Asei Kobayashi: The Composer Who Raced Through the Era of Television

It's a bit embarrassing, but while I thought I remembered everything, there are actually quite a few songs I have no memory of (laughs). It might sound irresponsible, but looking back, I realize I was just being made to work incredibly hard every single day at that time.

I think so.

That's right. At that time, Keio Futsubu School was in Mita, but it burned down in the air raids in May. We went to help clean up the ruins, and after that, we rented space in the Yochisha Elementary School building in Tengenji.

My parents simply wanted me to become a doctor. They told me to go to Keio and become a doctor just like that. But it was a huge nuisance for me; the School of Medicine was just not for me (laughs).

Initially, I joined the equestrian club. But soon after the war ended, broadcasts from the Occupation Forces suddenly started, and I fell in love with jazz. Since Hawaiian music had been popular at Keio since before the war...

Exactly. So, in my first year of Keio Futsubu School, I formed a Hawaiian band with Minoru Harada and others. Harada later became active with his own bands, "Wagon Ace" and "Kazuya Kosaka and the Wagon Masters." Harada played steel guitar, and I played side guitar.

After the war ended, an Occupation Forces club called "Knickerbocker" opened under the tracks in Shinbashi. Our band performed there.

From the perspective of the Occupation Forces, they had won the war and come to Japan, only to find kids playing their own hit songs, so they were astonished. However, our photo ended up being displayed at the entrance, a teacher found out, and I got scolded.

Then my father got incredibly angry too, and he even used my guitar as kindling for the bath (laughs). Back then, things like Hawaiian music were seen as being for delinquents.

Harada quit school, and I was starting to think I couldn't make it at this school either. But when I entered the first year of the new system high school, Mr. Tadahiko Okada, who had just graduated from the composition department of Kunitachi College of Music, arrived as a music teacher. He told me to join the chorus.

I thought, "What, chorus?" and did it reluctantly, but even though I had been in a band, I couldn't read sheet music until then. It was through the chorus that I finally learned how to read music.

I was in the first graduating class of Keio Senior High School.

I was in Class H. Hikaru Hayashi and Isao Tomita were in Class H too. All three of us were in the same class. Akihiro Komori was also a classmate.

Lunch breaks were filled with music discussions. Tomita and Hayashi were sons of doctors, and both had played piano and studied composition since they were small. Hayashi and I had been together since Keio Futsubu School.

Right after the war, there was a Gershwin biographical film called "Rhapsody in Blue," and we all watched it at Keio Futsubu School. There was an upright piano in the gym that anyone could play, and Hayashi played the entire score from the movie from memory. Everyone was stunned. Hayashi was that talented.

In high school, Mr. Okada taught us things like chords in class. He helped me with everything. Then, in my third year of high school, we formed a music club (now the Gakuyukai) with the girls' high school. The Gakuyukai still exists at the university today as a large organization, but at first, it was basically born from the desire to sing something with the girls from the high school (laughs).

Mr. Okada guided us, and we did mixed chorus. He singled me out, saying, "You, create something for this mixed chorus." So I wrote a song called "Home Song." That was the first song I ever composed. It was quite well-received. If I had to say, that was the catalyst for entering this career path.

We were Mr. Okada's very first students. So he was incredibly fond of us. He looked after me my whole life.

Even after I graduated and started this work, we would all go to his house, and I even went camping at Yatsugatake with him and his wife. His wife is still doing well, so I see her occasionally.

In 1975, Mr. Okada asked me, "Why don't you write something for the Gakuyukai?" and I wrote a song called "Seishun Sanka" (Ode to Youth). When he passed away, we all sang it together for the first time in a long while at the "Memorial Service for Mr. Tadahiko Okada" in 2016. At that time, everyone told me to create something again, so I composed a suite called "Machi" (The Town) consisting of six songs.

I hated studying, yet I had to go to the School of Medicine (laughs). I only studied during my third year of high school and somehow got into the School of Medicine (the medical course at the time).

Right around then, the Korean War began. Suddenly, there was a shortage of bands for Occupation Forces entertainment all over Japan. At the time, I was playing the vibraphone, so I formed a band with friends from the Gakuyukai and started going to entertain the Occupation Forces.

There was a WAC (Women's Army Club) in Yokohama. It was a club where the customers were female soldiers and officers' wives, and we ended up becoming something like their house band (laughs). In an era when the starting salary was about 8,500 yen, we could get about 3,000 yen for one performance. It became a huge income, so I was lured by the money.

At the time, there was a bootleg songbook called "1001" (Sen-ichi) that contained 1,001 standard numbers. I was made to carry that and had to memorize the songs that were frequently requested. If an officer's wife said, "Play this," I couldn't say no. That helped me immensely later when I started composing.

I was incorporating American music early on.

