Ayako Miyashita/Bonny Jacks/Hibari Misora -- Awate Tokoya（あわて床屋）

 

In all of the years that "Kayo Kyoku Plus" has been around, I've done my fair share of Author's Picks based on certain themes that some of that kayo kyoku has covered such as food and particular regions. But I don't think I have ever encountered an old Japanese pop song that was based on the barbershop experience.

As a bit of an aside, I have to say that one of the many pleasures of living in Japanese society for about a third of my life thus far was going to the barber or hair salon. Was it inexpensive? By no means. My old barber cost me close to 3900 yen a trip and then when my girlfriend at the time introduced me to her friend's salon not far away from my station, that expenditure took things to about 5000 yen. But in both cases, they were worth every yen for me. From the haircut, the shampoo, the shave, the scalp massage and the styling to the seasonal servings of coffee or cold oolong tea, this was simply a regular trip for a haircut in Japan that would probably be considered a top-notch treatment at Truefitt & Hill in downtown Toronto.

By the way, the above video has an Avengers-like meeting between two popular YouTubers. HairCut Harry got to have his experience at the Yamaguchi Barbershop last year.

"Awate Tokoya" (Busy Barbershop) first saw the light of day about a century ago in 1923. Written by Hakushu Kitahara（北原白秋）and composed by Kousaku Yamada（山田耕筰）as a children's song, it was performed by Ayako Miyashita（宮下禮子）*. The lyrics talk of a couple of crabs in the wilderness operating their own barber shop serving customers such as a rabbit, and apparently the business is a thriving one.

Almost forty years later in April 1961, "Awate Tokoya" was brought into the NHK's children song series "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）as one of its earliest, if not its earliest, entry with a special brand of animation and the vocal group Bonny Jacks（ボニージャックス）giving a hearty rendition of the animal-based barbershop. Future electronic music master Isao Tomita（冨田勲）handled the arrangement.

Then in 1966, Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）gave her rendition of the song via a snazzy orchestra with a bit of Latin pizzazz and haircut-like percussion. I also picked up on some interesting keyboard work in there, too; not sure whether Tomita was already working with some of those electronics on Misora's version. Of course, others have covered "Awate Tokoya" over the decades.

*According to Jisho.org, there are multiple ways to say the first name. Ayako happens to be the first on the list, so if anyone out there can tell me the proper way to say the singer's name, please let me know.

Isao Tomita -- Kyo no Ryori Theme （今日の料理テーマ）

I had a nice afternoon and night out last night. Met up with my movie-and-foodie buddies who are a long-married couple. With the husband, we got to enjoy "Now You See Me 2" in the VIP theatre before we met up with his wife downtown for a good dinner at Kintori, a yakitori restaurant where we ate mass quantities. The above photo is actually from our trip to Zakkushi, another popular yakitori place but I haven't bothered to upload last night's photos into the hard drive yet.

So, starting with a food theme in mind, I have a video from one of NHK's longest-running shows of all time, "Kyo no Ryori" (きょうの料理...Today's Cooking) which started all the way back in 1957. I think Japan is even more of a foodie nation than the US and Canada and has been for decades before the term foodie was first coined. Just judging from the number of daily cooking shows and the celeb segments of A-class and B-class tarento hitting the restaurants to go into spasmodic orgasms whenever they pop spoonfuls of dishes into their mouths, the Japanese do love the whole culture surrounding food as much as they actually love eating the stuff...and that goes for Japanese, Italian, French, Chinese, etc. Therefore, "Kyo no Ryori" is as much of a living fossil in that genre as a coelacanth. Even I had no idea that the show was that old, and yet it turns up daily on TV Japan.

Usually that cheerful theme for "Kyo no Ryori" comes on at 4:30 on weekdays. Therefore, it was a mild surprise this morning when I actually heard it this morning while NHK's "News Watch at 9" was broadcasting at 8am (Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time). I was having breakfast at the time when the theme popped on and it turned out that after all that shameful kerfuffle about Tokyo's Governor Masuzoe resigning, the news shifted to the funeral service for legendary composer Isao Tomita（冨田勲）who had passed away on May 8th this year.

I wrote my first article on the late Tomita a few months ago before he passed away and spoke on his hauntingly beautiful version on "Clair De Lune". Also, I mentioned how I first heard about his techno music as a teenager in the 1980s browsing around in the neighbourhood Sam The Record Man. But I had absolutely no idea that he had been creating music as far back as the 1950s. And yet Tomita, who looked like a techno hippie on his albums, was the guy behind the creation of one of Japanese TV's most recognizable theme songs. I would say that just about everyone knows the theme song to "Kyo no Ryori".

