Sasori-za (SWAY) -- Mado Garasu no Henohenomoheji​（窓ガラスのへのへのもへじ）

From Wikipedia

 

It's not something that I drew myself when I was living in Japan, but I've come across this doodled face consisting of hiragana characters that has been likened culturally to "Kilroy was here". Henohenomoheji is made up of he (へ), no (の), he (へ), no (の), mo (も), he (へ), and ji (じ) stylized together into a visage which has been used as the face of Japanese scarecrows but more often than not in various aspects of media as a running gag.

Several weeks ago at the end of October, I posted a song by the folk duo SWAY with Kana Sugiyama（杉山加奈）and Masako Horibe（堀部雅子）titled "Minminzemi no Natsu"（ミンミン蝉の夏）The act lasted between 1985 and 2000, but for the first five years, the original name for the duo was Sasori-za（さそり座...Scorpio） when Sugiyama and Horibe were junior high school students.

In 1984, the two created their own song "Mado Garasu no Henohenomoheji​" (The Henohenomoheji in the Window) which won them a prize at the 28th Yamaha Popular Song Contest, and it became their debut single in February 1985. The song hit No. 40 on Oricon and sold 36,000 records. It is a bittersweet song about goodbyes with the poignancy even more enhanced by the adorably young vocals by Sasori-za. The tune probably hit a lot of the kids and perhaps adults too in the feels.

SWAY -- Minminzemi no Natsu（ミンミン蝉の夏）

Neotibicen linnei by Bruce Marlin
via Wikimedia Commons

 

We have cicadas here in Canada, too, but the ones in Japan sound like they were inspired by heavy metal. At the end of every summer, they make their noise as if they were armed with amplifiers but I cannot deny that they are the harbingers of the end of a season and the entry into a cooler one.

In all likelihood, things are completely quiet now that we're fully into autumn, but I would like to introduce this folk duo SWAY that has given us this reminder of cicadas as the first track of their March 1994 album "Horo Basha"（ほろ馬車...Covered Wagon）. "Minminzemi no Natsu" (Robust Cicada Summer) is a relaxing and refreshing number delivered by Kana Sugiyama（杉山加奈）and Masako Horibe（堀部雅子）which brings to mind hot cloudless summer days and babbling brooks of fresh water. Sugiyama was responsible for the song's words and music. During a decade when folk songs were perhaps treated as nearly non-existent as compared to the 1960s and 1970s, for those who did discover SWAY, their discography must have been quite a nice change of aural scenery, especially with their harmonies.

Sugiyama and Horibe first joined up under the duo name of Sasori-za（さそり座...Scorpio） in the mid-1980s when they were only junior high school kids. They scored a nice hit with their debut single in 1985 and continued to sporadically release singles and albums in the folk, pop and anison genres. In 1990, they changed their name to SWAY after which they released four singles and three albums. Horibe herself would leave the duo in 1999 due to marriage to be replaced by Megumi Maruo（丸尾めぐみ）, but SWAY itself would only last one more year before calling it a day because Sugiyama herself would get married and move over to Thailand.