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.
It seems so long ago and yet it's only been a few months since enka singer and actor Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）left this mortal coil at the age of 82. I guess that the music that he provided fans were so imbued with the feeling of a long-ago era that it might be easy to assume that Hashi was someone from a very long time ago.
I was just scrolling through the Top 10 Songs of 1961 and it was evident that Hashi had a lot of hits during that time, including one that came in at No. 9,"Okesa Utaeba" (Why Not Sing A Traditional Folk Song?). Hashi's 3rd single was released in October 1960 and it's definitely an enka tune when compared to some of his later and more muscular rock kayo tunes such as "Zekken No. 1 Start da"（ゼッケンNO.1スタートだ）. Written by Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composed by Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）, it's got that jingly and jangly festival spirit in there although according to the J-Wiki article on "Okesa Utaeba", there was no choreography particularly planned for it in performances of the song unlike some of Hashi's other fare. I certainly thought that there was something min'yo about it.
With the mention of Niigata Prefecture in Saeki's lyrics and perhaps other places within the province, I assume that "Okesa Utaeba" can also be considered to be a go-touchi song or a regional tune as Hashi sings about the one that got away. Maybe the song is supposed to be a salve for that broken heart. Listeners could sympathize because "Okesa Utaeba" managed to sell about 200,000 records and break the Top 10 list in the pre-Oricon era as mentioned above.
Just for the record, the above YouTube video comes from the channel Going Awesome Places with Will Tang and he's showing off some of the wonderful things to do in Alberta's Banff and Lake Louise, a place that I got to visit all the way back in 1990.
I mentioned in a recent Xmas-based article on KKP that not all Canadians want to celebrate the Holidays in their own country. Perhaps it's something about the fact that walking daily in a winter wonderland with the temperature at a slightly cool -280 degrees and the winds coming in at a breezy Mach 2 might not be the most enjoyable environment. 🧊🥶
I know that folks do like to head down south for days, weeks and even months at a time but I wanted to sate my curiosity about where Canadians like to go during winter once and for all. And I was surprised to find out that at least some of my fellow countrymen do like to keep things within the Great White North while others do desire something more tropical. As such, possessing that whimsical nature which often powers my Author's Picks, I've come up with five destinations while providing the appropriate songs to accompany them.
(1967) Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets -- Blue Chateau（ブルー・シャトウ）
It's been a month since veteran singer and actor Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）passed away at the age of 82, and I think the kayo kyoku world has still been mourning his loss. One thing I've noticed as I've posted his music up onto the blog over the past several years, especially his hits from the 1960s is that at one point from the mid-1960s at least, the powers-that-be above and surrounding him seemed to have wanted to give him that tough athletic image in both music and movies. His 1964 hit "Koi wo Suru nara"（恋をするなら）had viewers imagining him hanging ten off of a surfboard and I think they saw him do just that, too, in the movie "Kodoku"（孤独...Loneliness） which had the song as the theme tune. The following year, there was also "Ano Ko to Boku ~ Swim Swim Swim"（あの娘と僕-スイム・スイム・スイム-）with an accompanying movie which had young Hashi hitting the pool.
In between those two examples of his discography, there was his 56th single"Zekken No. 1 Start da"(It's the Start of Racer No. 1) which has him in the milieu of a Grand Prix race although no movie was adapted from it. Released in September 1964, the song does literally bring in the sounds and imagined sights of race time. As with the above two songs, "Zekken No. 1 Start da" was written by Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composed by Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）as an example of Rhythm Kayo（リズム歌謡）, perhaps a proto-version of Group Sounds and something that was used to perhaps shake up the career of Hashi a bit more after earlier sweeter hits such as "Itsudemo Yume wo"（いつでも夢を）.
This was still in the pre-Oricon age so no ranking information, although I think that considering "Zekken No. 1 Start da" sold 240,000 records by May 1965, Hashi probably would have scored a Top 10 ranking at least. His Rhythm Kayo material just adds another dimension to his discography when compared to the solemn "Muhyou"（霧氷）and the jaunty "Koi no Mexican Rock"（恋のメキシカン・ロック）. To add one more thing, "Zekken No. 1 Start da" also happens to be one of my long-lost songs from my early memories. I hadn't heard this one since I was literally a baby and what got me to remember it once again was the roaring tires and that accordion which signified the urgency of the race.
