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.
Showing posts with label Mitsuko Nakamura. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mitsuko Nakamura. Show all posts
I was watching "Shin BS Nihon no Uta"（新BS日本の歌）last night when I saw the ever-beaming enka veteran Mitsuko Nakamura（中村美津子）appear on stage to perform a song that I'd initially assumed was one of her oldies. As it turned out, it was her latest (her 73rd) single from May this year.
"Jinsei Banzai"(Here's to Life) was released to commemorate Nakamura's 40th year in the music industry and I'm pretty sure when it comes to the annual Kohaku Utagassen, her name will probably be in the Red team lineup. Written by Kyosuke Kuni（久仁京介）and composed by Koji Tokuhisa（徳久広司）, it's a very genki song showing off her satisfaction and gratitude to everyone over the past four decades. The enka is in there of course, but I could hear a rumbling rhythm reminiscent of a 50s Latin-tinged number.
It was almost a month ago that I posted up enka singer Mitsuko Nakamura's（中村美津子）March 2025 72nd single, the brio-laden "Uta da yo! Jinsei"（歌だよ!人生）that should have a certain generation of karaoke enthusiasts singing its praises, especially in the final week of this year.
Well, the coupling song is a bit less fiery but it's also quite wholesome and reassuring just like a veteran custodian of an old-fashioned bar in Japan. In fact, the title of this enka ditty is "Izakaya Banashi"(Izakaya Talk) which sounds like two enka tunes in one. There is the main major-chord song with a slight diversion into a minor-chord number for one verse, as if composer Chiaki Oka（岡千秋）were musically bringing to life Reiji Mizuki's（水木れいじ）lyrics of that mama-san in the izakaya welcoming back an old customer who'd been transferred from Osaka to the Tokyo branch and then listening to his grievances on work and women for a bit before bringing his spirits back up.
I figure that the scenes like the one above will become even more frequent as we near the end of the year in Japan, and all of those bonenkai start up once more. All of those business workers have got to gush all of that stress from their systems at the year-end parties and subsequent karaoke sessions.
Well, I guess that the karaoke song menus now have one more boisterous tune to get the salarymen and women to scream their lungs out while dousing themselves in beer and other libations. This is "Uta da yo! Jinsei" (Life is Music!), the March 2025 72nd single for enka singer Mitsuko Nakamura（中村美津子）. Written by Reiji Mizuki（水木れいじ）and composed by Chiaki Oka（岡千秋）, this is one charming barnburner of a song celebrating all that is life and music, a philosophy that I can wholeheartedly embrace although the chances of me getting drunk with a necktie wrapped around my forehead while singing out my own lungs are now very remote. Mind you, I can imagine a number of folks throughout the generations sharing the same level of brio that Nakamura does to sing their hearts out. Reserve those karaoke boxes when you can!
Over the past several weeks that the sports events of the Tokyo Olympics, the Paralympicsand the annual high school baseball tournament at Koshien Stadium in between, there have been a lot of cancellations on the NHK schedule. That includes the kayo program "Uta Con"（うたコン）, and though I haven't exactly curled up into a traumatized fetal position because of its weeks-long disappearance from the television, I'm hoping that it will be returning fairly soon. It would be nice to get some of the old music back into my ears again.
Well, until that happens, there is always YouTube. And indeed, I did find an oldie but a goodie from November 1948. "Sayonara Rumba" (The Goodbye Rumba) was performed by Akiko Futaba（二葉あき子）as one of her string of hits in the immediate postwar period along with her cover of "Yoru no Platform"（夜のプラットホーム）.
Written by Ko Fujiura（藤浦洸）and composed by Takio Niki（仁木他喜雄）, "Sayonara Rumba" has that flavour of that swanky Latin nightclub in a snazzy area of Tokyo such as Ginza (although I'm not sure how ritzy the neighbourhood was in 1948 so relatively soon after the war). In addition, judging from Fujiura's lyrics about fondly but adamantly saying goodbye in some nighttime establishment after a torrid love affair, perhaps "Sayonara Rumba" can also be considered to be a predecessor of the typical Mood Kayo. Simply have that final dance on the floor before fading away in two directions.
Covers of "Sayonara Rumba" have been done over the years by singers such as Mitsuko Nakamura（中村美津子）.
For me, when it comes to drinking, I do that at an izakaya and I try to forget but it doesn't go too well. I remember my first birthday spent in Gunma on the JET Programme so my board of education guys decided to take me out for dinner and drinks. Of course, one of the things that a new teacher learns on the programme that his/her liver has to be in fighting trim since at those parties, drinking the harder stuff is what one does to socialize. That was not easy for me since aside from the sweet cocktails in university, I barely touched alcohol.
Anyways, I was doing a lot of chug-a-lugging at that birthday party in that izakaya in Numata City, and pretty soon, the room was spinning faster than disco lights. My memory was still intact enough to remember getting dragged up the stairs to my room in my host family's house and hearing repeated grunts from my fellows to the effect that I was a pretty heavy guy. I think my colleagues learned a valuable lesson that night and so I don't recall getting plied with as much booze from that point forward.
Mitsuko Nakamura（中村美律子）must be doing a lot better with her own "Wasurezake"(Drinking to Forget). This is her latest single from April 2019, and I first heard it on last week's episode of "Gogo no Uta"（ごごのウタ）. She remarked that through this song, her character doesn't simply drown her sorrows in that ladylike manner; she can just as easily glug it down and collapse into a messy heap on the counter. I'm sure her buddies would be able to carry her home more easily than my colleagues did with me back in 1989.
