After 15 months, Shinji Tanimura, an evergreen tree in the Japanese music scene, who combines composition, singing and music production, came to China again to sing. The "38 Years of Stars commemorating the 40th Anniversary of the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Peace and Friendship" concert was held in Shanghai and Beijing, and the Shanghai Grand Theatre on September 21 was the first stop of Tanimura's trip to China.
Stars and Pleiades
The popularity of Shinji Tanimura in China is self-evident, the concert began at 7:30, and at about 6 o'clock, "valley fans" from Shanghai and even other cities had gathered outside the door of the Shanghai Grand Theatre. A few "passers-by fans" seemed to be dissatisfied with the scalper's bid, so they began to bargain with a typical old aunt cunning: "I wait until 7:50 to buy (low-cost tickets), anyway, this is not a movie (no need to watch the storyline), "Star" must be sung at the end." 」 However, if she really gave up the opportunity to enter the venue on time, she may miss the initial surprise of this concert. Shinji Tanimura sang a piece of "Star" at the beginning of the concert, and the unprepared audience suddenly turned upside down...
Photo courtesy of Shinji Tanimura concert organizers
Indeed, as the name of the concert indicates, "Star", which was born 38 years ago (1980), is a representative work of Shinji Tanimura. The original name of "Star" in Japanese is "Pleiades". This is actually an ancient Chinese character, and the Han Dynasty's "Explanation of Texts" says: "Pleiades, white tiger star." From the sun, the sound. It can be seen that "昴" is a proper noun in Chinese, and it is the name of the fourth house of the Western White Tiger in the Twenty-Eight Houses. Pleiades are usually visible to the naked eye six or seven bright stars, which are pleiades in English, which means seven sister clusters, which is a collective name for the stars changed by the seven daughters of the two gods in Greek mythology. After the Chinese characters crossed to Japan, the Japanese "subaru" is commonly known as "six stars", which has always been popular with the people, and the female writer Kiyosho Nayan of the Heian period wrote in her essay "Pillow Grass": "Among the stars, Pleiades are still the most beautiful, and altair and Venus are also charming." "Even today's Japan has a subaru (transliteration "Subaru") brand of sedan, the symbol of which is the form of the Pleiades six stars. Therefore, strictly speaking, the translation of the "Pleiades", which refers specifically to one of the twenty-eight houses, into the general name "Star" is actually not appropriate (there are also Chinese characters for "star" in Japanese), but it is only a matter of prolongation over time.
In any case, the status of the song "Star (Pleiades)" can be seen in Shinji Tanimura's "Spring Festival Gala" in Japan, the "Red and White Song Battle" at the end of each year. When Shinji Tanimura was a member of the "alice" group in his early years (the other members were Takao Horiuchi and Touichi Yazawa), they had signed up for the "Red and White Song Battle", and who knew that the organizers (nhk) thought that they would pull down the ratings, so they ruthlessly refused. This was of course a blow to Shinji Tanimura, so even for several years after the "Alice" group disbanded the solo flight, he emotionally refused to appear in the "Red and White Song Battle" – even if it was a great opportunity to raise awareness throughout Japan, and many fledgling musicians had the goal of "Red and White" last time.
Shinji Tanamura debuted in "Red and White"
It wasn't until 1987 that Shinji Tanimura let go of his reticence and climbed the stage of the "Red and White Song Battle" for the first time, and the song he sang was selected as "Star" without suspense, and the rating reached a staggering 63%. Until 2003, when Shinji Tanimura announced the "red and white retirement", he appeared 16 times in the "Red and White Song Battle", of which "Star" was as many as five times. In the 1991 "Red and White Song Battle", the last to appear in the "Tanimura Shinji" sang "Star"; in the 1999 "Red and White Song Battle", Tanimura Shinji sang "Star" again, against one of the masterpieces of "Singer Queen" Ishikawa Koyuri," "Crossing the Heavenly Castle (Mountain)" (the other song is "Tsugaru Strait Winter Scenery", commonly known as "Crossing the Mountains and Crossing the Sea")," and the 2002 "Red and White Song Battle" became a classic, known as "one person feeds half of the Chinese music circle". The acclaimed Miyuki Nakajima appeared on the stage of "Red and White" for the first time (and only twice so far), and Shinji Tanimura was chosen as his match singer. The two sang songs that became a good story - Miyuki Nakajima sang "Star on the Ground" against Shinji Tanimura's "Star (Pleiades)", which was also the last time the melody of "Star" appeared on the stage of "Red and White Song Battle".
Chinese love affair
The melody of "Star" is beautiful and imposing, and the lyrics are concise but profound. Therefore, its influence has long been beyond Japan. Interestingly, in East and Southeast Asian countries, "Star" is the most popular in the Chinese world. In March 1984, nhk did a vote on the popularity of Japanese songs abroad. As a result, in South Korea, the first to receive the vote was Chimyasu's "Spring in the North Country"; in Thailand, the top runner-up was Atsumi Jiro's "夢追い酒(追梦酒)" and in the Philippines, the first place was Sakamoto's "Kami-mitsu", "Kami-mitsuru-no-mitsu". Only in the Chinese regions of the survey (Singapore and Hong Kong) did Star have a overwhelming advantage over other songs.
Perhaps this is because of The Star's intrinsic relationship with China. According to Shinji Tanimura himself, the song was inspired by China's Heilongjiang Province—like many other Japanese, the vast northeastern plains were a great ideological shock to Shinji Tanimura, accustomed to a cramped living environment. In more than 20 years, "Star" has also been covered by many Chinese singers from Teresa Teng, Luo Wen, Guan Zhengjie, Jiang Yuheng, Feng Feifei, Chen Peter and other Chinese singers from the three places across the Taiwan Straits, and the lyrics of the Chinese also include Cantonese, Chinese and other versions. Such as "The Horn", "My Heart Has No Return Journey", "Star" and so on. At the concert on September 21, Shinji Tanimura unexpectedly sang a Chinese cover of "Star", which brought another surprise to the audience.
