ENKA

a song first released in 1973, made famous by kaneda tatsue, another from what i remember folk singer although of far less impressive stature than okabayashi nobuyasu that turned to enka. the song was a minor regional hit then exploded again upon wider release in 1979. "hanamachi no haha." mother of the flower street, referring to the quarters occupied by geisha. a song about growing old as a woman, beauty fading, elegance failing, and longing to be reunited with a daughter she barely knows. from my reading of the lyrics. a deeply sad, tragic song.

kaneda tatsue's version is fine. but i do not believe it. it is sung here by a girl that is probably fourteen or fifteen. she sings it as credibly as kaneda, though, i believe, at least when she debuted the song (this is a better version from 1979 by kaneda tatsue). this returns me to my original point, about listening without hearing the lyrics, but here, knowing the lyrics, i can't listen without knowing them. and it says something about the utility of these songs, or perhaps how people hear the lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-URPUotiGc

well, i must admit that i appreciate too the backdrop of typical suburban japan. the first time i heard this song was in a snack in kanagawa, sung by a man in his 70s. if we had waited until the sun come up and looked outside, at least if we didn't look up the block to the home improvement store and the highway but out to the west, we would have seen the same landscape of concrete, vending machines, hills, and sky.

with the way media is protected, it is easier to find hundreds of covers of a song before stumbling across a version you might like by the artist that made it famous. it is easy to stumble across a woman singing it beside a river in keelung.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64qUvlKvbwY

xp Excellent! This is just some kid? I found the karaoke rig reverb effects very helpful in making most everyone listenable... but I've heard a lot of seriously talented amateur singers too.

This river performance is a sweet find. Where in Kanagawa did you hear the song? I lived in Sagamihara (though I was near the US base there, I'm not sure I met a single American who wandered outside).

i don't know, i guess she's a child singer of showa songs on the pro-am circuit.

anonymous odakyu line town, kanagawa.

pff. JR Yokohama line 4 life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTUuzOu5iiw

you saw misora hibari weeping through "kanashi sake" and ishikawa sayuri breaking down during a performance of "amagi goe." emotional authenticity or its convincing performance is part of enka. it's part of why the performers of the high showa can't be replicated. nobody can do it anymore, i don't think, at least in the same way. i appreciate it. it's infectious. carried to the extreme, it's overwhelming. a minute into this performance, she has tears running down her cheeks. she is overcome. her voice breaks. the audience shouts encouragement (and this is a good example of the typical audience participation). she hits the chorus a final time with defiance.

the singer is mori masako, anointed by misora hibari as her successor but left the industry soon after you see her here. the song is "etto tsubame," a hit from three years prior. the lyrics tell a story about a young woman that wastes her best years on a man that can't love her. she is a swallow that has missed the chance to migrate and must endure the cold of winter. the "hyururi hyururi-rara" she sings is the sound of the swallow's call.

Ganbatte dylannn!

Gorgeous

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n5MkUcnpYY

the men should be represented. this is a song that i don't love. for some reason, it came to mind tonight when i saw sen masao recommended by the youtube algorithm. this is "miso shiru no uta." it starts with a shiver. "winter is so cold, good time to drink some miso soup. delicious. warm. a taste of mother, isn't it?" it seems like a novelty song. but i don't think that's the right way to describe it. but it doesn't matter that i find it a bit silly. miso is mother. miso is the nation. he calls on the japanese people not to forget their hometowns and their miso soup, and to stop calling rice "raisu" instead of "gohan," which i agree with (this contains a joke about hesitating to decry blond hair, since he was married to an american). in the final spoken serifu, he makes all of this clear. it's been sixteen years since he left his hometown, he says, but he still returns in his dreams to his mother's breast. he weeps when he recalls her. he longs to taste her miso soup again. and it ends with the cry of kachan!—mommy! return to the motherland. to return to authenticity, however, sen masao was a real estate millionaire by the time this came out, despite the rusticated airs he puts on.

One thing I think is interesting is how enka is pretty close to country music in some ways, but there's also a big influence from Sinatra and Tony Bennet and such... I guess the common element being the night life, booze, and broken hearts...

Not to hijack this thread, but interesting to me that this is an accurate assessment of schlager as well, and all the equivalents from various European and South American countries I've come into contact with. Except country and lounge music, even at their corniest, still have that cachet of being part of the Grand Narrative of American Music, while these genres are dismissed in their native countries as much as they are ignored by the Anglosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAITxNqazFw

a veteran but still a star of more recent times (even ishikawa sayuri, who is young — young enough to have performed on new year specials this year — debuted a decade earlier): shinno mika. this must be from the late 1980s. excuse the rough audio for a stirring performance of "joppari fune," highlighting her peculiar style, with lots of trills and growls. another song about painful separations, departing ships, expressed in colorful local dialect expressions. it's followed by another tragic love story made possible by the developmental state's investment in public transit: "renrakusen no uta."

