UEHARA Toshi - Voices of Youth Scattered in Michu Uta (1937 - 1944)

UEHARA Toshi - Voices of Youth Scattered in Michu Uta (1937 - 1944)

Born in Odate City, Akita Prefecture, Toshi Uehara was a pitcher on the baseball team at Senshu University, and after graduation he went on to play baseball for working people, but eventually moved into the world of song. In 1937, "Tsuma Koi Dochu (Wife Love Road)" was originally scheduled to be sung by Taro Tokai, but Uehara was suddenly assigned to sing it, and it became a big hit, selling over 400,000 copies upon its release. His popular singing style, which incorporated the bars of nankyoku (traditional Japanese balladry), was strongly supported by the public, and he quickly rose to stardom as he was more accessible than the more classical vocal style of Tokai Lin. Tsuma Koi Dochu" (Wife's Love Road Trip) is one of the best-known road trip songs that depict travelers' emotions and their feelings of duty and humanity, and captured the hearts of the people of the time by singing about the world of humanity that the public sought in the early Showa period. As the war rapidly
escalated from the Sino-Japanese War to the Pacific War, entertainers were also forced to go to war. Uehara, at the height of her popularity, was called up and sent to the Philippine front. In 1944, his singing voice, which was supposed to echo after the war, was engulfed by the flames of war, and he died an untimely death at the age of 33. If he had lived, he would have become a central figure in postwar music, and his premature death continues to be regretted as a lost possibility in the history of Showa music.