I've been a fan of Japanese popular music for 40 years, and have managed to collect a lot of material during that time. So I decided I wanted to talk about Showa Era music with like-minded fans. My particular era is the 70s and 80s (thus the "kayo kyoku"). The plus part includes a number of songs and artists from the last 30 years and also the early kayo. So, let's talk about New Music, aidoru, City Pop and enka.
Credits
I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.
I gather that Golden Week has reached the halfway point so according to NHK this morning, the U-turn rush has already begun with the cars heading back to Tokyo stuffing the highways rather than the opposite.
As of 2007, May the 4th became known as Greenery Day in Japan so I'm not sure whether there are (or were, as of this writing) any horticultural events throughout the country but hopefully, the plants and trees are growing luxuriantly. In Japanese, Greenery Day is translated into Midori no Hi（みどりの日）so I thought that it would be nice to have an Author's Picks on some of those songs sung by ladies with the given name of Midori.
Although the next couple of days following Showa Day are technically regular days, the Golden Week holidays have begun and apparently folks could have as many as twelve straight days off depending on how nice the bosses are. I knew that GW was on when I saw NHK show the annual Bullet Train capacity percentages and shots of highways showing a packed route going away from Tokyo and a relatively empty one going to Tokyo. From what I've seen so far, it looks like a lot of the Japanese may be keeping things within the nation instead of flying overseas due to the yen looking rather middling and the rise in a lot of things such as airplane fuel.
So I gather that it's time for an Author's Picks on vacations, and I'm surprised that I hadn't already done this in the past but I can rectify this right now.
The above video shows a variety of entrance ceremonies for the new recruits at various companies throughout Japan, including All Nippon Airways at 1:55. Yes, it is April and so the corporate entities are throwing out the red carpet and all of the rigamarole to welcome the fresh newbies
I was watching the NHK morning news earlier tonight and there was a feature on the ceremonies, and the reporters did an interesting thing by showing the evolution of the corporate entrance ceremony throughout the decades from the 1960s to the 1990s, and for each decade, they put up a representative pop song. Just out of my sense of whimsy, I'm going to put these up here, too.
(1960s) Yukio Hashi and Sayuri Yoshinaga -- Itsudemo Yume wo（いつでも夢を）
(1970s) Koichi Morita and The Top Gallants -- Seishun Jidai （青春時代）
Now, the above were selected by NHK so they wouldn't come under Author's Picks. That label is for us KKP writers. However, I am throwing in my lone choice for an inspiring song to help encourage the new workers.
(1990s) Daiji Man Brothers Band -- Sore ga Daiji （それが大事）
Man, I hope the Xmas revelers are enjoying really hot cocoa and nothing radioactive above. But it is indeed the season.
Of course, one of the great Christmas musical chestnuts out there is "Winter Wonderland" which was first recorded in 1934 by Felix Bernard and lyricist Richard Bernhard Smith, according to Wikipedia. Since then, the song has been covered by so many artists everywhere, and of course, that includes Bing Crosby. It wouldn't be a KKP Christmas without Der Bingle. And so, he came up with his version in 1962. The snazzy one with the cool video above may be the 1962 version or any subsequent version by him but let's just go with that year, shall we? His baritone will always be welcome in my ears at this time.
I've had this version of "Winter Wonderland" on the backlog for quite a while now, and I figure that it must have come from one of Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu" episodes, since I could never imagine a ska version of the classic. But here we are.
akiko is a jazz singer who has been on the blog before with her 2003 take on "Good Morning Heartache", originally performed by Billie Holiday. Well, she provides her jaunty collaboration with The Ska Flames in "Winter Wonderland" via her 2007 release "A White Album". The band has been around since 1985 and has released six albums and eight singles up to 2020.
Being Friday, I would usually be putting up my spate of urban contemporary tunes onto the blog, but I hope you'll permit me one change here. Singer and actor Yukio Hashi passed away at the age of 82 yesterday on September 4th. My parents and I were watching an NHK news flash when the announcement came out which garnered a joint gasp from all of us. In the last couple of years, we had seen him announce his retirement from show business in 2023, even going to the extent of searching for a young singer to take on the name of Yukio Hashi and continue his music. But due to popular demand, the original Hashi rescinded that retirement exactly a year later. I don't know if many of us who've enjoyed enka and Mood Kayo knew that he was sick but he had been diagnosed with an Alzheimer's-type disease earlier this year and that may have been a factor in his passing along with pneumonia according to the latest report on J-Wiki.
Hashi's death is especially poignant as he not only was one of the three young Turks in Japanese pop culture's first Gosanke trio alongside Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）and Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）, but in our household, I came to realize that a number of his records were part of my father's collection. So, his voice was a familiar one on the stereo although I wouldn't know who he really was until many years later. The Tokyo-born singer was mostly known for his enka and Mood Kayo classics but he could also put out songs that were outside of those traditional genres...songs that would also become very popular over the decades.
