Jiro Kanmuri -- Tabi no Owari ni（旅の終りに）

 

I'm not sure that's the right type of garb for a male enka singer, but hey, whatever works for him.

On New Year's Day, I related the story of the late enka singer Jiro Kanmuri（冠二郎）and his most popular hit, "Honoo"（炎）from 1992. He had begun his career in music in 1967 but really paid his dues with nothing successful coming in for him for the first decade or so. Then, Kanmuri finally hit the big time for the first time with his 17th single from November 1977, "Tabi no Owari ni" (At Journey's End) which was the theme song for a TV Asahi drama titled "Kaikyo Monogatari"（海峡物語...The Story of the Strait）, adapted from Hiroyuki Itsuki's（五木寛之）novel. The contemporary story involves a once-popular music director now down on his luck and how he is able to redeem himself through encounters with other people. It's too bad that I couldn't find any footage of the show on YouTube.

The music and arrangement were handled by Shunsuke Kikuchi（菊池俊輔）, someone that I've usually associated with tokusatsu programs and cop shows. The feeling that I get with "Tabi no Owari ni" is, as I described the story of the show, someone on a difficult but necessary march back into the heroic light and I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been used as a theme song for a samurai drama instead. The lyrics were handled by Itsuki himself under a pseudonym and considering the dramatic showmanship that Kanmuri would later become famous for due to "Honoo", the singer sang this one straight and serious. That's because it was Itsuki's request that "Tabi no Owari ni" should be performed as if the singer were going through the toughest point in his life.

"Tabi no Owari ni" became a hit although I haven't been able to see how it did on Oricon probably because of its association with "Kaikyo Monogatari".

Jiro Kanmuri -- Honoo（炎）

 

Happy New Year and welcome to 2025! I hope that wherever you are, you are enjoying what is basically the final day of the Holidays (unless you have a truly kind and generous boss in which case, you are not due back to work until Monday the 6th) either still partying with friends and family or nursing that hangover. Here, we've had our ozoni breakfast and then we'll be engorging ourselves with sushi later on.

For the very first song of the year on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", I'm going with an enka. Last year, when I was scrolling through the list of Japanese celebrities that had left this mortal coil in 2024, I came across singer Jiro Kanmuri（冠二郎）who actually passed away exactly one year ago on January 1st at the age of 79. I had assumed that someone with the brio and outsized personality of Kanmuri already had his representation on KKP but I was sadly very wrong.

Born in Saitama Prefecture as Yoshihiro Horiguchi（堀口義弘）, he had begun his singing career under the aegis of lyricist Yasuteru Miura（三浦康照）and composer Kanae Wada（和田香苗）in 1967. The first ten years though were pretty lean in terms of success until 1977 when he had his first hit with "Tabi no Owari ni"（旅の終りに...At Journey's End） which was a theme song for a TV Asahi drama.

And then in September 1992, Kanmuri released his 38th single "Honoo" (Flame) which was created by Miura and Wada. A manly-man enka song with tons of brio this side of Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, "Honoo" was more than happy to exhort the visceral qualities of being a man and yet to also throw in some gentleness along with the strength. It's the type of song that would get a scrawny guy to help lift the mikoshi in a summer festival (and yep, there are plenty of hints of festival in the arrangement) or to approach that young lass for a date. Miura's lyrics even made it plainly obvious that enka was the genre to show off manliness through the phrase "I, I, I like enka!".

What surprised me was that I had never written about the late Kanmuri before now considering that whenever I saw him appear on television, he exuded showmanship as he performed "Honoo" with absolute panache and power. He was basically Sabu-chan with a fuller head of hair. The song reached No. 48 on Oricon, and won a couple of music awards. Kanmuri also got his second invitation to the Kohaku Utagassen at the end of 1992 to sing "Honoo". He had his first appearance on the NHK special in 1991 and had one more invitation in 1995.