Such a cool thread, thanks dylannn

yes, i love it

thanks.

i have something else here today which is not strictly enka but i think it fits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc_jv5zSCC0

first, you have to listen to kanazawa akiko singing a traditional tune, broadly minyo, or a folk song. this is "tanko bushi," or, literally, "coal mine tune," which is a song meant to be sung like bon odori songs, for a festival, with an accompanying dance. swinging tune, call and response. step, shuffle, arms up, arms out, step. this one here is the most famous version of "tanko bushi," talking about a coal mine and coal miners in kyushi, but i am given to understand that there are regional variations, as there are with bon odori songs. (here, you must rely on what has been explained to me.

it's music for festivals now. i mean, people listen to it, clearly, since kanazawa akiko has so many compilations of minyo, mostly northern songs (tohoku and hokkaido), where the tradition was diluted less completely. but it doesn't register against enka. but everyone knows the songs! there used to be a minyo restaurant near my place, where passionate amateurs performed over dinner, and customers were encouraged to get up and sing. it closed shortly after i found out about it. i'm not sure i would have gone.

and now with that context, please listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VTAo9ksY9A

listen to that.

and listen to this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3lRdkV1gPM

in 1991, terada soichi (and yokota shinichiro, i think, was involved, too, but i haven't seen full album credits) fresh from new york dropped twin house mixes of kanazawa akiko minyo tracks, followed by an ep putting her voice to spacier applications (below). these all came out on victor and supposedly sold well. i don't know much more. they're appealing. the vocal samples feel like they're in a conflicting time signature to the beat (this is my explanation, without knowing anything about this).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN8tCWoviV8

(given the passion for electrobeat pounding dance music in japan and practices in neighboring countries, it should come as no surprise that there is a genre of remixed enka, sped up and hammered with drums, which matches in china the practice of "dj version" folk tunes, often socialist tunes, put to throbbing italo disco, or vinahouse folk remixes in vietnam, or similar club music from thailand, which i know less about. but this is different. unlike the remixed enka, it's not intended for truck drivers but a hip, urban audience. i'm sure there's some precedent, some house producer that put world music samples on stuff... [this is not to say that i look down on the remixed eurobeat enka, as if anyone cares what i think. it's less offputting.])

This is an awesome thread, dylannn. Can't believe I missed it before, going to explore a bunch of this.

thank you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4UV_Fue5o4

i did not make an error by beginning with the dipped-in-gold untouchable superstars of enka, like misora hibari. they are the best pitchwomen for the genre. but i fear that what comes later cannot be measured against them. shinno mika, she's technically gifted, and she has her own idiosyncratic flourishes, like the trills, but why someone would buy one of her records is also down to the songwriters, which is less important to me (and probably to you, unless you understand japanese, which you might, and also appreciate enka songwriting, which is not as likely). that's an interesting thing to think about: did enka go into decline because it failed to produce monumental stars, or is it the other way around, or is it a combination of the two? i don't know yet.

shinno mika is a more recent debut, and so is kozai kaori. that's her 1988 debut song, "ame sakaba," being performed in her hometown of osaka in 1991.

it's the type of song i like. a "super-sentimental grand weeper," kate suggested, from tom waits. it has the ingredients. it fits the pattern. a lonely tavern. drinking to forget the pain of a tragic love affair. tears fall like the rain outside. (there is more to it than that. this is what i mean about being able to appreciate the songwriting, not putting it all on performance. but) kozai kaori breaks, too, just like misora hibari singing her signature song about liquor and love. a ragged, weepy performance.

this doesn't fit on this thread. it is maudlin and not poppy or cool, so forgive me. and i will choose the most appropriate version of the song.

because the album version of sakurada junko singing "kesho" doesn't exactly fit. it's lengthy and somber. i love the "whiter shade of pale" introduction (it somehow reminds me of not the original version of nakajima miyuki's "fight!" but some of the emo covers). but it is definitely a pop song. a sad ballad but a pop song. a televised performance with an orchestra accompanying her comes closer, and there's a live version in which she seems particularly fragile against a thunderous band and the shrieks of encouragement from the audience. this comes very close to being appropriate, with the brass fading into the flute, sakurada junko in her costume, and of course the tears midway through as she breaks down.

she sings: i never cared much for makeup, but at least tonight, i want to be beautiful. tonight will be the very final time. give me back all the letters i sent you. i don't want you to read them when you're with someone else. let me take them and run home. i will hold my tears. keep them inside. until the bus pulls away. so stupid. so stupid. i was so stupid. i thought i could make you love me. that's when the tears start, and the song goes on, but that's all we hear in this version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtzX0mpvFX0

i will now give up pop music and return to dusty pure enka.

i dig enka

I've been thinking about this a bit since your last posts. The below is one of my favourite Yapoos songs, incredible for its sheer melodrama (musically, I have no idea about the lyrics!) - it seems like this is probably quite enka-influenced? Am I wildly misguided here?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M1YttTdZ8A

i think is not necessarily influenced by enka. the simmilarities are probably cause she's japanese maybe.