I'm going to put up the songs that I knew as a kid at home. My condolences go to Hashi's family, friends, and many fans.
Over a decade ago, I posted an article on Saburo Kitajima's（北島三郎）debut single from 1962, "Bungacha Bushi"（ブンガチャ節）. Kitajima has recently retired as the Grand Old Man of Enka but back in those early 1960s, he was merely a 26-year-old man getting his start in the music industry, so on hearing that his first song was getting banned due to some innuendo within the lyrics, he must have wondered whether he was heading back to the salt mines, figuratively speaking. He didn't have to worry too long, though.
In any case, I have his B-side here and it was created by the same duo behind "Bungacha Bushi", lyricist Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）and composer Toru Funamura（船村徹）. "Nakimushi Yokocho"(Crybaby Alley), just from the English translation of the title, might sound like something rock n' roll but as was the case with the A-side, it's a fairly galumphing kayo kyoku that still makes me wonder whether it can also be categorized as an upbeat enka tune despite all of the Western instrumentation. Lyrically speaking, it seems to be about the life in the inner city and all that reside there including the local gangster element.
This is not the weekly scheduled Reminiscings of Youth article today but I still wanted to provide a tribute to singer Connie Francis who had passed away yesterday at the age of 87. In the late 1950s and into the following decade, her hits were popular enough that in 1960, she was considered to be the most successful female recording artist in many countries including Japan. She's had a great tie with this blog in that a number of female Japanese singers covered her tunes to success themselves, something that has been noted within the articles here.
Kyoko Koizumi, etc. -- Collar ni Kuchibeni（カラーに口紅）
The last pair with "Lipstick On Your Collar" is something that I hadn't covered but I have heard the Francis original before through the many commercials featuring her hit compilations on television when I was a kid. As with the other covers, 80s aidoru Kyoko Koizumi（小泉今日子）was among a number of other Japanese singers who have covered the song under the Japanese title of "Collar ni Kuchibeni". I had never heard of this one by Kyon-Kyon before because it was on a September 1983 album of hers called "Separation Kyoko" which was only available on audiotape although it has been available online since 2013.
There are probably at least a few more of Francis' songs that have been covered but in any case, I would like to offer my condolences to her family, friends and many fans out there.
Last night's broadcast of NHK's morning show "Asaichi"（あさイチ）was once again truncated because of the government deliberations program, so what's a family to do? Instead of trying to search for stuff on Jme, I opted this time to look for something on YouTube because I've found that a lot of long-playing kayo kyoku programs have turned up on the platform. And sure enough, I hit the jackpot since there was a program titled "Jinsei, Uta ga Aru"（人生、歌がある...There's Music in Life）.
A show that's been on TV Asahi's satellite channel since 2020, it's been hosted by a mixture of TV Asahi announcers and enka singers, and at the time of the above video, it was the debonair veteran Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）and the lovely Natsuko Godai（伍代夏子）on hosting duties. That video was the one that we caught and it happened to be a 2023 episode commemorating the supposed retirement of kayo kyoku singer and actor Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）who was 80 at the time. I'm surprised that I never mentioned it in any of past articles in 2021 or 2022 but Hashi actually announced back in 2021 that he would be retiring from the spotlight on his 80th birthday on May 3rd 2023 after decades of entertaining the masses.
What looked like the Avengers of the current group of kayo kyoku-singing professionals all assembled to pay tribute to Hashi through covers of his old hits ranging from the haunting "Muhyou"（霧氷）to the jaunty "Koi no Mexican Rock"（恋のメキシカン・ロック）. And it was indeed quite the show for me because I realized that a majority of the songs by him were ones that I had first heard as a diaper-wearing toddler. I repeatedly internally remarked "I know that song!".
However, there were a few songs that had escaped my ears with one being "Wakai Yatsu"(Young Guy) which was Hashi's 23rd single from June 1962. A proud and brassy kayo march, the song was created by the famous songwriting team of lyricist Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）. It was also used as the theme song for the TBS drama of the same title "Wakai Yatsu ~ Hashi Yukio Show"（若いやつ〜橋幸夫ショー〜）. As shown, Hashi was the main star of the series which featured him as the young son in a wealthy family heading to a Tokyo university to learn about life and academics in the big city.
Singer Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）provided her version of "Wakai Yatsu" for him on "Jinsei, Uta ga Aru". The tribute ended with both Itsuki and Hashi tearing up a bit at the significance of the event. However, the brine was rather wasted when several months later in 2024, Hashi showed up in Tokyo to announce that he just didn't have the heart to retire after all. And so, he's continued to sing and he has vowed that he'll do so until his final breath. I remember Harumi Miyako（都はるみ）doing much the same thing in the 1980s, so it's not unprecedented.
Well, for the fourth year in a row, "Kayo Kyoku Plus" has managed to reach 1000 articles in a year. I'm pretty sure that we won't be breaking the 1,103-article record that we achieved last year but that's OK. There's no need to push things anymore. Anyways, this year's 1000th article will be dedicated to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth and also we'll be covering Christmas again as we approach December 25th.
