Aiming for Kohaku at 17 and really becoming a singer… “Dr. Kohaku” talks about “100 Years of Showa Era” and “Showa Songs

The precious times “Kohaku Uta Gassen” has been trending on SNS

This year marks the 75th Kohaku Uta Gassen (Red and White Singing Contest). Next year will be the 100th anniversary of the Showa Era (1926), which also marks the 100th anniversary of the start of radio broadcasting. In this connection, as part of the “100th Anniversary of Broadcasting” project, “Everyone’s Best Kohaku” is being shown every day, featuring scenes from the singing of “Kohaku” that remain in each person’s memory.

However, the most talked-about program this time was the remastered version of the “22nd Kohaku” from 1971, which was broadcast over two days from December 14 as “Nostalgic Kohaku Uta Gassen.

NHK has VTRs of “Kohaku” from 1963 onward, and they have been replayed several times, but the one from this year has never been replayed because the VTRs were not well preserved. The VTRs from that year have never been replayed, due to poor preservation.

This year, Hiroki Itsuki sang “Yokohama Tasogare”, Masaaki Sakai sang “Saraba Koibito”, and Kisehiko Ozaki sang “Till We Meet Again”. In contrast, many singers in the red group made their first appearances in Kohaku with their big hits that still survive today, such as Rumiko Koyanagi’s “My Castle Town,” Tokiko Kato’s “Shiretoko Tabijo,” and Saori Minami’s “17 Sai,” making this a rare occasion.

The last performer in the red group is Hibari Misora, who has appeared on the program the most times. In contrast, the White group was led by Shinichi Mori, who has already performed three times in a row, although this was his fourth time participating. This was the year that his famous song “Mother’s Day” became a big hit.

The following year, the event was broadcast live to the venue of the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, where Toi et Moi sang the Olympic song “The Ballad of Rainbow and Snow”. I was a fourth grader living in Muroran, Hokkaido at the time. I learned this song at school and sang it while praying for the success of the Olympics.

It brought back all the memories of my fourth grade year in elementary school. In fact, my father had bought me a small cassette tape deck that year, and I had recorded “Kohaku” on it. The tape has since been lost, but I still have a copy of “Kohaku” from 1963, when I was two years old.

The “14th Kohaku” with the highest viewer rating of 81.4% and “Goda Family’s Record of 1963.”

When I was two years old, my family was living in Kushiro, and my father, a young reporter for the Hokkaido Shimbun, appeared on a radio program at the end of the year to review the events and incidents of the year in the Kushiro region. It was the first time for him to do such a thing, and he thought he would never be able to do it again. He bought an open-tape deck, which was expensive at the time, in order to record the program and keep it as a souvenir. My mother recorded the radio program as it appeared on the radio.

When I listen to the tape, I hear my father’s voice on the radio, and I, who had just turned 2 years old, calling out “Papa, papa,” as if I were looking for him. My father must have been thinking as he listened to the tape. While recording the “14th Kohaku” held a few days later in our living room, he recorded “A Record of the Goda Family in 1963,” which included my voice and the voices of my parents, along with songs representative of that year.

The “Kohaku” show had the highest viewer rating to date, 81.4%, and the singers who participated in the show for the first time that year were quite a group. The first-time singers that year included Saburo Kitajima, Chieko Baisho, Kazuo Funaki of “High School Senior,” “Hello Baby,” the “Record Award winner,” and Midori Hatakeyama’s “Deisei Kaido” with a fan in one hand.

My two-year-old sang along. The following year at the end of the year, I would record the same, but that year my younger sister was born, and the “Kohaku” song was played along with her crying voice.

That is why “Kohaku Uta Gassen” became my favorite TV program, and I really became a singer at the age of 17, aiming for “Kohaku”. Eventually, I began researching the history of “Kohaku” before I was born and joined a singers’ association to hear directly from the singers who participated in the early days of “Kohaku” who were still in good health at the time. …… This led to books such as “Behind the Scenes of the Kohaku Uta Gassen” and “Urabanashi” (stories behind the scenes), which began with “The Truth about the Kohaku Uta Gassen” (Gentosha Publishing Co., Ltd.).

Still, what was the thrill of “Kohaku” in those days? ……

What was the excitement of “Kohaku” in those days?

