Shinichi Mori -- Bojou ~ Amakusa no Onna（慕情〜天草の女〜）

By STA3816 via Wikimedia Commons

Earlier this morning, I turned on Jme to see the NHK news when I saw the familiar blue frame surrounding the video, and I knew immediately that there had been some major disaster. Unfortunately, Kumamoto Prefecture was hit with a big earthquake a decade following the tremor that had slammed into it before. I'm hoping that everyone in the province is doing OK under the circumstances, especially the family of an old friend of mine.

To start off today's duo of articles, I've decided to go with a go-touchi song from Kumamoto Prefecture (specifically the city of Amakusa) by enka veteran Shinichi Mori（森進一）relatively early in his career. "Bojou ~ Amakusa no Onna" (Longing ~ Woman of Amakusa). Released in April 1971 as Mori's 19th single, it's a bittersweet enka regarding the theme of "parting is such sweet sorrow" as one-half of a once-happy relationship is now on a boat slowly puttering away from the Amakusa shore (you can hear the engine itself at the beginning and the end) while the other half is probably standing devastated on that shore. Mori was most likely already the go-to singer for heartrending enka thanks to his weeping vocals.

Written by Akari Yamaguchi（山口あかり）, "Bojou" was composed by Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）. It's not everyday that Hirao came up with an enka melody so I consider this quite the revelation. It broke the Oricon Top 10 by coming in at No. 9 and it sold 300,000 copies in the first month following its release.