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've only seen taxi drivers in Japan as some of the politest and most button-down professionals in the service industry. But in the past couple of decades, I've unfortunately heard of increasing numbers of incidents of theft and assault against them. Absolutely undeserving of that.😠
Perhaps back in the middle of the 20th century, things were a little more footloose and fancy-free for the regular cab driver in the big city. That's the vibe I get from kayo singer Koichi Aoki's（青木光一）"Boku wa Nagashi no Untenshu"(I'm Just a Working Driver). Released in April 1957 with music and lyrics by Toru Funamura（船村徹）and Miyuki Hatakeyama（石本美由起）respectively, it's a song that I heard in the most recent episode of "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）, and it's all about a taxi driver, originally from the countryside, who's having a pretty good and interesting life in Tokyo. He's probably been privy to all sorts of intriguing conversations and information while driving all over, enjoying his dinner on the road and dreaming of bringing over his ol' flame for a tour of the capital.
Here are singers Hiroshi Takeshima and Takuya Nagasawa（竹島宏＆中澤卓也）covering "Boku wa Nagashi no Untenshu" on the kayo show "Jinsei, Uta ga Aru"（人生、歌がある）.
Back when I was spending the summer of 1972 at my grandparents' house in Wakayama Prefecture, I remember a delivery guy who brought over glass bottles of coffee milk. I'm not sure whether this was a daily tradition but that coffee milk sure was tasty. So tasty that I managed to drop one on the ground and break it open in my haste to get it. Nothing like sealing the deal on impressions to everyone in the neighbourhood by being butterfingers.
I was kinda reminded of that incident while listening to this old-timey kayo kyoku by Koichi Aoki（青木光一）. "Kojima Gayoi no Yuubinsen"(Mail Boat Through the Islands) was a March 1955 single written by Miyoshi Kamio（上尾美代志）and composed by Hideo Hirakawa（平川英夫）. A quaint melody and story which relates the feelings of sending letters and waiting for responses via the slower delivery system way back then, the arrangement and Aoki's tender vocals did give me the feelings of how much more precious the postal system was in the old days especially in remote communities on the smaller islands in comparison to the almost immediate replies of texting and email are now in the 21st century.
Happy Monday! As I've told viewers in a number of other articles over the past dozen years, the nearest station to my home in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture was Minami-Gyotoku Station（南行徳駅）on the Tozai Line. Although Toronto has been my home once again for well over a decade now since returning from Japan, I've always retained a soft spot for my old neighbourhood. Whenever I returned from Toronto after the biannual Christmas vacation there, there would be Nangyo (the abbreviated nickname for Minami-Gyotoku) as the sun was setting; my flights back to Narita Airport always ended up arriving in the afternoon. It was my station, my neighbourhood, my home. I could buy a bento at the konbini and crash on my sofa in my 2K.
Still, I think my feelings on returning to my apartment in Ichikawa probably pale to those of Tokyoites heading back to their hometowns after several years of working hard in the megalopolis to help get Japan back onto its feet. Koichi Aoki's（青木光一）"Furusato no Eki"(Hometown Station) from 1956 is a classic bokyo kayo（望郷歌謡...song of longing for home） with those old-fashioned strings and the down-home rhythms paired with the singer's nasal vocals. Written by Miyuki Ishimoto（石本美由紀）and composed by Hideo Hirakawa（平川英夫）, "Furusato no Eki" seems to be the ideal song to welcome back the mature son and daughter at the station with warm hugs and promises of food, drink and warmth.
Getting back home after dinner with my friends tonight, I flicked on Turner Movie Classics where I caught the last 45 minutes of the classic musical "The Band Wagon" (1953) with Fred Astaireand Cyd Charisse. Of course, there were some of the wonderful routines involving "Dancing In The Dark" and especially "That's Entertainment". And now I know from where the music video for Art of Noise's"Peter Gunn" was inspired along with Michael Jackson's"Smooth Criminal".
