Ringo no uta ga kikoeru - 1950's nostalgia and the winds of Tokyo

Ringo no uta ga kikoeru - 1950's nostalgia and the winds of Tokyo

Released in 1956, Michiya Mihashi's "From an Apple Village" was widely accepted as a song that symbolized the sentiments of postwar Japan. As the population began to flow out of the countryside to the cities and depopulation of rural areas increased, young people who went to the cities overlapped their memories of their hometowns in this song. In the early 1950s, when the Korean War special procurement had ended and the recession continued, and the society was in the midst of joblessness and poverty, "From Apple Village" soothed people's hearts as a song that conveyed hope and nostalgia at the same time. Mitsuhashi's voice, which incorporated the power of folk songs, bridged the gap between the loneliness of the city and the warmth of rural villages, and functioned as a "mental regulator" to compensate for economic poverty with cultural affluence. The song, which spread across Japan via radio, symbolized the "place of return" sought by postwar Japanese, and in the 1970s it on
ce again attracted attention as a nostalgic melody. In the midst of a society undergoing a period of rapid economic growth, "From Apple Village" has been sung throughout the ages as a song that reminds people of their origins.