Let's take a look at a Yuletide classic that is literally centuries old. "Deck the Halls" goes all the way back to the 16th century to a Welsh melody when it was a winter carol known as "Nos Galan". The English lyrics were written by Thomas Oliphant back in 1862. My first time with "Deck the Halls" was back probably in kindergarten in the early 1970s when my teacher sang it and then taught it to us moppets.
Then, not too long after, my family got that Ronco album which was making the rounds on TV commercials, "A Christmas Gift", with one of the tracks being "Deck the Halls" as performed by Percy Faith and his orchestra. Faith already has representation on the blog for being the original provider of "Theme from a Summer Place" which was covered by AOR duo The Milky Way in 1979. However, Faith tackles his rendition of "Deck the Halls" with gusto as it sounds like something from a King Arthur movie soundtrack as he and his Knights of the Round Table go forth to celebrate Christmas. Apparently, this version first appeared in 1954.
Of course, there have been tons of renditions of "Deck the Halls" over the years, but one of the most unusual covers was by the jazz vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross in 1962. Now, I've heard of Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross as the pioneers of vocalese which involves placing nimbly-delivered words and phrases within the usual improvised arrangement of jazz instruments, replacing those instruments. The Manhattan Transfer also picked up on the hip lingo, even coming up with their 1985 album"Vocalese".
Lambert, Hendricks & Ross' version was something that I found in a Xmas jazz compilation while I was living in Japan, and it was actually titled "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie". Before you could say Weird Al Yankovic, I could tell from the title and the intro that this was going to be a wacky parody of the original "Deck the Halls". I had assumed all these years that Boston Charlie was some near-lethal form of hooch that boozehounds could get in the various dives and saloons in the not-so-nice areas of town but it was actually just a play on the title. However, that fade-in intro where the three start shrieking the chorus in improbable harmony has always had me imagining the sots stumbling around at night trying to get into that hole in the wall.
Then, everything gets set right with a snappy drum and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross plow into the song with some major scatting while a piano player nimbly skates over the keys like a Gold Medal-winning figure skater. But just before the three end up taking us listeners to something far more respectable, we get thrown back into the back alley as Boston Charlie does its thing and the trio shriek their way off into the darkness. So, "Deck Us All" is more scat than vocalese but below you can see them handle the latter.
So, what were some of the big Japanese hits coming out in 1962? I've got three right here.
Hachiro Kasuga (春日八郎) recorded a lot of cover songs, ranging from Meiji-Taisho enka to early Showa kayo to 1980s pop enka. It's thanks to these covers that I got to learn a fair amount about a wide array of songs, some of which becoming personal favourites. But did you know, that the concept of covering pop songs, produced by record companies, wasn't as commonplace as it is now prior to the late 1960s?
Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken, but based on my understanding of sources like Yusuke Wajima's (輪島裕介) "Tsukurareta 'Nihon no Kokoro' Shinwa" (創られた「日本の心」神話) (2010), it was due to the old record company contract system from the late 1920s. What this system entailed was that a songwriter or singer, bound to a particular record company by contract, could not provide songs for a different company/sing songs made by a different company. There was also this concept of the mochi uta, where a song made for a singer was theirs and theirs only; to cover another's song (officially) was, I quote from venerable lyricist Kikutaro Takahashi (高橋掬太郎), "akin to betrayal", even if they were from the same company. For instance, Akira Matsudaira (松平晃) would not be able to cover Tadaharu Nakano's (中野忠晴)"China Tango" under most circumstances, even though they were both from Columbia Records. Or Columbia's Mr. Nakano would not have been able to cover King Records' Isao Hayashi's (林伊佐緒) "Kiso Bushi Bolero" (木曽節ボレロ). Rather limiting stuff.
Miura, Hachi, Yukiko Nomura From "Shinobu"
Of course, there were multiple exceptions and there were instances of insane loophole gymnastics. And one of these loopholes would change the record industry game for the better. This watershed moment that got rid of this limiting restriction was Shinichi Mori's (森進一) (Victor) cover album of Masao Koga's (古賀政男) (Columbia) works, "Kage wo Shitaite"(影を慕いて), from 1968. Initially seen as inconceivable, composer Kosho Inomata (猪俣公章) who was the album's director managed to do some insane contract red tape gymnastics and dodging Koga Sensei's initial wrath to get it done. This involved picking only the Koga Melody that did not "belong" to Columbia Records, i.e. those that were from the legendary composer's early Victor and Golden Age Teichiku days. The album's resounding success threw out the stigma around covers and cross-company collaborations. So much so that now it's essentially a given in at least the enka world. I'd go so far as to say that some past kayo have become "must covers"/a rite of passage for any modern day enka singer. Oddly enough, one of these enka rites of passages is doing a Koga Melody cover.