Anyways, after the movie ended, I was left wondering about some of the kayo that had come out in that same year of 1953. There are four previous songs from that year listed on the blog and I found out another one titled "Genki de ne, Sayonara" (Take Care, Goodbye) by enka singer Koichi Aoki（青木光一）.
Aoki is already represented by a song that has become an enka standard, "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie"（柿の木坂の家）which was released in 1957. However, it was with "Genki de ne, Sayonara" that the singer from Saga Prefecture got his first big break. And unlike the slightly sorrowful "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie", "Genki de ne, Sayonara" sounds more cheerful despite the theme of parting-is-such-sweet-sorrow.
Released in March 1953, the lyrics were by Toshio Nomura（野村俊夫）with the music provided by Minoru Mikai（三界稔）. The other interesting thing about the song is in the title; I don't think I had ever seen the word "sayonara" written in kanji before.
The persimmon is a fruit that I got to like somewhat later in life. It's known as kaki（柿）in Japanese, and it's not exactly too common in my area of Canada at least although it is well known in my ancestral homeland. My first experience with the persimmon wasn't too good; it tasted way too bitter, and sure enough there is the expression, shibugaki (bitter persimmon), and since I'm mentioning it here in this blog, there is the Johnny's aidoru group from the 80s, Shibugakitai（シブがき隊）.
However, once it finally ripens (or gets dunked into some alcohol for a few days), the persimmon becomes this luscious, sweet and messy thing that's quite delish. I've left a YouTube video up above just to show you what this fruit looks like, just in case some of you folks elsewhere on the planet are like I was when I was a kid and had no idea what the heck a persimmon was. To give credit where credit is due, the video was made by Perry Rush.
Anyways, on to the main song at hand here. A couple of nights ago, NHK's "Kayo Concert" paid tribute to the songs of longtime composer Toru Funamura（船村徹）who was the guest of honour on the show. Basically, Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, one of the performers of the evening, put it best about Funamura, "If there were no him, there would be no us."
I've already profiled a few songs that were composed by Funamura, and then came across this one on the show which fired up some of those old hoary memory engrams. It was "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie"(The House on the Persimmon Tree Slope) which was originally composed in September 1957 and written by the late Miyuki Ishimoto（石本美由起）. It's a venerable old ballad that has popped up over the decades on many shows, performed by many singers. In fact, it's a bit of a surprise considering how much of an enka standard it has become that it didn't earn its own article on J-Wiki.
The original version was sung by enka veteran Koichi Aoki（青木光一）who had been born in Saga Prefecture in 1926 before moving to Fengtian, Mongolia for several years and was detained in Siberia for a few years after serving in the Japanese army before being released in 1949. A year later, he would enter Columbia Records and release his debut single, "Wakai Arashi"（若い嵐...Young Storm）.
Aoki's "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie" had that reediness in the arrangement which I often related with the wartime and postwar kayo. And Aoki had that nasal and dreamy quality in his delivery which reminded me of some of those American Big Band crooners from a few decades earlier. Kishimoto's lyrics waxed wistfully on the protagonist's old hometown with that slope where his home was being just a few clicks from the little train station, how the scenes changed with the seasons and how the fellow wanted to meet that girl who may or may not have been an old flame. Probably the overall effect was to get all those folks working hard in the big city back in those days thinking about the relatively more idyllic days back in the countryside. Well, the effect worked as the song became an unprecedented hit for Aoki according to J-Wiki although I couldn't get any concrete stats on how many records were sold.
As I mentioned, "Kaki no Kizaka no Ie" has been covered by many enka singers over the years. The above link is for one version sung by Chiyoko Shimakura（島倉千代子）, which was released in May 2004. The arrangement is lusher (which is how I've always remembered the song) with the addition of those enka strings, although it still retains that feeling of the countryside.
Like Funamura, the 89-year-old Aoki, who is even older than the composer by 6 years, is still active in his career. He is even a Chairman Emeritus of the Japanese Singers' Association.
