Tsuttsugatsu! Tsuttsugatsu!
Great prewar music find on YouTube: Asai Maruko’s version of Nakayama Shinpei’s スキー節, “Ski song”. Not sure about the year, but I know that Asai was active in the early 1930s (assuming that the “About” is correct and it really is her). This is party music of the old school.
Lyrics here if you can bear the MIDI. “Sara-sara, lonesome falls the snow/ Let’s go skiing, come on/ Far, far across the wide fields/ Tsuttsugatsū! Tsuttsugatsū!” (Yeah, I don’t know either. The sound skis make? Something to do with tsutto?)
Note the use of tight-locked 7/5 mora phrasing (e.g. the first line’s kokoro bosoka ni/yuki ga furu), one of the distinguishing characteristics of post-Kokinshū Japanese poetry.
January 24, 2008 at 9:40 am
I didn’t like those YouTube visual. None more black.
January 24, 2008 at 11:06 am
Asai is metal, what can I say?