Being Friday, I would usually be putting up my spate of urban contemporary tunes onto the blog, but I hope you'll permit me one change here. Singer and actor Yukio Hashi passed away at the age of 82 yesterday on September 4th. My parents and I were watching an NHK news flash when the announcement came out which garnered a joint gasp from all of us. In the last couple of years, we had seen him announce his retirement from show business in 2023, even going to the extent of searching for a young singer to take on the name of Yukio Hashi and continue his music. But due to popular demand, the original Hashi rescinded that retirement exactly a year later. I don't know if many of us who've enjoyed enka and Mood Kayo knew that he was sick but he had been diagnosed with an Alzheimer's-type disease earlier this year and that may have been a factor in his passing along with pneumonia according to the latest report on J-Wiki.
Hashi's death is especially poignant as he not only was one of the three young Turks in Japanese pop culture's first Gosanke trio alongside Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）and Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）, but in our household, I came to realize that a number of his records were part of my father's collection. So, his voice was a familiar one on the stereo although I wouldn't know who he really was until many years later. The Tokyo-born singer was mostly known for his enka and Mood Kayo classics but he could also put out songs that were outside of those traditional genres...songs that would also become very popular over the decades.
I'm going to put up the songs that I knew as a kid at home. My condolences go to Hashi's family, friends, and many fans.
One of the earlier posts on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" was for the classic kayo "Itsudemo Yume wo"（いつでも夢を）by entertainers Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）and Sayuri Yoshinaga（吉永小百合）, a huge hit that also reached my ears early in life.
Well, that was all back in September 1962. But I'm sure that everyone involved was thinking about whether lightning could strike twice with Hashi and Yoshinaga. Sure enough, going into 1963, the songwriters for "Itsudemo Yume wo", lyricist Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）, went to work and created "Wakai Tokyo no Yane no Shita"(Under the Roof of Young Tokyo) for recording and release in April of that year.
Not surprisingly, "Wakai Tokyo no Yane no Shita" was another big hit, officially known as Hashi's 34th single, as it sold a million records. It continues the same sort of happy-go-lucky beat from "Itsudemo Yume wo" as youth enjoy life in an emerging and vibrant Tokyo. A few months later, a movie was concocted based on the song. Yoshinaga starred in it and Hashi was supposed to have been in the film as well, but an incident involving him and others had landed the singer in hospital and so he wasn't able to fulfill the role which was then taken over by actor Mitsuo Hamada（浜田光夫）.
Last night's broadcast of NHK's morning show "Asaichi"（あさイチ）was once again truncated because of the government deliberations program, so what's a family to do? Instead of trying to search for stuff on Jme, I opted this time to look for something on YouTube because I've found that a lot of long-playing kayo kyoku programs have turned up on the platform. And sure enough, I hit the jackpot since there was a program titled "Jinsei, Uta ga Aru"（人生、歌がある...There's Music in Life）.
A show that's been on TV Asahi's satellite channel since 2020, it's been hosted by a mixture of TV Asahi announcers and enka singers, and at the time of the above video, it was the debonair veteran Hiroshi Itsuki（五木ひろし）and the lovely Natsuko Godai（伍代夏子）on hosting duties. That video was the one that we caught and it happened to be a 2023 episode commemorating the supposed retirement of kayo kyoku singer and actor Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）who was 80 at the time. I'm surprised that I never mentioned it in any of past articles in 2021 or 2022 but Hashi actually announced back in 2021 that he would be retiring from the spotlight on his 80th birthday on May 3rd 2023 after decades of entertaining the masses.
What looked like the Avengers of the current group of kayo kyoku-singing professionals all assembled to pay tribute to Hashi through covers of his old hits ranging from the haunting "Muhyou"（霧氷）to the jaunty "Koi no Mexican Rock"（恋のメキシカン・ロック）. And it was indeed quite the show for me because I realized that a majority of the songs by him were ones that I had first heard as a diaper-wearing toddler. I repeatedly internally remarked "I know that song!".
However, there were a few songs that had escaped my ears with one being "Wakai Yatsu"(Young Guy) which was Hashi's 23rd single from June 1962. A proud and brassy kayo march, the song was created by the famous songwriting team of lyricist Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）. It was also used as the theme song for the TBS drama of the same title "Wakai Yatsu ~ Hashi Yukio Show"（若いやつ〜橋幸夫ショー〜）. As shown, Hashi was the main star of the series which featured him as the young son in a wealthy family heading to a Tokyo university to learn about life and academics in the big city.
Singer Yukino Ichikawa（市川由紀乃）provided her version of "Wakai Yatsu" for him on "Jinsei, Uta ga Aru". The tribute ended with both Itsuki and Hashi tearing up a bit at the significance of the event. However, the brine was rather wasted when several months later in 2024, Hashi showed up in Tokyo to announce that he just didn't have the heart to retire after all. And so, he's continued to sing and he has vowed that he'll do so until his final breath. I remember Harumi Miyako（都はるみ）doing much the same thing in the 1980s, so it's not unprecedented.
