The Groove Music Life

ARTIST: Tetsuya Ryu
SINGLE: “Okuhida Bojyo” c/w “Se Se Rago No Yado”
STYLE: Enka
LABEL: Trio
SOURCE: retail single, 3B-177
YEAR: 1980
DOWNLOAD: Full single (ZIP file, 256kbps mp3)

From what I have been able to gather – which unfortunately isn’t much – Tetsuya Ryu wrote the song “Okuhida Bojyo” (“Longing For Okuhida”) on his own (lyrics and music) and found himself having what is apparently his only hit single, selling over 130,000 copies. In a culture (the Japanese pop world) where the stars are supposed to look as good as they sound, Tetsuya Ryu looks like the Japanese edition of Joe Average: the kind of person that works his butt off as a salaryman during the week and then goes out on the weekends to grab the mic at his favorite karaoke house and belt out a few tunes. In short, a seemingly unlikely pop star.

A gentleman named Mushishinaide (who runs his own quite interesting J-blog) hipped me to a little more information about Tetsuya Ryu when the original version of this entry was posted at Stuck In A Pagoda 2.0: Ryu was doing a 15-day singing residency at the onsen/hot spa town of Okuhida when he first wrote the song; in that same year, he released it on a self-promoted limited vinyl run of 2000 copies. The version heard here would make this the second version of the song to be recorded and released.

Both “Okuhida Bojyo” and its B-side, “Su Su Ragi No Yado” (“Inn Of Babble”, or perhaps “Inn of the Brook” according to Mushishinade – maybe even “Babbling Brook” if one wants to do a less literal translation of the title), are typical, pretty, male-led enka ballads, heavy on the emotional vocal. In 1980, the year this song came out, he was named Best New Artist on Besuto hitto kay?sai, earning him some Japanese TV appearances like this one:

The song seems to show up only on compilations, but of late there are three other CD singles that this gentleman has released in recent years on independent labels, including a remake of “Okuhida Bojyo”. Apparently this remake appears on the soundtrack to the film The Cats Of Mirikitani, which aired recently on PBS.

While Ryu hasn’t been able to duplicate the success of his 28-year-old hit, it’s apparently still a karaoke favorite in Japan:

If anyone knows anything else about this guy, I’d like to know.

The scan of the picture sleeve is courtesy of Snow Records Japan..
Please read the disclaimer if downloading the mp3 files.