ENKA

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