That theme which still dances across the screen and from the TV speakers was right there playing when the show first started in 1957. According to the article on the show in J-Wiki, Tomita's cute creation hadn't been meant to be used for this cooking show but on the eve of the first entry in "Kyo no Ryori", the powers-that-be decided to push the song into service. Tomita wanted to link the song with the purpose of the show so the percussion was meant to sound like cleavers chopping away on the wooden board. And the rest is history.

So I learned this morning that Tomita hadn't been just about the synthesized soundscapes but also about the daily jingles.

P.S. There's also another venerable cooking show theme in Japan right here.

Isao Tomita -- Clair De Lune (Suite Bergamasque, No. 3)

I had heard of the original "Ocean's Eleven" with the Rat Pack of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and at least 8 more ring-a-ding-ding guys but never caught it in its entirety. The reason I've held back is that I've read that it was basically Hollywood's Gang of Coolness just slumming it in front of the camera. On the other hand, I am a huge fan of the 2001 remake with George Clooney (Danny Ocean), Brad Pitt (Rusty), Matt Damon (Linus) and at least 8 more ring-a-ding-ding guys. The charisma that just overflowed from the screen was more than enough for a lot of us viewers to root for a gang of incorrigible criminals stealing from another shady type in Andy Garcia (Terry Benedict).

One of my favourite parts in the entire movie was the scene in which the big reveal of the heist was done and the humiliated Benedict not only lost a ton of money but also his girlfriend as played by a really dour Julia Roberts. The soundtrack for this updated "Ocean's Eleven" was pretty eclectic with a contribution of jazz to fit the old Las Vegas scene, but it was the scene and accompanying music which immediately came after Terry's comeuppance that hit me like a double-tap. And this was basically the epilogue for the epic heist.

Danny Ocean's ragtag team simply walked...not marched proudly...out of their hideout after pulling off the crime of at least a decade as if they had just finished a factory shift which made them look even cooler. And it was the music that followed them that I would later find out was the 3rd movement of "Suite bergamasque" titled "Clair De Lune" by Claude Debussy that just affected the heck out of me. I had only heard of Debussy through a reference in the Pet Shop Boys hit "Left To My Own Devices" and knew very faintly that he was in classical music. But to hear this version by the Philadelphia Orchestra after all of the cool jazz and other offbeat music...it was a sweet denouement which likely expressed the well-earned fatigue and triumph and awed wonder that most of the Eleven were feeling at the fountain. Danny was taking one for the team by getting himself arrested and seeing him sheepish and satisfied as he got into the back of the police car while the oboe was playing a quiet section in "Clair De Lune" was a perfect matchup. I'm not a huge classical music fan but if I were to choose a favourite piece from the genre, this would be it.

All of that "Ocean's Eleven" prelude to talk about a Japanese artist whose work I don't even possess. I came close, though. It was just after returning from my very inspiring trip to Japan in 1981 that I got fully into music on both sides of the Pacific. I started becoming a fairly frequent visitor to the Sam The Record Man branch in my old shopping mall, and ended up purchasing my first pop single in the form of Chaz Jankel's "Ai no Corrida" there (I have my own story about that). But strangely enough, as I was flipping through the many LPs which were in the bins, I came across a few albums with the one word of "TOMITA" at the top in a futuristic logo. Just looking at the front and back of those albums, I could figure out that Isao Tomita（冨田勲）was into some of this newfangled electronic music. And at the time, I had a pretty bad case of Yellow Magic Orchestra on the brain. Also the early 80s were not an easy time for me to get access to a lot of Japanese music outside of the weekly broadcasts of "Sounds of Japan". However for whatever reason, I ended up not buying any of Tomita's albums. Perhaps I was a bit intimidated by some of the weirdness on the covers.

However cue ahead a few decades and we now have the benefit of YouTube to find out about music. And I could finally listen to this fellow Isao Tomita who so inspired a young Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉）that he would follow his own music career. In fact, I was able to listen to my beloved "Clair De Lune" through the spacy Moog synthesizers of Tomita and there was something very ethereal about the listening experience. And I think perhaps imbibing some alcohol could assist in that experience, too. :)

Tomita's "Clair De Lune" was a track on his 1974 landmark album "Snowflakes Are Dancing" which was nominated for 4 Grammy Awards in 1975. The album was basically a tribute to Debussy. And as synthy-sweet his "Clair De Lune" was back then, I have to admit that I will always be attached to the version for "Ocean's Eleven".

One interesting thing I found out about "Snowflakes Are Dancing" is that excerpts from one of its other tracks, "Reverie" was used for the nightly signoffs for Fuji-TV back in the late 1970s. Usually it would be the Japanese national anthem of "Kimigayo"（君が代）that would end a broadcasting day but having something as electronically progressive as a Tomita tune was quite the idea back then. However, if I had actually been listening and watching this as a kid in those days, I would have been majorly freaked out.

P.S. May 8 2016:  Isao Tomita passed away at the age of 84 on May 5 from heart failure.