As I mentioned in my previous article regarding "Good Night"（グッド・ナイト）, I heard a few songs that I hadn't encountered before on last night's "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）. This was another one from the ol' Showa Era.
The contemporary vocal trio Tokyo Rikisha（東京力車）sang "Wakai Ashita" (Young Tomorrows) and I thought from the sound of it, I had assumed that Kyu Sakamoto（坂本九）or The Crazy Cats were behind this very upbeat tune. So I was surprised to find out that it was actually Akira Fuse（布施明）who had originally recorded this for release in October 1965 as his 3rd single. I just wrote about him several days ago when he had done that cover of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive" in 1979.
Just a very shallow observation on my part since I haven't been a heavy follower of Fuse's long discography but my impression had been that a lot of his early material in the 1960s had been pretty introspective and serious before he and his music lightened up a lot going into the 1970s. Well, "Wakai Ashita" is one very happy and jazz-swinging tune created by composer Taku Izumi（いずみたく）and lyricist Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）. And the crazy thing is that even Iwatani's lyrics about keeping that optimistic outlook into the future are very positive rather than deceptively sad as was often the case with kayo kyoku.
Okay, I kind of feel that 「若い明日」 is closely tied to the television series 『青春とはなんだ』in a number of ways. The series premiered on October 24, 1965, at 8:00 p.m. on NTV, exactly two weeks after the record was released. It starred Yōsuke Natsuki (夏木陽介) as an unconventional young teacher, Nonomura Kensuke, who arrives at a provincial high school and challenges entrenched customs while working with his students through rugby. So perhaps the optimism of 「若い明日」 was not accidental at all. It seems like it was composed specifically for a program built around youth, physical energy, idealism, friendship, school life, and the belief that young people could make a different future.
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