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A Farewell to the Rural
Too Much of Self-torture Calls Laughter?
Date:28, Mar, 2018
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
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Hello, everyone! I'm talking about "A Farewell to the Rural (Ora Tokyo-sa Iguda)" by Yoshi Ikuzo, a Japanese male enka singer today. The song sings about a male rustic who's trying to escape from his hometown, trying to move to Tokyo.

You can probably get what he says, living in the sticks. His hometown is not sophisticated, he desires to live in a big city like Tokyo and New York. It's not easy to get the better of temptation of a gay life.


First, I must explain what Yoshi Ikuzo is. He's a Japanese enka singer from Aomori, born in 1952. In the early 1960's, he ran away from Aomori, moved to Tokyo. The song was released in 1984 November, but I heard it sang about the feelings of his early 1960's. It is said that he was truly unsatisfied with his hometown with nothing modern.

For instance, he sings as "No TVs, No Radios / I dislike such a country, I will go to Tokyo." We are difficult to find the rural homes like that today, but it was quiet natural in the early 1960's. Televisions spread over Japan for the 1964 Tokyo Olympic.

Listening to the song, we are difficult to stop bursting into laughter. I don't know why. Of course, it doesn't mean making fun of rustics. Probably, his self-torture is too much to sound serious.

Today, capitalism seems to have been facing the end, we are difficult to find an investment. Underdeveloped countries will also grow up soon. It means that modern materials are almost saturated over the world including Japan. So we might be hard to hear the old song telling us what it used to be, without kind of nostalgia.


about A Farewell to the Rural

・Written by Yoshi Ikuzo
・Composed by Yoshi Ikuzo
・Arranged by Nomura Yutaka
・Performed by Yoshi Ikuzo
・Published by Tokuma Japan Communications
・Released on November 25, 1984







 

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