In terms of same company covers, assuming the producers at King Records weren't being hyperbolic, the first full-on same company artist collab album was Hachi and his junior Michiya Mihashi's (三橋美智也)"Ougon no Utagoe" (黄金の歌声) from 1970. That was where both artists covered about 14 of each others' mochi uta. I believe it was also in 1970 when Kasuga began recording cover songs in earnest.
Anyways, this brief Japanese record industry history tidbit leads me to what I want to feature for my Hachi Centenary Project article: Hachi's cover songs I enjoy. I've always been picky about original singers, but sometimes covers just hit different, sometimes with better arrangements or better vocals. It's with these factors in mind that I share my picks of Hachi covers. At the same time, perhaps these songs may introduce you to some Taisho and Showa era classics, as they did for me. As a side note, I will also mention some of the albums each song is in.
This song is difficult with some intense peaks and dips, but Hachi maneuvers them so effortlessly and smoothly in this classic nagashi/sasurai mono. Maybe folks are right in saying that Hachi is just good at these sort of enka style kayo.
Albums: Showa no Enka Kasuga Hachiro Fukyu no Meisaku wo Utau (昭和の艶歌 春日八郎不朽の名作を歌う) (1971), Kasuga Hachiro Enka Hyaku Sen (春日八郎 演歌百選) (1973)
Hachi said that jazz doesn't fit him and some have said that he couldn't express that jazz feeling. I have to admit that there are some number where I felt that the jazz feeling was lacking a little. But not with this one. Also, it may be a hot take to fans of early Showa Japanese jazz, but this is the best version of "Dotonbori Koshinkyoku" with the best arrangement. I will die on this hill.
A point to note is that Hachi re-recorded this in his 1975 "Kasuga Hachiro no Osaka Jocho" (春日八郎の大阪情緒), but its arrangement was not as raw and... jazzy. The original cover from the 1962 "Taisho/Showa Hayari-uta" (春日八郎の大正・昭和はやり唄) album is the one I'm for.
Albums: Kasuga Hachiro no Taisho/Showa Hayari-uta, Kasuga Hachiro no Osaka Jocho, Kasuga Hachiro Osaka wo Utau (春日八郎 大阪を歌う) (2011)
I praise the creative decision to have Hachi sing the chorus, "Batten Nagasaki __ no machi, mimase yokatoko yori masse" (But Nagasaki's the city of__, c'mon over and check out this fine place... The line is in the Nagasaki/Kyushu dialect), unlike Higuchi's original. Higuchi's wasn't bad, but it just felt lacking to have just the back-up singers handle that crucial bit.
Albums: Kasuga Hachiro no Nagasaki no Jocho (春日八郎の長崎情緒) (1976), Kasuga Hachiro Showa Kayo wo Utau (春日八郎 昭和歌謡を歌う) (2010)
Karisome no Koi (かりそめの恋) (1949) -- Machiko Sanjo (三条町子)
Fun fact: I believe this was one of the songs Hachi saw/hear Mrs. Kasuga, Keiko Watabe (渡部恵子), sing while she was working as a part-time singer at the same restaurant as him back in the day. On a side note, I feel that Hachi's soft, forlorn-tinged voice fits this sort of blues/Mood Kayo-like songs to a T.
Album: Nihon no Uta Meiji/Taisho/Showa Hayari-uta (日本の歌 明治・大正・昭和はやりうた) (1977)
Onna no Kaikyu (女の階級) (1936) -- Shigeo Kusunoki (楠木繁夫)
Of all the songs on this is one of the rare numbers where I enjoy both the original and the cover in equal measure. Anyways, I've read that Koga Sensei wanted "Onna no Kaikyu" to be of a slower pace, contrary to the brisk pace of Kusunoki's original. I think it's in covers like Hachi's where you can hear the composer's intended vision.
Albums: Kasuga Hachiro Koga Melody wo Utau (春日八郎 古賀メロディーを歌う) (1971/1975/1992), Kasuga Hachiro Koga Masao wo Utau (春日八郎 古賀政男を歌う) (1974), Showa no Enka Kasuga Hachiro Fukyu no Meisaku wo Utau, Kasuga Hachiro Enka Hyaku Sen
Palau Koishiya (パラオ恋しや) (1941) -- Haruo Oka (岡晴夫)
Hachi's smooth delivery makes Okapparu's mochi uta more polished, and I think you can feel it in a relaxed tropical island number like "Palau Koishiya". Interestingly enough, even though Kasuga recorded this cover, it wasn't included in his 1977 Oka cover album, "Kasuga Hachiro Oka Haruo wo Utau" (春日八郎 岡晴夫を歌う). Rather it seems to have only been released decades later in 2010 via "Showa Kayo wo Utau". Perhaps they'd already hit the song limit for the 1977 one, so "Palau Koishiya" got dropped.
Fun fact: Okapparu, known for that strident and nasally delivery with large lung capacity, was said to have developed these attributes during his days as an enka shi/nagashi (street musician). Because of the cigarette smog in bars, he learned to sing in this manner to reduce the need for inhaling the smoke and damaging his vocals.
