Haruo Minami -- Tanaka Ondo（田中音頭）

 

During my decades being interested and then living in Japan, I knew my fair share of Japanese Prime Ministers ranging from Yasuhiro Nakasone (good buddy to US President Ronald Reagan) to the current PM, Sanae Takaichi. But before all that, as a little kid, I had really only known of one Japanese Chief Executive and that was Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka（田中角栄）...basically because he had been involved in the Lockheed bribery scandals back in the 1970s. As time passed though, I came to realize that he had been a very powerful politician and that certain comedians loved to do impressions of him...usually by speaking in a very high-pitched crackly voice and pretending to flutter a hand fan in front of his own face.

I have the impression that he had been quite the popular Parliamentarian before he took the reins as PM in 1972 and I take it that he's one of the prime examples of a rags-to-riches story after being born poverty-stricken in Niigata Prefecture to eventually reach the highest position in the land. In fact, I guess he was so popular that the legendary enka and minyo singer Haruo Minami（三波春夫）wrote the glory-filled lyrics and recorded a minyo in tribute to him titled "Tanaka Ondo" (The Tanaka Song). Composed by Futoshi Satogawa（佐藤川太）, the song was released sometime in 1972 (maybe it was meant to commemorate his achievement of the prime ministership) and it sounds like any sort of traditional summer festival song. I think the back of the single cover page even had dance instructions. Couldn't quite find out whether Tanaka himself appreciated the musical gesture.