Welcome to another weekly article of Reminiscings of Youth. A few years ago, I posted up the theme from the first "Casino Royale"(1967), the hot mess of a 007 spoof starring David Niven and Peter Sellers which nonetheless inspired Mike Myers'"Austin Powers" franchise. As I said in that article, I have seen the movie once and then bits and pieces on YouTube. However, what I've appreciated most about the flick is the music and that Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass theme penned by the amazing Burt Bacharach that is so infused with the Swinging 60s of Great Britain. If I were ever to get to London someday on a vacation and somehow got a Savile Row suit, I would love to walk up and down the streets with that song in my ears.
However, there was one scene in "Casino Royale" that also caught my attention because of the music and, well, Ursula Andress. I remember she was hopping all about with a bunch of shocking pink feathers and I guess the above footage only shows the seconds or so before that one scene. At the same time, there was the music which was jazzy and oh-so-sexy with a breathy voice that squeezed out "The Look of Love" as if a woman in Bubble Era Japan were trying to get out of her bodicon dress. I think the scene and the song play off of each other very well because of the languid pacing out of both of them, and considering the lunacy that precedes and follows in "Casino Royale", Sellers and Andress having a little intimate fun makes for a pretty calming oasis.
Dusty Springfield was someone that I had heard of before when I was a kid in the 1970s because of those K-Tel LP compilation commercials on television but the song that featured her (can't remember the title) had her sound a whole lot different than those vocals on "The Look of Love". The bossa nova jazz was woven together by Burt Bacharach with Hal David taking care of the lyrics, and it was even nominated for a Best Song Oscar in 1968.
Jazz pianist and vocalist Diana Krall is one of many artists who have covered "The Look of Love", and it's included as the title track for her September 2011 album. The original version was released in April 1967, so what were three songs from Japan that got their release at around the same time?
With Tanabata happening a couple of days ago, I figure that Japan has entered its annual weeks-long festival season. Lots of traditional dancing, yukata-wearing, food-noshing and minyo-singing to be had all over the nation.
To be honest, I can't remember how I encountered this festive tune. Perhaps it was through one of the music shows popping up on NHK via Jme but it's appropriate for the time. At first glance, I'd assumed that "Dai Tokyo Ondo" (Great Tokyo Song) was something that had been around for a century at least but then I looked up its article on J-Wiki and discovered that it had been created by lyricists Tsuneharu Takita（滝田常晴）and Masato Fujita（藤田まこと）and composer Minoru Endo（遠藤実） back in the relatively recent year of 1979 (in May, to be exact). It so happens that the festive "Dai Tokyo Ondo" was actually created to commemorate the 15th anniversary of what is now the channel TV Tokyo back in that year. There was apparently a contest in which around 3000 entries were accepted for a celebratory song.
Mr. Takita must have been doubly honoured when he found out that veteran enka singer Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）and relative newcomer Akiko Kanazawa（金沢明子）would record "Dai Tokyo Ondo" as a duet officially as Hashi's 140th single. It also became the title song for a Hashi album that came out in September 1979.
"Dai Tokyo Ondo" may have been created on behalf of a TV station, but it has since also become a regular part of the Tokyo summer festival scene, and it's been covered by a number of other singers over the years. However, the Hashi and Kanazawa duet is supposed to the one that had the most success.
If I'm not mistaken, this was performed on a recent episode of either "Uta Con"（うたコン）or "Shin BS Nippon no Uta"（新・BS日本のうた...Songs of Japanese Spirit）. "Samurai Nippon" is an intrepid but upbeat march of the honour-bound and duty-bound warrior which was the theme song for the 1931 Nikkatsu movie of the same name, itself based on Jiromasa Gunji's（郡司次郎正）novel. It was written by Yaso Saijo（西條八十）and composed by Nobuhiro Matsudaira（松平信博）. The original singer was Tamaki Tokuyama（徳山璉）who was not only a singer of kayo kyoku in the early Showa era but also a baritone in opera and chanson. What is interesting about "Samurai Nippon" is that the last several notes before Tokuyama's first vocals which repeat themselves throughout the song sound almost happily comical.
On his Wikipedia profile, Tokuyama was born in Kanagawa Prefecture in 1903. Graduating from what would become part of Tokyo University of the Arts, he became a faculty member of the music conservatory Musashino Academia Musicae but then signed a contract with Nippon Victor Company in 1930. With "Samurai Nippon" coming out the following year, it became a big hit for Tokuyama after which he also enjoyed more success in his records. Considering the times back then, the singer also became famous for his military music. Sadly, his life would be short since he would die at the age of 38 in 1942 from sepsis.