Albums: Kasuga Hachiro Showa Kayo wo Utau
Hoshi no Nagare ni(星の流れに) (1947) -- Akiko Kikuchi (菊池章子)
The hardship of immediate postwar Japan can be felt in this song about the realities of many women who had to turn to working the night to survive. Perhaps it would be more appropriate sung by a woman, but Hachi's voice is more filled with a pained longing than heavy melancholy, which fits the emotions expressed in this song.
Albums: Enka to wa Nandarou Kasuga Hachiro Show (演歌とは何だろう〈春日八郎ショー〉)(1973), Kasuga Hachiro Enka Hyaku Sen, Kasuga Hachiro Showa Kayo wo Utau
Epilogue
Something I noticed when studying the covers Hachi recorded was that he never covered any (Ryoichi) Hattori (服部良一) Melody save for one: Mieko Takamine's (高峰三枝子) "Kohan no Yado" (湖畔の宿) - correct me if I'm wrong. I wonder if it's because R. Hatter was known for jazz and "pop", and thus not fitting with the enka rhetoric in the 70s and 80s.
On a different note, among the other fellas I love, Hachi has covered Akira-san's, Bin Uehara's (上原敏), and Yoshio Tabata's (田端義夫) stuff. As I've said, I can be very picky with covers. As much as I love Hachi, originals win here, especially for Bin-san and Batayan. I'm more forgiving with the Akira-san covers, though. This is because Hachi and Akira-san vaguely share a similar vocal quality in that they are great at conveying forlornness - the difference is that Hachi sounds empathetic while Akira-san sounds needy (purely subjective). So, I thought the former's covers of the latter's hits, "Isoge Horo Basha" (急げ幌馬車) and "Circus no Uta" (サーカスの唄), were pretty good, but the arrangements just fell short.
"Isoge Horo Basha"
But, y'know, a dream Hachi cover of mine is "China Tango". I know I'll regret it because, while I know it'll be good, Hachi has nowhere near the same level of sex appeal as Mr. Nakano to pull it off. But I just want to hear it. Not because it'll be hot, but because I think it'll be kinda funny.
Quincy Jones (1933-2024) from the LA Times via Wikimedia Commons
Now that I've put up a rare Monday Reminiscings of Youth article just now and I'm going to do the same here, people must be wondering why I've gone all ROY on KKP. Well, one excuse is that it is a national holiday in Japan known as Culture Day. I don't usually include Japanese national holidays when I do the special holiday version of ROY, but for today I'm making an exception due to the passing of a couple of music figures in my life.
I've already posted one on singer Jack Jones and now we have here a tribute to Quincy Jones, one of the most prolific and successful songwriters and music producers the world has ever known. His file on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" is already fairly large thanks to entries such as his phenomenal 1981 album"The Dude" and his collaborations with Michael Jackson, including the album "Thriller".
Jones had already been in the music business for several years since the 1950s when he released his first single in 1962, "Soul Bossa Nova". Sound familiar?
If it does, you are probably one of the many folks who caught any of the "Austin Powers" movies with Mike Myers. One couldn't have asked for a more Swinging 1960s tune to accompany the British spy and his fellow dancers. The give-and-take between the flutes and the horns is truly groovy, baby!
Probably, though, for a lot of us Canadians, hearing "Soul Bossa Nova" as part of an "Austin Powers" movie was nostalgically surprising than revelatory. That's probably because we had heard it before...as the theme for the Canadian game show "Definition" with Jim Perry throughout the 70s and 80s. I certainly had no idea about what the title was and what its pedigree was...just knew it as the theme from "Definition" and it was probably the biggest thing that I can remember about the show.
According to Wikipedia, "Soul Bossa Nova" was also a track on Jones' 1962"Big Band Bossa Nova" album and apparently it took no more than twenty minutes for the composer to whip up. I had no idea that Lalo Schifrin, the master behind the themes for "Mission: Impossible" and "Mannix", was the piano player on "Soul Bossa Nova".
I know that Jones left this world a very elderly man at 91, but it's still a big void that he's left in music and we can be grateful at least that he's left this huge legacy of music from movies, television and the recording booth. My condolences to his family, friends and millions of fans.
"Soul Bossa Nova" was released in December 1962. Therefore, why not have the last three performers on the White team from NHK's Kohaku Utagassen that year show up?
One of my favourite dishes has been potato croquettes. They were easy to get in Japan because they are very popular there and my mother used to make them but they are rather labour-intensive and time-intensive to make so it's no longer that practical to get them from scratch anymore, although I wouldn't mind taking a crack at making them myself.
The croquette is another dish that was warmly welcomed into Japanese cuisine back in the late 19th century in the Meiji era, and another variety of the dish that has been another popular item in restaurants is the cream croquette. This one took a little more time for me to warm up to since the filling isn't potato but béchamel sauce with other ingredients including corn and crab meat. But once I did, they also became another popular item in my stomach.
