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.
Welcome to the third in the weekly series of "Go-Touchi Songs", those tunes that reflect a certain region or prefecture or city in Japan. Last week, I devoted the sophomore effort to the Kanto region, which includes Chiba and Gunma Prefectures where I lived at different times in my young life, and now we move further westward and southward to cover the Chubu region. Incidentally, this area covers Aichi, Fukui, Gifu, Ishikawa, Nagano, Niigata, Shizuoka, Toyama, and Yamanashi Prefectures, a whopping nine provinces. However, although I couldn't get go-touchi songs from KKP to represent all of the areas, there are some pretty famous kayo among the ones that I could find. Next week, I'll take care of the Kinki region.
1. Kenichi Mikawa -- Niigata Blues （新潟ブルース）for Niigata City in Niigata (1967)
2. Sayuri Ishikawa -- Noto Hanto （能登半島）for the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa (1977)
4. Shigeru Amachi -- Nagoya Blues（名古屋ブルース）for Nagoya in Aichi (1981)
5. Tetsuya Ryu -- Oku-Hida Bojou （奥飛騨慕情）for the Hida area in Gifu (1980)
6. Kiyoshi Hikawa -- Oi Okkake Otojiro (大井追っかけ音次郎) for the Oi River in Shizuoka (2001)
As usual, why don't we end this session with some regional delicacies? This time, we have sasa dango（笹団子）from Niigata Prefecture and then miso katsu（味噌カツ）from Nagoya.
Happy Monday and a very cool one at that. We here in the GTA probably had our coolest morning so far this fall with a wake-up temperature of 4 degrees Celsius. I'm still seeing Tokyo getting those 30-degree highs, though.
Now for the sake of perfect transparency, one reason that I'm putting up this song "Nagoya Blues" is that when I was looking ahead for the plan to put up the Chubu region's group of go-tochi songs for this coming Saturday, I realized that I had yet to contribute anything go-tochi（ご当地）for the city of Nagoya which is a tad embarrassing for me considering it's been over a decade since I began "Kayo Kyoku Plus". However, part of my attempt at amends is the above tourist video for the capital of Aichi Prefecture by Omotenashi TV. As well, in the past, I have given some indirect tribute to the city whether it be through one of the theme songs for the anime "Yatogame-chan Kansatsu Nikki"（八十亀ちゃんかんさつにっき...Yatogame-chan's Observation Diary）, whose very brief episodes have taken an affectionate poke at Nagoya and the whole thing about it not getting much respect...kinda like the Japanese metropolitan version of Rodney Dangerfield, and putting up songs by Nagoyans Junko Yagami（八神純子）and Sentimental City Romance（センチメンタル・シティ・ロマンス）.
(Sorry but the video has been taken down.)
However up to today, I hadn't put up a go-tochi song on Nagoya despite a lot of other regional tunes getting a place on the blog. Well, this is "Nagoya Blues" which is a 1971 single by actor/singer Ichiro Kanbe（神戸一郎）who was born Masakatsu Maehara（前原正捷）in the city of Kobe（神戸）. And yes, his stage name was created on the point that his beautiful singing had him referred to as the "Ichiro Fujiyama（藤山一郎）of Kobe", thus Ichiro Kanbe (that last name being another way to say the kanji for Kobe). Written by Kousuke Sakurai（桜井幸介）and composed by Keishiro Tsuchida（土田啓四郎）, it's a go-tochi song with some shoutouts to places in Nagoya and the cruelty of love that seems to straddle the line between the downtown bluesiness of Mood Kayo while also retaining some of that elegance of enka.
A decade later in 1981, actor/singer Shigeru Amachi（天知茂）recorded a cover of "Nagoya Blues"（なごやブルース）for which Nagoya was rendered into hiragana instead of kanji for some reason. As well, this version tilts things more into the Mood Kayo style for which Amachi's more gravelly voice fits. Amachi also gave some good Mood Kayo several years earlier for his "Showa no Blues"（昭和のブルース）in 1974.
To complicate things further, there is a completely different "Nagoya Blues"（名古屋ブルース）that was created many years later for Yoko Masaki（真咲よう子）and Los Primos（ロス・プリモス）. I'll have to take a look at that one later on this week.
When it comes to cop TV nowadays, most of the various series consist of the police procedural teams such as "NCIS" and the now-departed "CSI" franchise. Back when I was a kid growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, though, a lot of those shows were productions starring rebellious lone-wolf detectives with "name" titles such as "Cannon", "Barnaby Jones", "Columbo", "McCloud" and "Banacek". Mind you, Leroy Jethro Gibbs of "NCIS" probably could earn his own show on his supremely crusty personality if he were ever to leave the agency and go solo.
During that same time period, though, there were the Japanese cop shows, and my impression of them has always been of the elite team at the Tokyo police department with the wise commander at headquarters, the field boss and a whole bunch of junior tecs willing to whip out the guns and run for lots and lots of kilometres. I will have to talk with JTM about this since the old shows are more his forte.
However, I have found out that there was at least one show back in the 1970s which dealt with one ippiki ohkami (lone wolf) who looked so hard-boiled that even Dirty Harry would have taken a step back if he were to meet him in a dark alley. The show was titled "Hijo no License"（非情のライセンス...Extraordinary License）, no connection to the song performed by the late Yoko Nogiwa（野際陽子）that I had written about recently, and the star was singer-actor Shigeru Amachi（天知茂）as Detective Aida, hero to the defenseless...bane to the police chief. The guy struck me as a particularly seen-it-all, done-it-all Japanese Michael Caine doing his version of Peter Gunn.
Amachi also sang the ending theme "Showa no Blues" (The Showa Blues) which didn't directly reference the Showa Era but just his character's probable philosophy toward life that involved struggling, pushing and slogging through the years toward the inevitability of death that awaits us all. I gather that Detective Aida wasn't exactly the life of the party at the year-end celebrations.
But I gotta say that "Showa no Blues" seems perfect for the character. The music by Masaru Sato（佐藤勝）is languid and oh-so-shibui, and matches Detective Aida's measured strolls through the lonely byways of the city. This is a guy who doesn't need to go anywhere fast since there is nothing novel for him to catch and there is no place where the bad guy can hide from him. His eyes alone could probably take down the perp. Meanwhile, Michio Yamagami's（山上路夫）lyrics repeat Aida's cynical view toward life even at the cost of happiness with the lady who loves him.
I can also say that this is the type of song that Yujiro Ishihara（石原裕次郎）would probably raise his glass of whiskey on the rocks to. Perhaps Amachi and the Tough Guy even met up for drinks at some hole-in-the-wall in shitamachi.
The link below will take you to another rendition of the song but with scenes from "Hijo no License".