The “Kohaku” show, which featured singers known by everyone from children to adults, was truly the culmination of the year and a once-a-year event to be looked forward to. No wonder it was called a “national event. When I was a child, I used to feel sad at New Year’s, thinking, “Oh, there are still more than 300 days until Kohaku.

The other day, I was interviewed about how the Kohaku tape changed my life.

It was the program before this year’s Kohaku Uta Gassen, “It will soon be 100 years since the broadcast of Kohaku Uta Gassen!　(NHK Sogo 12:15 – 5:00 p.m.),” which will be broadcast before this year’s Kohaku Uta Gassen. I am looking forward to seeing how it will turn out.

If that is the case, on the 2nd of the New Year, I will be the host of BS TV TOKYO’s “Japan Singers Association New Year 12 Hour Song Festival” (12:00 – 24:00), which will be a recreation of the “Kohaku” of that era.

The program will consist of more than 150 songs, mostly from the Showa era, including Chieko Baisho and Midori Hatakeyama, who appeared in the “14th Kohaku” for the first time, and Yasuo Tanabe, the president of the singers’ association. In memory of Mari Sono, who passed away in July of this year, Mie Nakao and Yukari Ito, who participated in that year’s “Kohaku” as the Three Daughters, sang along with a VTR of Sono’s “Aitakitakute Aitakitate.

In addition to the energetic appearance of Hiroshi Itsuki and Rumiko Koyanagi, who made their first appearance in the “22nd Kohaku,” Yoichi Sugawara, who turned 91 this year, and Columbia Rose, who sang “Tokyo no Bus Girl,” will join the veterans to remember Toshiyuki Nishida, who also passed away, as in this year’s “Kohaku,” while Tetsuya Takeda, a close friend, will sing “If I could play the piano,” in memory of him. Tetsuya Takeda will sing “If I Could Play the Piano. Miyuki Kawanaka, Agnes Chan, Natsuko Godai, Kaori Mizumori, young singers Arata Aoyama and Tokyo Rikishi, and father and son Ichiro Toba and Tetsuji Kimura will also sing “Showa-uta” songs.

In addition, she and Toko Takeuchi, an NHK announcer and until last year the general host of “Kohaku” (red and white), will sing a “local song Kohaku Uta Gassen” (local song contest). In fact, she was often invited as a guest on “Gogo Cafe,” a radio program she regularly appeared on when she was with NHK.

For the past several years, the first broadcast of the New Year’s season has been a “local song kohaku” program. This year, since she is retiring from NHK, we tried to recreate the “Kohaku” event on the stage of this year’s “Song Festival,” with the singers singing the songs on the spot. We hope that everyone will enjoy “Kohaku” during the New Year’s holidays as well, as it reminds us of that era.

Next year is the “100th Anniversary of the Showa Era” ……The appeal of “Showa Songs

Thus, “Showa-uta-yo” was born one after another, and today’s young people are also addicted to “Showa-uta-yo. Why is this?

I think it is because these songs are all new and fresh to the young people. This is also thanks to the Internet. Videos of singers singing when they were young are available on the Internet. Even if the singer is now over 60 years old, he or she appears in the video as he or she did in his or her younger days, singing as he or she did in his or her younger days. The freshness and power of the songs are added to the video, and it becomes a new discovery for young people. It becomes “It’s good, isn’t it? …….”

At the same time, for those who lived in the same era, seeing a singer who has aged and added a fuller voice to her songs gives them the courage to say, “She’s doing her best. We can learn from them.

We are now entering a new year. In this year of the “100th Anniversary of the Showa Era,” we would like to take a look back at the events of that year, and we would like to take stock of the songs that were born and popular during that time, and by looking at them, we would like to feel something. This is truly “learning from the past. The Showa era is 100 years old, broadcasting has begun 100 years ago, 80 years have passed since the end of World War II, and “Kohaku” has been broadcast 75 times. I think it is important because we are now in the midst of a milestone year.

In mid-January, a new book about these thoughts will be released. The title of the book is aptly titled “Uta wa seiyori yori ni yori!　The title is “Uta ha yoroshite ♪ Ryukoku uta de gitaeru Showa 100 nen (100 years of the Showa Era)” (Kasama Shoin Publishing Co., Ltd.). It is an easy-to-understand history of Japan and the history of songs, looking back one year at a time from the first year of the Showa era to Reiwa 2024, the 99th year of the Showa era, with songs. Please look forward to it!