It took a bit of doing but I was eventually able to find out when and where Yukio Hashi's（橋幸夫）cover of "Samurai Nippon" was recorded. A track on his April 1972 album"Enka"（艶歌）, his version is completely swathed in a glorious cloak of enka right from Note One. Even those comical notes that I mentioned in Tokuyama's original come off sounding more dutiful and serious.
When I posted the "Top 10 Singles for 1961" in the fading minutes of September 30th 2023, I couldn't help but notice the fact that singer Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）had no fewer than four songs on the list. That was quite the achievement and the last time that I saw a single artist or band with as many as four songs on the Top 10 for a particular list was probably AKB48.
As such, I had to look into and write about at least one of those Hashi hits and so I went with No. 2 on the Top 10, "Nankai no Bishonen" (The Handsome Boy of the South Seas). Released in May 1961 as as his 8th single, when I first saw and translated that title, I envisioned some toned and tanned Polynesian kid having a ton of fun under the sun while wearing a grass skirt. But then, I heard the melody by Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）and the lyrics by Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）, and realized that this was anything but a tale of tropical Nirvana.
Actually, the young man in the title refers to Shiro Amakusa（天草四郎）, a 17-year-old Japanese Catholic leader of the Shimabara Rebellion (1637-1638), the biggest uprising against the Shogunate in Japanese history. Also calling himself Geronimo and Francisco, the rebellion in what is now Nagasaki Prefecture involved fighting back against the policies enforced by the daimyo of Shimabara which included prohibition of Christianity. In the end, the rebellion was defeated and Amakusa and his thousands of followers were beheaded. So, I can imagine the militaristic and mournful melody of this song which has also been given the subtitle of "Shiro Amakusa's Song".
The above has fresh-faced enka singer Shin Aoyama（青山新）performing "Nankai no Bishonen" in front of the original singer himself.
I'd read about entertainer Yukio Hashi's（橋幸夫）intention to retire this May at around his birthday at the age of 80, and according to the press conference above, he actually had already made his announcement last year. Well, earlier on the NHK News, he also declared that he was now looking for his successor. Thinking along the lines of traditional entertainers such as kabuki actors and rakugo storytellers who inherit names from their masters and pass them onto their beloved acolytes, he posited about why couldn't a singer do the same thing. It would be setting a precedent since as far as I know, this had never been done before involving a singer from the kayo kyoku era.
The surprising thing was that I had assumed that the singer was using a stage name of Yukio Hashi which would have made things easier in terms of passing on a name. But looking at his J-Wiki profile, I found out that Yukio Hashi is indeed his birth name, although the second kanji for his first name Yukio（橋幸男）at birth is different from the one that has been used in his career. Maybe that was good enough for Hashi to treat the name that his fans have known all this time as a stage name. Regardless, Hashi is searching for that younger, tougher and more talented singer to become Yukio Hashi II (and again that special second kanji will be changing) to sing his old hits so that fans and others won't ever forget them. I wish him well.
Noelle Tham was good enough to cover Hashi's debut single"Itakogasa" (潮来笠) from July 1960, so I'm going with his second entry, "Are ga Misaki no Hi da"(That's the Light of the Cape) which was released a mere month following his debut. I believe that it was normal for the singles of new singers to come out strong and fast so not surprisingly, his third single"Okesa Utaeba"（おけさ唄えば...Singing in the Traditional Style） came out a little more than a month later in October.
It's been the case sometimes that I have to wonder whether a certain Japanese song is actually an enka or a straight ahead kayo kyoku or Japanese pop song. "Are ga Misaki no Hi da" has that somewhat emotional and slightly mournful tone that the traditional genre of enka is famous for, but Hashi's second single is also arranged through Western instruments and according to the J-Wiki article for "Are ga Misaki no Hi da", it's been categorized as a kayo kyoku. Well, I'll do my usual straddling of the genres here.
Regardless, the song was created by veteran songsmiths, lyricist Takao Saeki（佐伯孝雄）and composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）. Hashi sings about a man relating a story to someone while on board a ship rounding a promontory and points out perhaps what could be a lighthouse or a beacon there. It just so happens that the man's home port is there along with the love of his life. It's uncertain whether the relationship is ongoing or is now in the past tense but just judging from the tone of the song and the usual kayo tropes, it could very much be the latter. However, Hashi sings in his last line that the woman has changed the man no matter what the status of the relationship is.
