Happy Monday! Well, the third Monday of July has already passed in Japan but they did celebrate a long weekend culminating in the national holiday of "Umi no Hi" or Marine Day (or Sea Day or Ocean Day). I was watching the NHK news footage of kids and grownups hitting the sea and having oodles of fun while the heat wave bombarded on them. And so I figured about whether I actually had done a tribute to the national holiday. As it turned out, I did do a tribute back in 2023, also on the third Monday of July.
But I still wouldn't let the idea of another Author's Picks go. So thanks to a J-Wiki entry called "Umi wo Daizai to Shita Gakkyoku"（海を題材とした楽曲...Songs Themed on the Sea）, I was able to find some more ocean-frolicking-themed tunes that I had already written about way back when. Without further ado then:
(1966) The Wild Ones -- Omoide no Nagisa（想い出の渚）
(1980) Seiko Matsuda -- Aoi Sangoshou（青い珊瑚礁）
(1984) Junichi Inagaki -- Ocean Blue （オーシャンブルー）
(1984) Kiyotaka Sugiyama & Omega Tribe -- Kimi no Heart wa Marine Blue （君のハートはマリンブルー）
(1985) Yukiko Okada -- Summer Beach
(1986) TUBE -- Season In The Sun
I was just reading up on marine day yesterday! To my understanding it was only made a national holiday back in 1995, but the celebration itself dates back to 1941?
ReplyDeleteThat's right. A communications minister for the Imperial government in 1941 commemorated the day on behalf of Emperor Meiji's voyage on the Meiji Maru back in 1876. It didn't become a national holiday until 1995 and then from 2003, just to make a long weekend, Marine Day would take place on the 3rd Monday in July.
DeleteAt this point, I think June is the only month in Japan that doesn't have any sort of official holiday or celebration.