Ryūkōka
| Ryūkōka | |
|---|---|
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1920s Japan |
| Typical instruments | |
| Derivative forms | |
Ryūkōka (?, literally "Popular Song") is a Japanese musical genre. The term originally denoted any kind of "popular music" in Japanese. Therefore, imayō, which was promoted by Emperor Go-Shirakawa in the Heian period, was a kind of ryūkōka. Today, however, ryūkōka refers specifically to Japanese popular music from the late 1920s through the early 1960s. Some of the roots of ryūkōka were developed from Western classical music.Ryūkōka ultimately split into two genres: enka and poppusu. Unlike enka, archetypal ryūkōka songs did not use the kobushi method of singing.Ryūkōka used legato. Bin Uehara and Yoshio Tabata are considered to be among the founders of the modern style of kobushi singing.
Many composers and singers of ryūkōka went on to earn official distinctions; Ichiro Fujiyama and composers Masao Koga and Ryoichi Hattori received the People's Honour Award in later years.
Although enka branched off from ryūkōka, many singers of the latter genre proclaimed strong disdain for its stylistic descendant. In a 1981 interview, Noriko Awaya said "Whenever I hear enka, I have to get away from the music because I feel like vomiting."
In 1914, Sumako Matsui's song "Katyusha's song", composed by Shinpei Nakayama, was used as a theme of the rendition Resurrection in Japan. The record of the song sold 20,000 copies. One theory holds that this was the first ryūkōka song, which was made by Hogetsu Shimamura's order: "the tune between Japanese popular folk music and Western music". However, street performers called "enka-shi" (演歌師?) had been popular until record labels such as the Victor Company of Japan began to produce songs in the early Shōwa period.
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