Through a book that Hashi co-wrote titled "Hashi Yukio Kayo Tamashi"（橋幸夫歌謡魂...Yukio Hashi The Soul of Kayo） and referenced on J-Wiki, he stated that because of the lightning-quick release of his early singles in the 1960s, although he personally liked "Are ga Misaki no Hi da", the hits of his first and third singles rendered his second single into a less venerated song. Still, it managed to sell around 100,000 copies throughout 1961 so it was no big flop by any means.
Getting back to the news of Hashi's retirement from the geinokai, I really felt that time has been going by since he will be leaving in a few months as a familiar face in entertainment and as one of the Ganso Gosanke（元祖御三家）. One other member of the trio, Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）, died almost a year ago, which would leave only Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）.
Yup, I finally saw the moment of Season 3 of "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai"（かぐや様は告らせたい）last week, and though I heard that there was some controversy regarding the scene, I thought that most viewers reacted with varying levels of satisfaction. And as it turned out, there was a reason for that blue heart balloon to hide things. However, as strange as it may be, I'm not going to be using this particular scene as the analogy here for this song although I will be using the franchise.
So, let's imagine a slightly older Kaguya and Miyuki in 1980s Tokyo out in some swanky nightclub in Ginza or Akasaka. They are actually still engaged in their battle of wits and romance with the former turning on some ice while the latter is blowing the torch during a literal dance on the floor. That would describe what is happening lyrically in the July 1983"Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" (I Won't Let You Go Tonight), a Mood Kayo duet between Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）and kayo singer Ritsuko Abe（安倍里葎子）.
From my feeling of its arrangement by Tatsuya Nango（南郷達也）, I'm gathering that Mood Kayo during the high-flying 1980s was fun, footloose and fancy-free with a touch of Latin. Kensuke Fujinami*（藤波研介）was the lyricist while the melody was composed by Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）, the same fellow who would come up with similarly happy tunes for the group Junretsu（純烈）many years later.
According to J-Wiki, Ritsuko Abe hails from Sapporo, Hokkaido and though she has been singing professionally since 1970, it was with "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" that she finally got some of those accolades for a hit tune. Although she had thought that she could now go it alone and actually left the recording company behind the song, Abe apparently found the need to do the duets once more, so she worked with other singers such as Hiroki Matsukata（松方弘樹）. In fact, at one point, she was even called the Queen of Duets.
For Abe, "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" was her 24th single while for Hashi, the song would be his 149th single. Over 300,000 records were sold and it earned a Japan Cable Award.
*I couldn't find definitive proof that the lyricist's first name is indeed Kensuke despite giving an educated guess. Even Jisho.org doesn't have the name in its files.
Well, I'm putting up a new Label on the side here. Recently, I wrote about the technopop band P-Model and in looking up information on them, I found out that they have been included with two other similar groups, Hikashu and The Plastics to form a Techno Gosanke（テクノ御三家）. Over the years, I've referred to that term gosanke（御三家） a number of times. Therefore, I figured that it may actually be time to display on a weekly basis the various trios in the music world, especially on finding a page at "idol.ne.jp" that has a fairly long list. I can also think of a few other entries that weren't included on that list.
I recall explaining about the word at least once in the past few months, but I'll explain it here as well. Gosanke began its existence in terms of Japanese history. According to the J-Wiki description, it was first used to refer to the three sons of the shogunIeyasu Tokugawa（徳川家康）and their families. Those sons, Yoshinao（徳川義直）, Yorinobu（徳川頼宣） and Yorifusa（徳川頼房）, were given special status as such. They were The Big 3.
Hundreds of years later, the mass media and/or entertainment management companies in Japan picked up on the significance of gosanke, and have been using the term to describe certain celebrities and corporate figures among other people and things as influential and charismatic trios. The first time that this occurred was in the 1960s when it was first used for the young new stars of Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）, Kazuo Funaki（舟木一夫）and Teruhiko Saigo（西郷輝彦）. Because Saigo was the last of this Gosanke to make his debut, I've pegged this article with his debut year of 1964.
In the 1970s, another trio of male stars popped up (which I will show next week) which took on the name, so since that point, Hashi, Funaki and the late Saigo have been called the Ganso Gosanke or The Original Big 3. Welcome to KKP, Gosanke!
As if anyone needed reminding, it is indeed October 1st, 2022. Time for fall leaves, harvesting and good food such as matsutake mushrooms and grilled sanma in Japan. Turkey and pumpkin pie would be the delicacies here in Canada and the United States, but I digress.
