Haruo Minami -- Nobunaga (信長)

2026 marks Haruo Minami's (三波春夫) 25th death anniversary. To commemorate the occasion, the Minami Creates team has bestowed upon us an official lyric video of one of the kayo world's most revered figure's long form kayo-rokyoku (chohen kayo rokyoku...長編歌謡浪曲) works, Nobunaga. On top of that, it was streamed on most, if not all, music listening platforms. 

To be honest, Haru-san has recently taken a bit of a back seat, what with Hachi and Mr. Nakano usurping the majority of my attention. Wading into rokyoku territory and watching the odd narrative-singing show live, usually at Asakusa's Mokubatei theatre, has ensured Haru-san got some love outside of his birthday and death anniversary celebrations - it's so hard to love all my bois equally. But even with that said, I've fallen behind on delving deeper into his discography, so Minami Creates dropping Nobunaga on 14th April (the day of Haru-san's death anniversary) was a welcomed present. 

Seeing as how it's been a hot minute since I talked about Minami, here's a brief intro to chohen kayo-rokyoku, conjured up by the man himself. As the name implies, it’s an even fusion of kayokyoku (pop music) and rokyoku (narrative singing). Imagine a kayo or enka with its 3 stanzas. Now imagine fitting a rokyoku's fushi (the singing part) and/or tanka (the spoken part) into the kayo/enka's musical interludes. There you have the basic structure of one of Minami's music babies. Duration-wise, they can be as short as 4 and a half minutes or as long as 20 minutes, but are, on average, about 6 to 10 minutes in length. This makes them longer than the average 3-ish/4 minute kayo, but much shorter than the average 25-35 minute rokyoku set. 

The idea of making rokyoku more quickly consumed and digestible, and thus more acceptable to a population that was beginning to lose interest and patience for the older genre, was a significant factor that pushed Haru-san to make this bite-sized (relatively speaking) fusion a reality. From my understanding, he'd already been thinking of some way to make “singable naniwabushi (the older term for rokyoku)” (utau naniwabushi) since he restarted his rokyoku career upon returning from Siberia, where he'd been a POW. Despite switching career tracks (rokyoku artist to pop singer) in 1957, this idea began to take shape when Haru-san was given the rokyoku-like Otone Mujo (大利根無情) in 1959. Its massive success led to a him releasing a spate of rokyoku-inspired kayo and kayo that were based on actual rokyoku stars of the past, like Ippon-gatana Dohyo-iri (一本刀土俵入り), Tochuken Kumoemon (桃中軒雲衛門), and Meigetsu Ayataro Bushi (名月綾太郎ぶし). Still, I'd say these were still more kayo than rokyoku at this point.

I believe that it was only in 1962 when Haru-san first experimented with longer forms of this genre with Soga Monogatari (曽我物語). This fresh take on kayo-rokyoku finally came into the limelight in 1964 with the heroic, Chushingura-affiliated drama Tawaraboshi Genba (俵星玄蕃). Since then, Haru-san would regularly create chohen kayo-rokyoku for the next 30 plus years of his life, making Japanese historical figures, folk tales, and rokyoku more accessible to the average pop music listener. 

Moving on to the song itself. Nobunaga is one of Haru-san’s many self-written projects, albeit one from later in his life, having been released in January 1992 in an album of the same title. This tune is not to be confused with Oda Nobunaga (織田信長), which Minami created in January 1970. The latter is considerably shorter at 4 minutes, while the latter is twice its length at 8 minutes. Nevertheless, I think Nobunaga can be seen as a plus alpha to Oda Nobunaga. If it's not already apparent, these 2 songs were based on the revered daimyo regarded as Japan's first unifier. 

For reference, here's Oda Nobunaga

From what I gather, Haru-san mainly focused on the infamous end to the daimyo in Oda Nobunaga, wherein he perished in the Honno-ji temple fire ambushed by his once-trusted retainer Mitsuhide Akechi. The later Nobunaga includes this incident, in addition to listing the efforts the daimyo made to bring the fragmented lands under his rule, which, aside from waging several important battles, included improving transport networks and loosening trade barriers across the Kansai region. One such policy was the raku-ichi-raku-za, which made trade possible anywhere within castle town grounds, as opposed to having it be restricted to designated areas. Music-wise, both of Haru-san's Oda-centred works have proud and heroic-sounding melodies, fitting for an all-powerful daimyo. However, I feel that Nobunaga is elevated by Nobuyuki Sakuraba's (桜庭伸幸) fantastic arrangement, which paints a Oda in a more intimidating and powerful light with the thunderous rolling drums; the ko-tsutsumi and flute further draws out an air of ancient grandeur.

My knowledge on Japanese history before the Taisho era is paltry, and I know next to nothing about Oda. So, listening to Nobunaga and its predecessor took me back to my old days. I remember learning about the likes of Taira no Kiyomori and Kinokuniya Bunzaemon through Haru-san's kayo-rokyoku, using them as stepping stones to delve deeper into that the drama of these figures online so that I could get more context to better understand his work.

Haru-san had written in one of his books Utagei no Tenchi (歌藝の天地) that one of his wishes was for the world to remember his songs, even if it's been 2 decades since his passing and his name forgotten. The Minami Creates team, helmed by his daughter Miyuki Minami (三波美夕紀), seem to have been working tirelessly over the years to make sure this wish of his comes true. Well, suffice to say that, 25 years after his passing, the name "Haruo Minami" is still remembered alongside his chohen kayo-rokyoku.