Well, I've come up with another food-based kayo kyoku and it's known as "Korokke no Uta"(The Croquette Song). According to one Japanese-language blog, the song was first recorded in 1917 during the Taisho era with Taro Masuda（益田太郎）behind the lyrics while the composer remains unknown. Basically, it describes one man's loving but rueful admission that his wife gets nothing but croquettes for dinner. Yeah, I can understand...I do like my croquettes but variety is the spice of life, after all.
The above version is probably one that was recorded much later with singers Yasushi Suzuki and Mitsuharu Minamichi（鈴木やすし・南地みつ春）although I couldn't specify the year. Also, I'm not 100% sure of the proper pronunciation of the second person's family name and for that matter, for a person with a male first name, he sure sounds like a woman. Maybe someone better in the know than me can explain, although maybe the above version was performed by a different pair.
In October 1962, enka singer Midori Satsuki（五月みどり）released a single with the same title but it is actually a different song under the words and music by Kuranosuke Hamaguchi（浜口庫之助）. The arrangement is similarly whimsical but it goes a little more into an enka direction. The lyrics, though different, still talk about a couple and their oft-chosen meal of croquettes. However, the couple is definitely stated to be a newlywed pair so the new husband is more than accepting of his beloved's obsession with the dish.
The above is a photograph of an intersection in Asakusa and I believe that building on the left is the main tourist centre. I never visited the place since I was actually working and not touring in my old stomping grounds.
Back in 2017, I posted a song called "Koi wa Kamiyo no Mukashi kara"（恋は神代の昔から）, originally recorded by enka singer Midori Hatakeyama（畠山みどり）that I'd first discovered on a charity kayo kyoku concert on NHK. Well, just by chance, the other day I managed to discover another Hatakeyama song performed on "Uta Con"（うたコン）that was released a little over six months following the singer's debut of "Koi wa Kamiyo no Mukashi kara".
"Shusse Kaidou"(The Road to Success) was the Hokkaido singer's 3rd single from December 1962 and I think it's been seen as her signature song. Created by the same duo behind her debut, lyricist Tetsuro Hoshino（星野哲郎）and composer/arranger Shosuke Ichikawa（市川昭介）, Hatakeyama sings this as a bokyo kayo（望郷歌謡）or a song of longing which means it shares a similarity with Hachiro Kasuga's（春日八郎）iconic "Wakare no Ippon Sugi" (別れの一本杉) as it relates the tale of someone who has to go to the big city away from their rural village to be able to make it in the world though it also means sad farewells and long separations. Considering that there had been a government-encouraged mass migration of people as young as junior high school graduates from the towns to the cities from the late 1940s to get the economy up and running fast again, such songs hit the heart hard.
NHK noticed that, too. In fact, Hatakeyama was invited onto the 1963 edition of the Kohaku Utagassen for her first appearance on the New Year's Eve special, her first of three appearances with the last two coming in 1964 and 1966. What has struck me about her singing was that she was all of 23 years old when she recorded "Shusse Kaidou" and yet her vocals sound like those of a much more veteran performer. I'm not an enka expert by any means but that voice is not green but darn oaken to me.
Hatakeyama is now 85 years old and her most recent 78th single came out in 2016. One other piece of trivia that I read on her J-Wiki profile is that she'd been once known as one of the more ravenous stock investors within the enka community during the financially crazed Bubble era in late 1980s Japan. At one point, she'd made 4.7 billion yen but then lost it all when the bubble finally imploded at the turn of the decade. She owed a lot of money but was somehow able to pay it all back over the years, vowing to never play that wild with her funds ever again. Perhaps this could be considered her road to wisdom?
I would like to humbly thank the late Tony Bennett for his appearance in singing "Stranger in Paradise" originally from 1953. But did you know that this pop ballad was based on Alexander Borodin's"Gliding Dance of the Maidens" from the "Polovtsian Dances" in the opera "Prince Igor"(1890)? No? I wouldn't blame you. I had no idea about it myself until I saw the commercial for "120 Music Masterpieces" back in the 1970s when I was a child. My childhood was complete and the old guy's line about "Stranger in Paradise" became a punchline for many a late-night comedian.
Well, I'm putting my own contemporary twist on the above by first introducing pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii's version of "Liebesträume No. 3" (1850) by Franz Liszt. It's also known in Japanese as "Ai no Yume"（愛の夢）. I've heard this nocturne before many times but because I'm not a classical music fan, this is really the first time that I've had it identified for me.
But did you know that "Liebesträume No. 3" was given its own twist into its own twist in April 1962 in Japan when teenage firebrand Kyoko Aso（麻生京子）recorded a rearranged version called "Hungaria Rock ~ Franz Liszt Twist"? Given lyrics by Kenji Sazanami（漣健児）and arranged by Hajime Hayashi（林一）*, Liszt got lit and made into a twist with the accompaniment of Toshiro Hamamizu and his Gay Stars（浜水俊朗とゲイ・スターズ）. The percussion is really cooking here.