Last Saturday, I began a series known as "Go-Touchi Songs", those tunes that reflect a certain region or prefecture or city in Japan. They are held near and dear by many people in the country and last weekend, I started with Hokkaido and the Tohoku region which tends towards the northern part of the main island of Honshu. But as promised, I am now going into the area where I spent almost two decades of my life: the Kanto region which includes Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Gunma, Chiba and Kanagawa Prefectures along with Metropolitan Tokyo. As was displayed in last week's list, the songs aren't all about enka and Mood Kayo. Also to reiterate, this is a very tiny list merely to provide a small taste of these geographically based songs (especially where Tokyo and Yokohama are concerned); you can take a look at the far more extensive list at J-Wiki. Plus, I'll be covering the Chubu region next week.
1. Yukio Hashi -- Itakogasa (潮来笠) for Itako City in Ibaraki (1960)
2. Duke Aces -- Ii Yu da na （いい湯だな）for Gunma (1966)
7. Ayumi Ishida -- Blue Light Yokohama（ブルーライト・ヨコハマ）for Yokohama, Kanagawa (1968)
As was the case with Hokkaido and the Tohoku last week, I'd like to finish with a couple of delicacies from the Kanto: yaki manju（焼き饅頭）in Gunma and monjayaki（もんじゃ焼き）in Tokyo respectively.
Unfortunately, the thumbnail photo here isn't quite accurate since this was taken during the fall of2017 but it looks festive enough by Sensoji Temple in Asakusa. What I wanted to get across is that the summer festival season is most likely back in Japan considering that the Gion Festival of Kyoto returned in all of its glory last month and I saw the news report on the annual fireworks festival in Niigata Prefecture.
Mind you, this video uploaded by dodondo was apparently taken at some Wakayama Prefecture festival in late September some years back, but the important thing is that even in the early days of autumn, people can still enjoy a good matsuri. Of course, a festival means a lively dance to an ondo around the yagura stage. And the first song featured here is "Tozai Nanboku Ondo" (Traditional Folk Song of the East, West, South and North).
Recorded as a duet featuring Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）and Akemi Misawa（三沢あけみ）and consequently released in June 1967, "Tozai Nanboku Ondo" was created by lyricist Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）and composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）, two of Hashi's mentors in the music industry. With those taiko drums and shamisen in play, it would be more than enough for folks to stand up and get into that ring around the yagura.
According to J-Wiki, the song was recognized as Hashi's 90th single, and I also found out that the singer has had the second-highest number of duets with Misawa, next to his collaborations with actress/singer Sayuri Yoshinaga（吉永小百合）. In any case, for those KKP viewers in Japan, let me know if you have any local festivals coming up this month.
As I mentioned a few minutes ago, I'd caught "Top Gun: Maverick" at the theatre yesterday with a buddy so I figured that I simply had to cover the famous anthem from that movie. However, my original intention with this week's Reminiscings of Youth was to cover an even more famous theme from the movies. In fact, I'd say that this theme will go down as one of the most famous songs in moviedom.
I do this because British composer Monty Norman passed away on July 11th a few days ago at the age of 94. For all that he's created over the decades, I can say that his most recognizable creation with John Barry's arrangement is the theme song for James Bond, MI6 Agent 007.
The James Bond theme made its debut with the debut of the James Bond movie franchise in 1962 with "Dr. No". A few years before my birth, so I missed out on catching the very first 007 flick at the theatres. Therefore, it was through the TV reruns on ABC's Sunday night movies where I caught Sean Connery as Bond. That scene above where he uttered the coolest introduction of a character's name (Bond...James Bond) is still amazing even after 60 years. The man was so charismatic that he apparently emitted the theme song along with his cologne whenever he took a walk.
Just like the fact that I've always considered the first movie incarnation of Bond via Sir Sean to be my favourite, I've always preferred the very first rendition of the James Bond theme through "Dr. No.". Neither shaken nor stirred but very steady and controlled until it's time to be unleashed.
One reason that I like the original version of the Bond song so much is that distinct twangy guitar riff provided by studio guitarist Victor Flick on his 1939 English Clifford Essex Paragon Deluxe via a Fender Vibrolux amplifier according to the Wikipedia article on the theme. That riff seems to describe the character of Bond himself stalking his prey within that mysterious atmosphere jazzily provided by Barry and his orchestra. When the horns suddenly explode, that's when the fun and bullets and fisticuffs begin.
I remember seeing bits and parts of the early Bond movies with Connery such as "Thunderball" and "You Only Live Twice" on the telly, but it wasn't until I finally saw the gun barrel sequence and the subsequent opening credits for "Dr. No" that I finally got the theme in its full glory and realized who and what James Bond represented. It's like that old saying "You always remember your first".
So, while 007 was doing his romancing and killing for queen and country, which kayo were winning prizes in Japan in that year of 1962? Let's take a look at the Japan Record Awards.