In addition, in 2008, Feng Xiaogang's New Year film "Do Not Disturb" also chose this song as one of the interludes. At the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, Shinji Tanimura served as the Ambassador for the Japan Promotion of the World Expo, and sang "Star" at the opening ceremony on April 30, 2010, which brought infinite emotions to the audience and the world. This old song, which was popular in the 1980s, became a highlight at the opening ceremony of the Shanghai World Expo, and also allowed many young Chinese people to appreciate the charm of "Star" for the first time.
Shinji Tanimura at the opening ceremony of the World Expo
However, in general, unlike the phenomenon of the "student party" in the concerts of idol singers today, the audience of the "38 Years of Stars" concert is not short of middle-aged and elderly people, and even the touching scenes of elderly women struggling to walk to the seats with the support of relatives, friends and staff. This is of course because Shinji Tanimura's concert is actually full of nostalgic elements, and the good memories of the previous generation. His songs were written as early as 1976 ("Low Tide") and as late as the early 1990s. Those young fans who held aloft glow sticks and the banner of "Shinji Tanimura China Fan Club" at the Shanghai Grand Theatre concert site to help, I am afraid that they were not born at that time. Of course, these "classic old songs" cannot fail to mention Zhang Guorong's classic masterpiece "Who Resonates", the original of which is from Shinji Tanimura's "儚きは". In 1986, the song "Who Resonates", composed by Shinji Tanimura and written and sung by Zhang Guorong, won the honor of "Top Ten Golden Songs in Hong Kong" that year. In fact, Zhang Guorong's other song "Spend Together" is also a song "Flower" from Shinji Tanimura, which is almost the same as last year's concert, and the chorus "Flower" is still an impressive scene in the Shanghai Grand Theatre on the night of September 21, and many audiences even involuntarily burst into tears...
Shinji Tanimura, who came to China in 1981 to perform
On the other hand, Shinji Tanimura's friendly feelings toward China, like his friendship with Zhang Guorong, do not need to hide anything. As he puts it, he sees China as a "second home" and to China "feels like home," while music is seen as a force that can "cross borders." On August 23, 1981, Shinji Tanimura, who was in China for the first time, performed at the Japan-China Concert at the Workers' Gymnasium in Beijing, followed by the "First China-Japan Friendship Music Festival" held at the Workers' Cultural Palace. Shinji Tanimura later recalled, "At the concert, Mr. Deng Xiaoping sat in the middle and watched. After we sang the rhythmic song, Mr. Deng Xiaoping was the first to stand up and clap his hands to our rhythm, and then all the 10,000 people present stood up. "It was truly an evocative moment of memory.
It belongs to the era of memory
It is a little regrettable that in the performance of the Shanghai Grand Theatre, Shinji Tanimura did not sing the song "Wind and Flower" as he did last year. The theme song "The Legend of the Wind and Flowers" produced for Toei Animation's "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is regarded by many as the most intense "Chinese style" in Tanimura's musical works. Like Mr. Mo Da in Jin Yong's pen, "The Tale of the Wind and Flowers" uses erhu and Japanese chants to tell the legend and sentimentality of Chinese history... Perhaps we can only hope that Mr. Tanimura can sing the Chinese style of "The Legend of The Wind and Flowers" in the capital of China in the next performance of the Beijing station!
At the end of the concert at the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the 69-year-old Shinji Tanimura half-jokingly and half-seriously said that he "will sing for another twenty years", and suddenly received thunderous applause. However, the audience knows that Shinji Tanimura himself knows that the peak of his musical era has long been fixed forever in the late last century. When Shinji Tanimura first appeared as the group "alice" in the 1970s, when the Japanese music scene was still in its heyday, Saburo Kitajima and Miku Skylark undoubtedly dominated the Japanese music scene, and "j-pop" as popular music was still a new thing that changed from direct imitation to interpreting American music in its own unique way. Until the mid-1980s, popular songs gradually won the love of young people, and the songs were instead called "songs for the elderly", and slowly entered a period of conservatism and decline. At that time, Shinji Tanimura and his music represented youth and vitality, just like he himself joked at the Shanghai Grand Theatre, "At that time, there were 200-300 concerts a year, and I felt that I was Superman", which caused the audience to laugh heartily.
Famous singer Saburo Kitajima
Yeah, as Shinji Tanimura then lamented, it's good to be young. Today, "j-pop" has long been the mainstream of Japanese music, but the career of singer-songwriters like Shinji Tanimura has entered the twilight years like the natural age. The newborn "idol group" swept the Japanese music scene with the business law of handshake coupons and photogenics on CD disks, and the new generation became indifferent to pure "singers". For example, in the 2015 oricon (Japan Public Trust List) list, the top ten songs sold annually were all the works of idol groups, and the top five of them were akb48, which was called "Nihono Cancer" by opponents, which was jaw-dropping.
akb48
In this case, even if Shinji Tanimura can "sing for another twenty years" as he wishes, I am afraid that he will only be able to repeat the previous works and it will be difficult to see new works. However, there may not be anything wrong with this, after all, his songs represent the memories of a generation and can still move the audience again and again, which is enough. Many years have passed, and whenever the melody of "Star" sounds, it can always make people find the strength to move forward in confusion. As the lyrics in "Stars" sing, "Ah... Brilliant stars, even if they are nameless, must sparkle. Never give up without silence, burst out of the brilliance to ignite life! ”
Looking up at the night sky, Shinji Tanimura is such a "star".