There's not much information on Aso unfortunately, From one site, I found out that she hails from Tokyo and that she was all of 19 when she applied her raspy voice to "Hungaria Rock". She was also captain of her basketball team back in high school.
*Not totally sure of the pronunciation of this name.
Over eight years ago, KKP contributor and specialist on the early Showa Era tunes, Noelle Tham, introduced the late singer Takuya Jou（城卓矢）and his huge hit "Hone Made Aishite" (骨まで愛して) from 1966.
As Noelle mentioned in that March 2015 post, Jou was born Masaki Kikuchi（菊地正規）and when he debuted in 1958, he took on the stage name of Masao Kikuchi（菊地正夫）with just that small alteration of one kanji. One of his notable songs under that pre-Jou name was his September 1962kayo kyoku, "Furusato wa Souya no Hate ni". (My Home is at the End of Souya).
To further explain, Souya is the name of a cape in Hokkaido which is the northernmost point of all of Japan. The song was written and composed by Jun Kitahara（北原じゅん）who happened to be Kikuchi/Jou's older brother, and for both brothers, "Furusato wa Souya no Hate ni" was in all likelihood a very personal song for them. It's a gallant tune with a bit of a country twang but it's also a kayo about lamenting the fact that neither Kikuchi nor Kitahara could go back to the land of their birth because they had been born on what was known as Karafuto Island（樺太）but it's currently known as Sakhalin after the Soviet Union had taken it over at the end of World War II. I'm not sure how the song did in the pre-Oricon era but I figure that there was nothing like a furusato kayo kyoku to get people into a sentimental mood and hitting the record shops.
Certainly, the fact that "Furusato wa Souya no Hate ni" was covered by a number of other singers and bands in the years since is probably a good sign at its popularity. For example, just when Kikuchi made that re-debut as Takuya Jou, Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）covered the song in 1966 as a tune belonging more in the Mood Kayo vein thanks to the chorus and that bluesy saxophone. Saigo also gave his vocals a more elegiac tone.
To finish off, I've embedded a video from Kuga's Travel, one of the channels that I subscribe to. A year ago, he made his own trip to Souya.
Strangely enough, this trio isn't listed at "idol.ne.jp" which has had that page with the long scroll of Gosanke（御三家...The Big Three） and Sannin Musume（三人娘...The Three Girls）. And yet, the Spark Sannin Musume (The 3 Spark Girls) kinda bridged the gap with 1960s female aidoru Yukari Ito（伊東ゆかり）, Mie Nakao（中尾ミエ）and Mari Sono（園まり）between the Ganso Sannin Musume（元祖三人娘）of the 1950s and the Shin Sannin Musume（新三人娘）of the 1970s. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that the newspapers and magazines didn't come up with the name but the show that starred the ladies.
For about 18 months between 1962 and 1963, Fuji-TV featured a Sunday afternoon music-variety show called "Morinaga Spark Show"（森永スパーク・ショー）with the Spark referring to the sponsor, confectionary company Morinaga & Company's own brand of cola. Initially, the star was rockabilly singer/actor Takashi Fujiki（藤木孝）but midway through the show's run, he left not only the program but singing altogether which meant that the spotlight was trained onto the other co-stars: Ito, Nakao and Sono who then became known as the Spark Sannin Musume.
Well, I've had one representative song from the currently running anime "Tomo-chan wa Onna no Ko!"（トモちゃんは女の子！...Tomo-chan is a Girl!）in the form of Maharajan's "Kurae! Telepathy"（くらえ！テレパシー）. There have already been some highlights from the first few episodes of the show including main character Tomo giving her own special touch to traditional Japanese kids' songs at karaoke. I will definitely have to cover the song that Tomo sings here very soon since it is a classic and because her seiyuu Rie Takahashi（高橋李依）has really shown her range.
But allow me to introduce an old kayo that I hadn't realized was specifically a children's song until I got to listen to it again after many years. I simply assumed that "Te no Hira wo Taiyou ni" (The Sun in the Palms of Our Hands) was just another one of those Showa Era songs that everyone loved to do in a singalong. It's jaunty and people can do it in unison so I can imagine that it was a fun tune to do at karaoke, and maybe ol' Tomo can give it a shot the next time she goes...if she does go a next time.
Bonny Jacks（ボニージャックス）is a chorus group that I've always wanted to get onto the blog just because I like the sound of that name of theirs. Formed in 1958 from the Waseda University glee club, they first consisted of Takeomi Kashima（鹿島武臣）, Motoyasu Tamada（玉田元康）, Hisao Nishiwaki（西脇久夫）and Masato Ohmachi（大町正人）. With the deaths of the last two members in 2021 and 2011 respectively, it's currently a trio with Hideyuki Yoshida（吉田秀行）joining in 2003. "Te no Hira wo Taiyou ni" is one of Bonny Jacks' trademark tunes that was released as a single in 1965 and it was successful enough that the group made their final of three appearances on the Kohaku Utagassen that year.
