Karaoke in Hong Kong | Tomoyuki Kojima (Dean, Faculty of Policy Management)
2006.06.01
The theme this time is "Leaders and Music." The editorial department's intention is that there should be plenty to write about music, such as favorite instruments, songs we hum, and memorable tunes. Indeed, at SFC, there are many such people. In classical music, we have Professor Koichi Furukawa (Graduate School of Media and Governance), who not only plays the cello but has also made improving performance techniques his research theme. There is also Professor Fumiya Hira (Faculty of Policy Management), who still performs on percussion in SFC concerts. In rock music, we have Professor Jun Murai (Vice-President, Keio University), who showed off his bass skills at the 2004 Homecoming Day (HCD), as well as Professor Eiji Oguma (Faculty of Policy Management) and Professor Hiroya Tanaka (Faculty of Environment and Information Studies), who still hold hard rock concerts. Professor Kenji Kumasaka (Faculty of Environment and Information Studies) was also active in a jazz band during his student days, I believe.
However, I am not good with music. So much so that when I was little and had to choose between learning the violin or the soroban (Japanese abacus) for my lessons, I chose the soroban. My children still play the piano in their free time, and my wife has started taking piano lessons again to brush up on her skills. I am the only one who cannot play any instrument. I wish I could at least sing, but I'm no good at that either. Even though I can chant Noh songs, I can't think of any songs to sing when invited to karaoke.
Nevertheless, I have sung karaoke before. It was a four-hour continuous karaoke session in the early hours of July 1, 1997. On June 30 of that year, Hong Kong was "returned" (the Japanese media called it *henkan* [返還, "return"], but the Chinese side considered it a "recovery" [*shouhui*, 収回] of sovereignty taken by the British, and thus writes it as *shouhui* in Chinese), and a ceremony was held for the occasion. I was also staying in Hong Kong, having been asked to provide commentary for the satellite broadcast of the ceremony. I appeared on a TV Tokyo special program on the night of June 30, and on July 1, I was on an NHK satellite broadcast special all day, which included being made to do a nearly 30-minute unscripted talk with Agnes Chan, who was also on the show, during a sudden break in the schedule.
At that time, Professor Toshio Watanabe (currently the president of Takushoku University) was also in Hong Kong for a special program on another broadcast station. We had promised to get together after the ceremony. The idea was for the two of us to quietly have a drink in memory of Hong Kong, which was returning to China. Professor Watanabe is a graduate of Keio University and a senior colleague with whom I have had the pleasure of working at academic conferences and on government councils. He is a karaoke enthusiast who, when we travel together to places like China, passionately sings songs by Takao Horiuchi. He said to me, "Kojima-kun, I feel like singing all night tonight. It's the only way to mourn 'the day Hong Kong became part of China.'" Hong Kong was a place I had visited before, where I spent the last days of my twenties from 1974 to 1975. I had a deep attachment to it, so I agreed, feeling a sense of nostalgia for Hong Kong. I asked Satoru Usami, a junior of mine from the Keio University Faculty of Law who was stationed in Hong Kong at the time with the Mitsubishi Research Institute, to take us to a karaoke bar.
To reminisce about the Hong Kong of the past, we decided to sing only songs by deceased singers. It was a hit parade starting with Hibari Misora, followed by Taro Shoji, Dick Mine, Katsuhiko Haida, Ken Tsumura, Michiko Namiki, Haruo Oka, and others. Professor Watanabe did most of the singing, but since these were songs by deceased artists, I hadn't forgotten any of them and occasionally jumped in to sing as well. The younger Mr. Usami looked on in amazement, drinking his sake in silence. There were no other customers in the karaoke bar besides us. We left the place with a "soon to be sad" feeling and returned to the streets of Hong Kong as dawn was beginning to break. When I visited the city of Hong Kong again in 2004 after a long time, I was no longer in the mood to sing karaoke.
Incidentally, Professor Masaru Tomita's renditions of songs by the band Tulip are superb.
(Date of publication: 2006/06/01)