Singing in the Wind, Beyond the Security--A Portrait of Tomoya Takaishi, a Traveler (1960s-1970s)

Singing in the Wind, Beyond the Security--A Portrait of Tomoya Takaishi, a Traveler (1960s-1970s)

At the end of the 1960s, the Japanese archipelago was abuzz. In the shadow of rapid economic growth, students rose up against tuition hikes and anti-war protests at universities, and the streets were filled with helmets and gobball sticks. There was a young man who breathed in the air of those times and sang with a single guitar. He is Tomoya Takaishi, a man who is called both a "pioneer of Japanese folk music" and a "singing traveler.

In 1960, he entered Rikkyo University. This was the year of the intensification of the First Security Struggle, when the revision of the treaty was forced in exchange for the resignation of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. Takaishi remained at the university for ten years, graduating in 1970 as the automatic extension of the Security Treaty once again shook society. He became a symbol of the "man who was a student from the Security Treaty to the Security Treaty.

This was a time when folk songs began to represent the ideas of the youth. While inspired by American Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan, Takaishi sang songs that were rooted in Japanese soil. He sang about the anger of workers, the cries of rural areas suffering from pollution, the outrage over the assaults by U.S. soldiers in Okinawa, and the tragedy of the Vietnam War. He collected such "voices from the frontlines," transformed them into words, and put them to music.

His representative songs include "Examinee Blues" and "Let's Join the Self-Defense Forces. The latter, in particular, became a sealed anti-war song in 1968, when broadcast stations voluntarily restricted the singing of the song and universities stopped singing it one after another. Despite its lighthearted melody, the irony and biting social criticism of the song were an eyesore for the powers that be.

The group's style of activity was also unique. Unwilling to settle for the confines of the stage or television, he spent 20 days a month on the road, living a nomadic life. He spent 20 days a month on the road, traveling to university auditoriums, local labor halls, rural festivals, and city streets. He would confront the audience with his own voice, sometimes without a microphone, wherever he chose. This style of music influenced future generations of musicians, and he was named one of the "Three Crows of Folk," along with Nobuyasu Okabayashi and Yoshio Hayakawa.

The "folk guerrilla" incident at the end of the 1960s is also hard to forget. In 1969, Takaishi was involved in a guerrilla live performance in the underground plaza at the west exit of Shinjuku, Tokyo. This incident, in which police were dispatched to an unauthorized street performance and many students were removed, became a watershed for freedom of expression. Takaishi's name is also mentioned as a symbol of this incident.

It was in 1970 when he finally graduated from university. He was the last student of that era and a singer of resistance. However, he continued to find hope in the midst of the angry roar. It was his own thought, his way of life, and above all, his songs themselves. His voice, which resonates only where the microphone cannot reach, still rings quietly in the wind of folk music.