Not surprisingly, "Te no Hira wo Taiyou ni" has had its covers over the decades, and in fact, Bonny Jacks' tilt at the song was also a cover. The song about friendship and love of life in all its myriad forms (sounds rather Shinto) was first recorded in 1962 for NHK's music program for kids "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）with lyrics and music provided by Takashi Yanase（やなせたかし）and Taku Izumi（いずみたく）respectively. Recorded by Mariko Miyagi（宮城まり子）, a singer and actress who would later become an advocate for children with disabilities, and Victor Jidou Gasshoudan（ビクター児童合唱団...The Victor Children's Chorus）, the orchestra has an almost rumba approach to the arrangement. Miyagi herself is downright boisterous in her delivery.
SongwriterJames Lord Pierpont (1822–1893) would probably be marveling right now at how ubiquitous and representative of Christmas his ultimate creation, "Jingle Bells" (1857) has become. Perhaps it may not be everyone's favourite Xmas song but it's most likely the most famous and one of the oldest Yuletide tunes on Earth.
I'm sure that "Jingle Bells" was already insinuating itself into my baby system a couple of months following my entry into the world via radio and TV, but one of the first times that I can remember Pierpont's magnum opus is through the piano scene featuring wunderkind Schroeder and crabby Lucy Van Pelt in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (in the reruns). It was truly a technological marvel how Schroeder could change his instrument from grand piano to organ to toy piano. Maybe this was the inspiration for instruments like the synclavier.😉
From Ebay
To sidetrack slightly, it looks like a whole bunch of families fell under the sway of the television commercial for Ronco's "A Christmas Gift" in 1973 since I've been reading on YouTube how they ended up buying the compilation of Xmas classics. Our family was no exception and I still play it on the TEAC. It's just too bad that I can't find the original ad on YouTube.
And yep, my album can still open up to reveal that Christmas scene. In any case, I've already included one of the tracks from "A Christmas Gift" onto the blog, and that is Tony Bennett's scintillating take on "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". I only noticed a few hours ago that though I wrote it last year at the beginning of KKP's Xmas season, I'd forgotten to include Bennett's name in the Labels. Gave myself a Gibbs slap for that.
Track 2 of Side B is today's special Christmas ROY song. I'll be honest with you, though, and say that when I first heard jazz legend Duke Ellington & His Orchestra's version of "Jingle Bells", I wasn't sure what to make of it. Being less than ten years old at the time, I couldn't be expected to understand the call-and-response that often occurred within a swing jazz orchestra back in the day or the fact that improvisation was an obligation in jazz when handling an established song. But at the time, my thought was that it was "Jingle Bells" and it wasn't "Jingle Bells".
Fortunately, I did get into jazz deeply enough so that I even read into the history and mechanics behind one of America's great innovations, and understood what Ellington and his band were doing here. Now, it's very much a swinging delight which has become my favourite version of "Jingle Bells", thanks to the arrangement of the Duke's son, Mercer Ellington. It was originally recorded for the compilation "Jingle Bell Jazz" album from October 1962.
Thinking it is too difficult to track down which songs from Japan were coming out in that particular month, I'm going back to the Japan Record Awards for 1962. I've already picked some songs from that group when I did a ROY on Norman & Barry'sJames Bond theme, but there are a few more choices.
Best New Artist: Saburo Kitajima -- Namidabune (なみだ船)
Best Composer: Hachidai Nakamura for Jerry Fujio -- Tooku e Ikitai （遠くへ行きたい）
Well, all things come to an end, and such is the case with the go-touchi series of kayo which began all the way up in the north more than a month ago. Continuing from the Chugoku region and Shikoku last week, it will now come to an end in the south with the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan, Kyushu, and then Okinawa. Once again, the regional songs here are just the tip of a really large iceberg, and I hope that you can find some other famous go-touchi songs not just for these territories but for the others that have been covered over the past several weeks. The island of Kyushu consists of Fukuoka, Kumamoto, Nagasaki, Oita, Saga, Kagoshima and Miyazaki Prefectures.
1. Fuyumi Sakamoto -- Abaredaiko (あばれ太鼓) for the Kokura district in Kita-Kyushu City (1987)
2. Nyc Nyusa -- Sachiko（サチコ）for Fukuoka City (1981)
4. Saburo Kitajima -- Satsuma no Hito（薩摩の女）for Kagoshima City (1968)
5. Yoshio Tabata -- Shima Sodachi (島育ち) for Amami-Oshima in Kagoshima Prefecture (1962)
6. Shoukichi Kina -- Haisai Ojisan（ハイサイおじさん）for Okinawa (1972)
Here's one final look at some of the delectable dishes from the area. This final time, we have toruko rice（トルコライス）from Nagasaki and then goya champuru（ゴーヤチャンプル）in Okinawa.
