Boogie-Woogie in the Ruins — A Too-Bright Rhythm Echoing Through the Rubble

Until now, we have watched the era in which war gradually took away the freedom of song. What to sing and what not to sing was left to national policy, the jazz named as enemy music was driven from the main stage, and musicians were woven into the mesh of the system. Yet that heavy lid came off all at once with defeat. In August 1945, when the war ended, the cities had mostly burned down and people lacked even enough to eat. And yet — no, all the more so — people sought song. To the degree they had been held down, their thirst for music when released was all the greater. In this installment, we trace the moment when postwar popular song raised its curtain, taking as our axis the plain melody that sang of hope in the ruins, the rhythm of boogie that burst forth explosively, and the appearance of a twelve-year-old prodigy.

Ringo no Uta — A Melody of Hope That Flowed Through the Ruins

A few months after defeat. Through the rubble-strewn city, one bright song began to flow. It was ‘Ringo no Uta’ (The Apple Song), sung by Namiki Michiko and Kirishima Noboru. The lyrics were by Satō Hachirō, the music by Manjōme Tadashi. Originally written as the theme for ‘Soyokaze’ (Gentle Breeze), the first postwar film, released in October 1945, the record is said to have been issued the following January, in 1946. Spreading through film and radio, it became a great hit also called the first hit song of the postwar period.

This song captured people’s hearts, surely, because its brightness was never hollow. Pressing one’s lips to a red apple — just that, a plain scene. Yet for people who had lost everything, that very gaze, cherishing the ordinary everyday, was hope to live itself. After heavy military songs had long held sway, the very fact that such a light and personal song had returned announced the arrival of a new era.

What deserves attention is that it spread through the power of film and radio — media that had been growing since before the war. Radio, which under wartime had become a tool of control, this time carried songs that encouraged people. The same mechanism does utterly different work depending on what it broadcasts — the ambivalence of the media surrounding song was inherited just as it was into the postwar period.

Tokyo Boogie-Woogie — The Sense of Liberation Kasagi Shizuko Set Bursting

Following the song of plain hope, what swept the city was a more intense, more bursting rhythm. It was ‘Tokyo Boogie-Woogie,’ released in 1947. Suzuki Masaru wrote the words, the composer Hattori Ryōichi — who had worked in jazz since before the war — set the music, and Kasagi Shizuko sang. There is an anecdote that Hattori conceived the melody from the rhythm tapped out by the joints in the train rails, and got off at a station and wrote it down in a café he ducked into.

What this song embodied was the revival of that leaping rhythm, which had been branded ‘enemy music’ and held down under wartime. Kasagi Shizuko sang with her whole body in motion, and her figure is said to have even thrilled the soldiers of the occupation forces in Japan. Following ‘Tokyo Boogie-Woogie,’ hits such as ‘Jungle Boogie’ were born, and Kasagi came to be called the Queen of Boogie, an icon that reflected the times.

The boom in boogie was not a mere change in musical taste. It was the very mood of an era of liberation from oppression. Not dark, sunken songs, but a rhythm bright to the utmost, one that made you want to move your body. People may have layered onto it the real sense that the war had ended. At the same time, that this brightness stood upon the reality of occupation — a situation where the hope of reconstruction and the constraints of a defeated nation lived together — is a background that must not be forgotten. Light stood side by side with shadow.

The Appearance of Misora Hibari — A Peerless Voice Born of the Ruins

And then, in 1949, a figure indispensable to any account of postwar popular song appeared. It was Misora Hibari, still only twelve at the time. ‘Kanashiki Kuchibue’ (Sorrowful Whistle), released that September, was also the theme of a film of the same name, and is said to have recorded record-breaking sales for the time, becoming her starting point. Her supple, deep singing voice, unthinkable for a child, astonished people.

Hibari’s appearance met with both approval and disapproval. There were voices, it is said, that frowned at a girl singing grown-up songs. Yet for people surviving the ruins, her singing was a sure comfort and a hope. Before long she would grow into a national singer, transcending the bounds of popular song. An era that had lost much to war pushed, ironically, a single peerless talent onto the main stage — one could also see it that way.

What was happening here was also a sign of a generational change in the leading players of song. Alongside singers who had been active since before the war, a new voice rose up from the chaos of the postwar period. The ruins were not merely a place where something had been lost, but also soil where the talent of the next era sprouted.

The Songs Radio Carried — The Beginning of Kōhaku Uta Gassen

What delivered postwar popular song into people’s lives was, after all, radio. The full arrival of television broadcasting was still a little way off. Until then, popular tunes flowed from the radio, and there people met new songs. Programs like NHK’s ‘Radio Kayō’ (Radio Songs) are said to have delivered gentle songs into the home and sent many beloved tunes out into the world.

A symbolic program born within that current was the ‘NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen.’ Its prototype is said to trace back to the ‘Kōhaku Ongaku Shiai’ (Red-and-White Music Match) broadcast on New Year’s Eve of the year of defeat, and on January 3, 1951, the first edition was broadcast as a radio New Year program. This program, in which men and women divided into teams and competed in song, drew a response, eventually became a New Year’s Eve fixture, and, on reaching the television age, grew into a national event.

Songs flowing from the radio shaped the rhythm of people’s days, and families hummed the same songs — such scenes took root in postwar life. Media that under wartime had become a tool of mobilization, this time became the accompanist of reconstruction. The relationship between song and media, as a mirror reflecting the air of the times, continued here too, changing its shape as it went.

From the Ruins, to the Next Generation

In the few years after the war, Japan’s song regained a surprising vitality. The plain hope of ‘Ringo no Uta,’ the bursting liberation of ‘Tokyo Boogie-Woogie,’ the peerless talent of Misora Hibari, and the many beloved tunes that radio carried. All of these were the result of the people’s desire to ‘want to sing,’ which the war had held down, gushing out all at once. Control could suppress culture for a time, but it could not erase the very human heart that seeks song — this is one answer to the question placed at the close of the previous installment.

That said, this brightness lay along the unfinished path of reconstruction. The constraints of occupation, and poverty too, still remained vivid. Even so, people sang, and song encouraged people. It was precisely because light and shadow lived together inseparably that postwar popular song gave off such an earnest radiance.

Before long the era heads toward remarkable economic growth. Life grows richer, television enters the home, and a generation that knows no war comes of age. That new generation will no longer be satisfied merely listening to the popular songs the grown-ups sing. They take instruments in their own hands, sound electric guitars, strum away, and bring forth a music utterly unlike anything before. The rhythm that rose from the ruins is thus handed on to the next generation.