Hiroshi Inoue -- Tokyo Waltz（東京ワルツ）/Wakare no Tango（別れのタンゴ）

 

I've mentioned this to people and readers before but my favourite era in Japanese history isn't particularly the Muromachi or Taisho periods for example. Actually, the one group of years that has been interesting for me is the postwar era extending to the early 1970s because I had always wondered how Japan was able to rise above the ashes to become the 2nd-largest economic power behind the United States at one point. But before I end up wearing those rose-coloured glasses of romanticism, a lot of those years were ones of struggle and with the sudden ramp-up in industrialization once more, there was a heavy toll on the environment and health.

Still, I've been able to get a glimpse and a feel for the Tokyo of the 1950s or 1960s thanks to visits to the Ramen Museum in Yokohama. The time warp walk around the city seems to make one's vision go sepia and the ramen is pretty darn good, too. 😋 I must thank the good people at Nippon Wandering TV for the above video.

But of course, this is a kayo kyoku blog and not a ramen one, although I imagine that there are far more of those than there are of mine. And perhaps filtering over the speakers in the mockup Tokyo underneath the ground floor of the museum is a September or October 1961 single by crooner Hiroshi Inoue（井上ひろし）depending on whether you go with the J-Wiki article on Inoue or YouTube uploader Ka Fu respectively. "Tokyo Waltz" is a Mood Kayo written by Sou Nishizawa（西沢爽）and composed by Itsuro "Raymond" Hattori（服部逸郎）and has the rich tenor of Inoue expressing a man's heartbreak within the Tokyo nightlife. The melody indeed takes on a sad and slow waltz.

The B-side is "Wakare no Tango" (Farewell Tango) which continues the themes of dancing and imminent romantic loss, but this time as the title says, the melody by Tadashi Manjome（万城目正）has a bit more of that Latin spice. Ko Fujiura（藤浦 洸）came up with the lyrics, and listening to the song, I can imagine a couple born of the nightlife in the megalopolis having one last teary cheek-to-cheek dance on the nightclub floor before having to part permanently.

Taneko Seki/Hiroshi Inoue -- Ame ni Saku Hana（雨に咲く花）

I gather that this is one of the few older kayo kyoku that I have first found out about without needing the guidance of "Uta Kon"（うたコン）or another similar music show.

Through my browsings via YouTube and tips from commenters and collaborators, I've been able to find out about a lot of the more contemporary music in City Pop and the like, but this time around, some after-dinner exploration had me discover something from nearly a century back.

Taneko Seki（関種子）who lived from 1907-1990 was a Showa-Era singer hailing from Okayama Prefecture who began her career as a classical soprano. She made her debut on records at Columbia Records in 1931 and had hit upon hit until in 1935, she recorded the theme song for the movie "Toppa Muden"（突破無電...Breakthrough Wireless）, "Ame ni Saku Hana" (The Flowers That Bloom in the Rain) which became an even bigger hit for Seki, selling around half a million records.

Written by Kikutaro Takahashi（高橋菊太郎）and composed by Fujio Ikeda（池田不二男）, the tango-esque "Ame ni Saku Hana" is about a woman lamenting the loss of her romantic affair. She likens the flowers in the rain to her love probably losing its petals.

About a quarter-century later, singer/actor Hiroshi Inoue（井上ひろし）covered "Ame ni Saku Hana" in July 1960. Born in Yokohama in 1941, he had been a rockabilly singer with an early form of The Drifters troupe in 1958 but left the group a year later.

His "Ame ni Saku Hana" is more in the Mood Kayo vein with that bluesy sax, the twangy guitar and that percussive piano. I automatically got those images of smoke-filled nightclubs and tumblers filled with whisky on the rocks. Inoue's cover was a huge hit since it sold a million records according to a November 1991 issue of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper via J-Wiki. In that same J-Wiki article, the Mood Kayo "Ame ni Saku Hana" was such a hit that it sparked a boom of singers of that decade in covering some of the old classics including Frank Nagai's（フランク永井）take on "Kimi Koishi" （君恋し）in 1961, originally sung by Teiichi Futamura（二村定一）back in 1928.

Inoue also appeared once on the Kohaku Utagassen in 1961 although it was to perform a different song. In 1985, he had started learning how to cook in his education on how to run a restaurant but tragically in September of that year, he suffered a fatal myocardial infarction at the age of 46.