Pikachu!

cc liked something?? rip

the "Japan Blues" show on NTS right now should be of interest for readers of this thread. I didn't know about this, and it's monthly! https://www.nts.live/shows/japanblues

i think the yappos song is just something else not enough of the vocal style, the melisma, the growl, the honey but what do i know. and gosh what a tune

whatever was playing when I tuned in made me think to post here. It got pretty wide ranging. "Japan Blues" is the DJ's name? Anyway glad I found it, I'll have to play this back, and more shows. And catch up on this thread! Cheers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtzpfpWqrYw

(i wonder if this will be blocked because it is a nippon columbia upload.) this is not enka either. let me stop saying that. not enka but ryukoka. but here sung by misora hibari, an exception. released in the summer of 1960—the original version, sung by nishida sawako—to a nation convulsed by protests against the america-japan security treaty. a turning point in japanese history. a moment when a different road could have been taken, if not for brutal tactics of the monster of the showa himself, kishi nobusuke, and his sugamo prison buddies, including kodama yoshio, underworld fixer, with his connections to the cia and organized crime. kanba michiko died that summer. she was studying at tokyo university. beaten to death by riot police or beaten by riot police and then trampled by students, depending on who you believe. "akashia no ame ga yamu toku" became an anthem for the martyr whose death shocked the nation. soaked by the acacia rain, this is how i want to die. the sun rises, and my body is found, cold. will he shed any tears for me? sung by misora hibari, it could become more conventional, just another weepy love song. maybe it does.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VH9ZBm47kQ

let me share this first. sakamoto fuyumi with hosono haruomi in their shortlived band, HIS, who put out one album in 1991. and i think this 2006 performance is only performing an older tune or one added to the remaster. you can hear in her vocal performance some touch of enka, i hope. i had never heard this until today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMjRoOezd7A

but well this is what i was actually listening to. this fits. this is enka. this is recent. i sometimes walk past the two shops in ameyoko that sell only enka records and i will sometimes stand outside and listen to what they're playing through the pa out onto the shopping arcade. or i will look at the posters at least. elderly women elderly men with immaculate makeup in gaudy traditional clothes. so that is how i recognized the name sakamoto fuyumi, rather than the hip collaboration. a lyrically typical song about fleeting love and lasting pain.

xp 見えない,カナダで :(

Dylann, you got me intrigued... are there any good books/websites with more info on kodama yoshio and that whole scene?

someone should write an english-language biography of kodama yoshio. i don't have one to recommend until then. but he's mentioned in every book on the japanese underworld, every book with yakuza in the title. there's one called ruffians, yakuza, nationalists. it's limited. but he pops up. what a character! a sick man. tied to manchurian heroin, shared a prison cell with sasakawa the speedboat gambling kingpin and financier for global anti-communism and kishi, the cia's man in japan, linked to the unification church (very relevant given events this past summer), and the lockheed scandal, which saw a nationalist porno actor fly a plane into his house.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRLLJPfLpw4

this is recent, too. i won't explain what exactly is going on here, since i'm not quite sure (an nhk benefit connected to a sumo tournament at ryogoku, i gather). but it begins with a duet with a sumo wrestler, kiriyama oyakata (i think that's what i heard the reading of the name as). but this is ichikawa yukino. and if you watch long enough, she will sing a beautifully overwrought rendition of "ishikari ruran juroku banchi." if only to prove that this is not a forgotten relic, this still aired on primetime.

Thanks Dylan, that sounds like a crazy story! I will hunt around...

The only exposure I have is via the red and blue new years broadcasts. Also im sure there is sampled enka vaporwave

i recently started trying to watch p1r4t3 5tr34m5 of japanese tv stations as part of my immersion practice and really enjoyed a program similar to the video of sakamoto-san. i made a mental note to seek out more music that sounded like that, so thanks for doing the legwork!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bK9u_5KP8XE

filmed last year. this is more ichikawa yukino, singing a recent composition of dusty heroic enka, based on the heroics of highwayman kunisada chuji, or the later dramatization of his give-to-the-poor heroics and eventual execution, or even the catalogue of traditional songs and enka numbers about him. speaking as a dilettante, this kind of number—regressing into premodern heroism—is popular in the genre at present, overrepresented along with nostalgic evocations of rural japan—and setting aside, i would argue, the grand weeper, the tears in my sake cup, the doomed romance, which are more social songs... as if the genre is losing touch with reality. but what a performance! i wish i knew the term for that tempo break or time change midway through (here, again, i struggle with not having any musicological language) (this on the lyrics "semete katami no...")

Yesss thank you d