Grand Prize -- Yukio Hashi and Sayuri Yoshinaga -- Itsudemo Yume wo （いつでも夢を）
I may have been less than a year old when the original "Mission: Impossible" series came on CBS in September 1966, but my earliest television memories are the opening credits montage sequence, the tape recorded message and Jim Phelps looking over who was going to be in on this week's mission. Oh, of course, there was also the theme song by Lalo Schifrin for which my mother told me with no lack of mirth that I had a very visceral reaction. Apparently, I was bouncing in my Pampers when that iconic theme came on, but I guess even back then, I had an ear for the coolest tunes.
And so for this week's ROY article, I'm going with another beloved American lawman show theme to join the themes from "Dragnet" and "Peter Gunn". But unlike those articles which had the avant-garde group Art of Noise do their cover versions, I'm sticking with the original Schifrin version. Indeed, it is one of the most recognizable themes on television no matter the nation and as soon as one hears it, I'm sure that those famous repeated scenes, mask-ditching, espionage derring-do...and Tom Cruise come to mind, although for nostalgia's sake, so do Peter Graves and Martin Landau.
These pieces of information haven't appeared on the Wikipedia article for the song, so I'm wondering if they are apocryphal. However, one piece is that Schifrin had actually originally created the theme as background music for a particularly intense scene in an episode of "The Man From UNCLE", another 60s spy show; Schifrin was involved with at least a few of the episode scores. The other trivia point is that the "Mission: Impossible" theme was played presumably once on ABC's "American Bandstand", that popular music-and-dance show hosted by Dick Clark, only for things to come to a screeching halt because the kids couldn't figure out how to dance to it.
Ah, yes. Tom Cruise. There was the late 1980s return of the series on ABC with Graves once more which started out well but petered out (no pun intended) fairly quickly. However, I was in Japan when Paramount Pictures decided to bring "Mission: Impossible" to the big screen with the actor who would become the world's most famous stunt man with the first of the movie franchise coming out in 1996. Even though I was no longer bouncing around on my butt in the theatre, it was still a thrill to catch the trailer with the famous catchphrases and the original Schifrin theme. When I first saw the movie, though, I had to admit to some disappointment since the production team decided to break two M:I commandments: they killed off the team, making Ethan Hunt the overarching one-man IMF team with a few recruits helping out here and there; plus, they made Jim Phelps a bad guy. In the quarter-century since that first movie, though, I've been much more accepting of it, and I have to say that Brian DePalma put in a lot of style and Danny Elfman put out a bristling version of the theme song.
In the leadup to the release of the 1996 movie, I was at Tower Records in Shibuya when I saw a counter selling Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen's dance remix take on the Schifrin theme. Yeah, I think that I was spending an inordinate amount of time at the listening post for that one.
Since the DePalma movie, we've had a total of six "Mission: Impossible" movies with Cruise up to now with different directors and composers. Plus, we should be getting another couple of them coming down the pike in the next few years. With all of the intrigue and "Can you top this?!" stunts (I'm guessing that Cruise will have to crawl around the International Space Station before jumping onto a Space X capsule to get back to a yurt in Mongolia in the next flick), I still look forward to the opening credit montage and how the Schifrin theme is handled. No more bouncing around, though.
Although a single of the Schifrin theme was released in 1967, I'm going to go with the debut year of the original series in 1966. So, what were the award winners at the Japan Record Awards back then?
As has been reflected on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" over the years, veteran singer Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）has been able to tackle a number of genres including enka, Mood Kayo and even some rock. Tonight, it'll be some enka.
I heard this one on last Saturday's episode of "Songs of Japanese Spirit" on NHK's satellite channel, and it's quite the jaunty tune called "Edo no Hana" (The Flower of Edo). If I'm not mistaken, it was actually Hashi himself singing this one on the stage (I was actually around the corner from the telly having dinner at the time so I couldn't see the screen).
"Edo no Hana" was actually the B-side forHashi's 122nd single"Mukou Tooru wa"（向こう通るは...Passing Yonder） from October 1973, and both songs were used as the theme songs for NTV's adaptation of historical novel series "Denshichi no Torimonochou"（伝七捕物帳...The Memoirs of Denshichi The Detective）. It was evidently quite the popular series since it had first been televised on TBS in 1968 for a few months before NTV had its time with its own version for four years and then TV Asahi produced yet another version in 1979.
While "Mukou Tooru wa" served as the opening theme for the first half-year of the NTV series, "Edo no Hana" was the ending theme for those early episodes before taking over as the opening theme for the remainder of the series. Kazuya Senke（千家和也）was the lyricist while Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）took care of the music.