When the era of television began, there were almost no composers who came from a jazz background. In jazz, there were plenty of arrangers, but Hachidai Nakamura was about the only one who became a composer. Most TV composition work was done by people from classical backgrounds. I had dabbled in classical, jazz, and even Hawaiian (laughs).

Rather than a wide range, it's more that I was haphazard—it's embarrassing, really—but no matter what came my way, I'd say, "Oh, I get it. I can do that."

Soichi Minegishi, who later became a flutist, was also a classmate at Keio Senior High School and a good friend. He also went into the medical course, but the two of us went to say we wanted to quit being doctors. The teacher got angry. But I kept it a secret from my father that I had transferred to the Faculty of Economics.

The School of Medicine takes six years. When my father bought a white coat or something, saying I'd be going to Shinanomachi starting next year, I told him, "Actually, I'm graduating next year" (laughs). My father was very disappointed.

But since I didn't like it at all, the company wasn't interesting. That's when I finally thought, "A person should only do what they love." I didn't think I could make a living as a composer, but I felt I just had to do it, so I quit the company.

Yes. At first, I didn't know he was a Keio alumnus.

I visited his house in Omotesando with a recording tape of my own work. That's when I first realized he was a Keio senior, but his wife told me they only taught students from music colleges. However, after I left the tape, I received a letter from him a week later saying, "Please do come by." I was so happy. From then on, I started going to his place every week.

Masashi Wakamatsu, who was a senior apprentice of mine and composed many children's songs, was also a Keio graduate. The tuition was 3,000 yen per session. That was quite expensive for the time.

But I only paid for the first three times or so and didn't pay at all after that (laughs). I was quite brazen.

His teaching mostly consisted of small talk, but that turned out to be incredibly useful.

Nowadays, everyone calls themselves an artist, don't they? But according to him, that's the lowest. He would scold us, saying, "Don't you dare call yourselves artists, even if your mouths rot."

He said even a craftsman making clogs, if they make wonderful clogs, people will say, "That person is an artist." He told us, "Don't go around dressing like an artist," which is why everyone under Mr. Hattori's tutelage wore proper ties and suits.

Eventually, I started helping my teacher and senior apprentices. It was right around the time the Dark Ducks became well-known, and Mr. Wakamatsu often introduced me to do arrangements for them. From there, arranging work for NHK, TBS, and record companies increased one after another.

And while I was doing work like "Music Bouquet" or arranging Asian folk songs for orchestras, I became quite useful at NHK. I was put in charge of all the arrangements and conducting for a 30-minute music program called "Yoru no Shirabe" (Melodies of the Night). But I was doing nothing but arranging work.

It's said that arranging uses the left brain and is mathematical. But composing uses the right brain. So, if you do nothing but arranging, you get worse at composing. I thought, "This is bad." So, I gathered my courage and quit the NHK job.

At that time, my younger sister was working at Renown. They were starting a TV program and needed a commercial song. She told a lie, saying, "My brother seems to be doing that kind of thing" (laughs). Even though I had never done it, I created the Renown commercial ("Wansaka Musume," 1961–) through her introduction, and it became incredibly popular.

Around the same time, when a place called Toei Animation was doing their very first TV anime, for some reason I got the call and was allowed to do "Wolf Boy Ken" (1963). That was the first time I did anime music.

Exactly. Then suddenly, CM and anime work increased and I got so busy. I wonder how I lived like that. There were times when I was creating about three songs a day.

It was an era where people felt they had somehow escaped the poverty of the post-war period and that things were going to keep getting better. So the bubble era was the peak, and from there, it became a different, not-so-good Japan.

At first, everyone thought of TV commercials as art and created them seriously, but eventually, a trend emerged where people felt there was no point in acting important while making commercials. It started to feel "uncool" to work hard on them.

I once wrote a song called "Beautiful" (1970) that Kazuhiko Kato appeared in. From around that time, I also started to think it was foolish to work so hard on TV commercials.

Yes. Nowadays, I think it's difficult to do this job. People who create new music for TV commercials have probably become rare. They just use existing material. Because the number of people who don't watch TV itself has increased. That's why popular songs have disappeared. No matter how hard you try, a hit song won't emerge.

Completely different. There's probably no such thing as a "trendy style" now. Even looking inside a train, everyone is dressed however they like. Because each person likes different things, the phenomenon of "trends" has disappeared.

Ah, yes. I wonder what music program that was? It was the theme song.

That's right. It's common now, but back then, Cup Noodle was something revolutionary.

That one was a hit within the industry before it even went out into the world. Things that are hits in the industry usually fail. It was right after the student movement had failed, and living life with a cynical attitude had become uncool; the timing was bad, so it didn't become a hit.

That might be true. There certainly might have been a foundation.