning to see smoke coming out of my ears. But much of it revolved around Hachiro Kasuga (春日八郎) - shocker. I've had an entire year to figure out where I think he stands in the world of enka and kayokyoku. For the most part, I came to the conclusion that he's not just an enka singer, but a singer who can sing any genre. I focused on the point that he and his biggest hits were turned into enka when the genre was formally formed in the late 1960s/early 1970s, and grew hesitant to call him an enka singer. But my inhibitions have been lowered the more I read about and listened to Kasuga's thoughts on enka and after getting a feel of what his die-hard fans thought of him and the genre. Kasuga genuinely seemed to have embraced enka as his own and worked hard to show it from at least the 1970s all the way up to his death in the early 1990s. He released many overtly enka songs and albums, founded a club that supported aspiring enka singers in the 1970s (Enka wo sodateru kai (演歌を育てる会)), and hosted enka radio programs in the 1980s. Of course, I still believe that Kasuga can do more than just enka and that he was made into an enka singer. But if my Hachi believed that he was true blue enka, then that's what he is. I only managed to sort out my thoughts on this matter just today, mainly because it's the crux of my thesis and I can see the deadline catching up to me. But it was also something I felt that I had to figure out as a Hachiro Kasuga fan. 

Throughout my Hachi Centenary project, I had solely focused on his works produced before 1975, the majority of which, I would say, had little to no enka flavour. But since I have finally accepted that Hachi is an enka singer and began to re-listen to some of his later-day works, I would like to feature a Kasuga Enka for my final post as the singer's centenary celebration year comes to a close. This song is "Tokyo Sakaba".

This Kasuga Enka (春日艶歌) has everything: Bar stools (tomarigi), alcohol (mizu-wari), Tokyo, bars (sakaba), heartbreak, pining for one's lover at the bar, backup singers going "haa", and the koto (?) played in the tremolo manner. The only thing preventing me from getting an Enka royal flush is that this is a yonanuki pentatonic major scale song, not minor. Still, "Tokyo Sakaba" is truly an enka with a capital "EN". Seiji Kibugawa's (葵生川正治) melody makes this one of those enka tunes that sounds cheerful with its snappy melody, but once you hear what Hachi is actually singing, you realise how depressing it is. Ryutaro Kinoshita's (木下竜太郎)* words feature a man feeling the bite of a broken heart over his drink in a cozy bar in the heart of the city. I joke about the backup singers going "haa", but it's reminiscent of our protagonist's sighs as his ex-lover doesn't show up to their usual bar once again. 

"Tokyo Sakaba" was released in Hachi's original album "Asu e no Shuppatsu" (明日への出発), which was released in 1981. Based on one of the Kasuga Kayo-Enka medley videos uploaded by user kiibo55 that includes this song, "Asu e no Shuppatsu" was meant to commemorate both Hachi's 30th Anniversary in showbiz and King Records' 50th Anniversary. Admittedly, I haven't listened to 80s enka in a really long time, especially not from Hachi, so listening to "Tokyo Sakaba" and the other entries in this album is a nice change in pace. Kinda like having a nice, warm barley tea after all that coffee and earl grey. Sake would be a better EN-alogy in this case, but I do not drink. 

What a year it has been. I finally joined the fan club of my favourite artist, met people who love him as much or even more than I do, and learned so much more about him than I ever had in the previous 6 years of being a fan. Doing my Hachi Centenary project on KKP has also been really fun, so it feels a little sad that it's coming to a close. I think I'll keep it going until March next year since I started the series in March of this year. With that, I'd like to wish you guys a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

*I was doing up a Hachi singles discography as an appendix for my paper, and I came across some interesting songwriter names amidst the sea of Kenji Yoshidaya (吉田矢健治) and Ryo Yano (矢野亮) in my references. Perhaps one I found the most amusing was Kinoshita's, because there were a few songs he made that had their lyrics written by one Noboru Taki (滝のぼる). There's this myth that if a carp successfully swims up a waterfall, it will turn into a dragon. Taki's name literally means "Climb the waterfall" and Kinoshita's has a dragon under a tree, which makes me wonder if they were a songwriting duo that wanted to represent this myth in their names. It sounds auspicious, so maybe they were hoping it would bring them luck with producing hits.