Yesterday I gave my thoughts on Tatsuro Yamashita's（山下達郎）1988 album"Boku no Naka no Shonen"（僕の中の少年）in which one of the tracks was inspired by the works of singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb. Well, for this week's Reminiscings of Youth, I bring you a song that was actually composed by the man and it's one of the first songs that I had ever heard regularly as a toddler.
Listening to The 5th Dimension's"Up, Up and Away" once again after so many years, I did get a thrill up my back, I have to admit. It's such an upbeat song about the simple wonder of flying in a hot-air balloon (not that I would ever get in once since I'm terrified of heights) but I think that the lyrics can be extrapolated to mean any sort of wondrous trip, physical or figurative or romantic.
Just how the members sing "We can FLY!" and the accompanying horns and strings seem to bring in a flood of dopamine, and the crazy thing is that "Up, Up and Away" is surprisingly short at around 2 minutes and 44 seconds. I'm prehistoric enough to remember seeing The 5th Dimension performing this very song on one of the prime-time variety shows on American network TV; it may not have been this particular program above but I definitely remember the performance.
"Up, Up and Away" was The 5th Dimension's third single from May 1967 and from what I know about music, I think that it's probably one of the best examples of Sunshine Pop or even Champagne Soul, the genre name that's been applied to the group's blend of "...pop, R&B, soul, jazz, light opera and Broadway" according to the Wikipediaarticle on them. Lamonte McLemore, Marilyn McCoo, Florence LaRue, Ronald Townson, and Billy Davis Jr. were the original members, and I remember McCoo and Davis becoming the later hosts of the 70s and 80s syndicated music ranking show "Solid Gold" after the first host, Dionne Warwick.
The song hit No. 1 on both the American and Canadian singles charts. It was even released in Japan under the odd title of "Beat de Jump"（ビートでジャンプ...Beat and Jump）. In any case, what was also released at around the time of "Up, Up and Away"?
When I celebrated the first anniversary of "Kayo Kyoku Plus" at the end of January 2013, I chose the kayo "Muhyou"（霧氷）, the haunting 1966 hit by Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）because it is a song that I had heard since I was literally a toddler but didn't know the title nor the singer at the time. However, thanks to a viewing of the previous NHK incarnation of the regular kayo show "Kayo Concert"（歌謡コンサート）a few weeks earlier that had Hashi appear and perform "Muhyou", I finally found out the truth. The (re-)discovery of that song was an early example of me finding out some of those lost kayo in my head.
Guess what? Another kayo lost in the ancient windmills of my mind has been unearthed once more, and moreover it was yet another NHK kayo show and the same singer involved. Yesterday, I was finishing off a KKP article and then headed back to the living room where the TV was showing an episode of "Songs of Japanese Spirit", and it turns out that there was a tribute to the late composer Tadashi Yoshida（吉田正）. I then heard this song that hadn't actually actively entered my ears in decades but had popped up every so often in my brain.
And the reason that this dusty kayo remained stuck in my head all these years without a singer's name or a title was that it possessed this very dynamic arrangement. Yukio Hashi's "Ano Ko to Boku ~ Swim Swim Swim" (That Girl and I) sounded like some sort of soundtrack from a 1940s Hollywood adventure into Africa, especially with a haunting but relentlessly chanting chorus which included a battery of "Yeah, yeah, yeah"! The rhythm came across as a melodic expression of a tribal custom as filtered through Tinseltown.
"Ano Ko to Boku" was a June 1965 single by Hashi (his 68th) that was composed/arranged by Yoshida with lyrics by Takao Saeki（佐伯孝夫）, and despite that exotic sound, the song is actually all about the whirlwinds of love and hedonism on the beach. It's definitely not enka, the setting and the really active melody don't put it into Mood Kayo either, but that rollicking rhythm seems to throw "Ano Ko to Boku" into some gray zone between Group Sounds and kayo that is perhaps described as Rhythm Kayo which is the genre that the song has been put into according to the J-Wiki article.
This became a huge hit for Hashi, and though Oricon was still a few years away, it was placed at No. 1 in the monthly magazines of "Myojo"（明星）and "Heibon"（平凡）. In addition, having "Ano Ko to Boku" sell over 700,000 records within two months of its release was another nice sign of its success. It also won a Grand Prize at the Japan Record Awards and then even had Hashi appear for his 6th straight time on NHK's Kohaku Utagassen to perform the song with a number of his fellow White team members (including actor Kiyoshi "Tora-san" Atsumi) getting in on the act. To put the final cherry on top, a movie with the same title was released just several weeks after the single's appearance on the record store shelves with Hashi starring.
Glad to cross off another mystery kayo from my mind.