Still, despite Nakamura's explanation, I think "Wasurezake" does have that enka elegance although the actual recorded version sounds like her getting quite soused at the nomiya. Veteran composer Chiaki Oka（岡千秋）took care of that lovely music while the late Akiko Shimoji（下地亜記子）provided the lyrics.
Another TV sign in Japan that the year is coming to an end along with NHK's Kohaku Utagassen and Fuji-TV's FNS Music Festival is NHK's "Wagakokoro no Osaka Melody"（わが心の大阪メロディー...Osaka Melodies of My Heart）. A relative baby sister when compared to the first two specials, the national broadcaster's tribute to all music Osakan started only from 2001 but it's been quite popular and certainly my family has made it a custom to see it whenever it broadcasts in December.
The beginning of this year's special which was broadcast here in North America during the same time slot for "Uta Kon"（うたコン）on Tuesday night had bubbly (I'm using Noelle's apt adjective here) Mitsuko Nakamura（中村美律子）and the stalwart Takashi Hosokawa（細川たかし）go into a friendly sing-off. Hosokawa performed the classic "Naniwa Bushi da yo, Jinsei wa"（浪花節だよ人生は）while Nakamura sang a song that I hadn't heard before, "Kawachi Otoko Bushi"(Melody of a Kawachi Man).
Written by Miyuki Ishimoto（石本美由起）and composed by Chiaki Oka（岡千秋）, "Kawachi Otoko Bushi" has that same festival jauntiness as "Naniwa Bushi da yo, Jinsei wa". According to the J-Wiki article on the song, the rhythm is based on Kawachi ondo（河内音頭）, the brand of Japanese traditional folk song that originated in what is now part of Osaka Prefecture. It was released back in June 1989 as the Osaka native's 3rd single, and the timing was great since festival season usually starts up from mid-summer.
And it has apparently been used for the bon odori performances that take place in the Kansai area. On the Oricon chart, "Kawachi Otoko Bushi" only made it up to No. 69 but it's more than compensated since Nakamura has sung it a total of 8 times in her 15 times on the Kohaku Utagassen which makes it the No. 3 song in terms of the most repeated performances of a particular song on that special. Only Sayuri Ishikawa's（石川さゆり）"Amagi Goe"（天城越え）and "Tsugaru Kaikyo Fuyu Geshiki"（津軽海峡・冬景色）have had more appearances at 10 and 9 times respectively.
"Kawachi Otoko Bushi" was a hit right from the start in the Kansai area but it took 3 more years before it got its national attention. That late-coming fame was punctuated by Nakamura's debut appearance on the Kohaku in 1992, singing this very song.
Nakamura hasn't appeared on the Kohaku since 2010 after singing her trademark song three straight times up to that year, so I gather that perhaps she and her listeners probably wanted to take a break. However, it would be pretty nice for her to get onto the NHK stage again and bring back this crowdpleaser.
This picture of Ikuzo Yoshi (吉幾三) doesn't have any relation to the song I'll be talking about in a while, but I'd say it's a good representation of how I felt when I discovered that there are some fans of KKP from Singapore. For some reason, I didn't think that I could come across other natives of The Little Red Dot via this blog. At the same time, I never thought I'd be able to interact with Singaporeans who really know about enka and kayo rather than simply seeing such songs as the originals of popular Chinese covers, so it was a happy yet oddly strange feeling to encounter Francium and Karen. I mean, there are probably more Singaporean readers here too, and there are probably others from the island nation who appreciate more genres of Japanese music than just anisong or current day aidoru/J-rock, just that I'm not aware of/haven't had the chance to interact with them yet. But still, it was quite an amusing and eye-opening experience.
With that thought out, let's move on to the topic at hand. The song I'll be talking about today is "Yume no Hana Sakasou", a fairly recent (2013) entry in the discography of a couple of enka singers I see on the Tube from time to time - the bubbly Mitsuko Nakamura (中村美律子) and the husky Daishiro Masuiyama (増位山太志郎). This was introduced to me via Karen in the comments of my The First article when I asked about the type enka she listens to, and I have to say that I enjoyed it a lot more than I expected.
I found Nakamura's version first when I looked up "Yume no Hana Sakasou", and my first impression of it was that it kind of reminded me of Hibari Misora's (美空ひばり) "Kawa no Nagare no Youni" (川の流れのように). Soon, I took a liking to Tetsuya Gen's (弦哲也) light and encouraging pop-inclined melody - which still has a hint of enka - for the low horns and the way the rolling drums and smooth strings swell at certain bits. I was also quite surprised to hear something like this from Nakamura as the impression I have of her is that she tackles the traditional side enka, but it's nice to hear that she can pleasantly carry stuff like this as well.
As for Masuiyama's take, it's pretty much the same in terms of arrangement but I find that both singers' differing deliveries give the same song a different flavour. From Takashi Taka's (たかたかし) lyrics, "Yume no Hana Sakasou" seems to be saying that despite how tough life's trials can be, one should persevere as there's always a light at the end of the tunnel - hits pretty close to home at the moment, if you ask me...With Masuiyama's soft and almost Yujiro Ishihara-like vocals, this message sounds rather reflective, as if it's coming from someone who's been through said trials and is now looking back on his experience. On the other hand, Nakamura's spunkier and more hopeful delivery feels like how a maternal figure would encourage you when you've hit a rough patch. Personally, I don't have a favourite version as I like both just as much.
