MATSUBARA NOBUE: A CELEBRATION OF A  COMPASSIONATE

In May of last year, Matsubara Nobue celebrated her 25th year in the Japanese entertainment world and treated her fans to an “arigatou” anniversary concert in Tokyo. At one point during the concert, she kidded with her admiring audience that the bright crimson dress she was wearing? one of her many changes of clothing during the concert? was a color that would look good only on herself or a tomato. During the concert, she sang some sixteen of her hit songs, including: “Onnna no defune”, “Haha to musume”, “Aoi tsuki” and “Namida no sanbashi”.

Nobue-san might kid about her looks, but these days in fact, she is looking just great. The stress of her much publicized and traumatic divorce from her former manager last year, had taken its physical toll on her, and wrestling with the weight she had put on because of the stress, she set out on a diet which whittled her down to a svelte 59 kilos. She also published a diet book last year, “Kiwi Slow Diet” that has been selling briskly.

Along with Kaori Kozai; Yoko Nagayama; Sayuri Ishikawa and Fuyumi Sakamoto, Matsubara Nobue is often cited as one of the contemporary female enka/pops divas who so embody the spirit of Japan’s most enduring sirens of song of years gone by such as Misora Hibari, Yamaguchi Momoe, Mori Masako and Sakurada Junko.

Matsubara-san, whose real name is Hirohara Nobue, was born in Shimoge-gun, Oita prefecture, Kyushu in 1961. It seems to be of no small coincidence that Kyushu, with its dramatic landscape, much of it seemingly right out of a Chinese brush painting, has been the birthplace of so many enka stars. As the middle child of three children, Nobue-chan was frequently teased by her grandmother as being a small but plucky kid.

In fact, and credits her mother’s maternal kindness as well as her father’s influence in the arts, as having been responsible for her being able to set her sights on a life in the entertainment world from early on. She started “performing” songs for family and neighborhood friends from the time she was three, and one of her favorite memories of those early years was how she would receive ten-yen tips for her performances. People kidded even then that she had that certain feminine appeal that might lead to stardom.

By junior high school, in addition to being quite active in sports and acting, she was becoming an avid fan of any TV entertainment programs that had song and dance numbers she could memorize the lyrics and choreography of, and she vividly remembers watching all the pops/enka programs broadcast. The influence of established stars at the time, such as Yamaguchi Momoe and Misora Hibari, was indelible on the young Nobue-chan, and she recalls how much she loved looking up to these women.

Misora Hibari, (1937-1989) a Yokohama fishmonger’s daughter, who made her stage debut at 11, was of course enormously popular with young would-be stage stars of Matsubara-san’s generation. While part of her appeal was her melancholic style, vocal range and powerful voice, in songs like “Kanashiki kuchibue”, “Ringo oiwake” and “Yawara”, it was Misora’s charismatic legendary persona, and especially her life tale as heroin of success as well as tragedy, that no doubt provided for the deep connection. Certainly her, “In my right pocket a dream/in my left pocket chewing gum? down-to-earth gumption (a line taken from the 1950s film, “Tokyo Kid”, in which she starred) easily fueled the dreams of young Japanese girls everywhere, and it’s that very sentimental spirit of course, that is at the heart of enka.

It was in junior high school that Matsubara-san’s plan, to someday move to Tokyo and try to become an enka singer, was definitively hatched. And by high school, a scout from Tokyo, having heard about a certain girl in Oita who had star potential, traveled to Kyushu and well, the rest is history, as they say. When she looks back on those years, Matsubara-san has to laugh’it was such big news in a rural place like Shimoge-gun for that to happen to one of their own. She moved to Tokyo in the spring of her 16th year, and has fond memories of carrying along a tape player to practice her singing when she took dogs for a walk. Also, she remembers that in mainstream popular music, groups like the Cassidys (of Partridge family fame) had most of the songs at the top of the record sales charts. She worked so hard though, during her first year living in Tokyo, attending singing lessons and the like, that she let herself get rundown. She concedes that she never ate right and that getting sick forced her to start taking better care of herself. In 1979, she debuted with “Onna no defune”, which, that same year, earned her the Nihon Records Grand Prize for new artists. And even today, that hit is instantly recognizable with her name.

Matsubara-san’s most recent releases include: “Yukiwarisou”, which came out last February. And in conjunction with her 25th anniversary concert last May, she released a companion album, “Aoi tsuki”, a 3-disc set compiling her debut single “Onna no defune” and other more memorable hits. “Echizen kazemai”, which was released in October of 2002, includes karaoke tracks/sheet music for some of the songs, and a re-edited medley of the “Fureai meguriai” series.

In addition to her appearances on stage, she keeps up a brisk TV and radio schedule. Her TV program, “Nobue no uta dayori” is broadcast weekly, and can be heard on NHK radio, each Sunday afternoon. Her program, “Matsubara Nobue no ongaku to ocha shimasho” is also broadcast on regional radio. And she also recently appeared in a music video on Yoko Nagayama’s TV show, ?Yoko no enka ichokusen.?

One of the things most dear to her heart these days is her involvement with guide dogs for the blind in Japan. In Japan, the government does not make provisions and monies available for the training and supplying of guide dogs for the blind, and 80% of the funds for training dogs comes from private donations, while the remaining 20% comes from local, community funds. Such problematic financing is one of the basic causes for the severe shortage in Japan of guide dogs.

Matsubara-san recently held a charity concert in her home of Kyushu, in order to raise much needed money for the Kyushu chapter of the guide dogs association. And in conjunction with the concert, she released a charity CD on the Columbia Japan label, “Olive no uta”.

As she explained at the beginning of the benefit concert, Japan lags way behind other industrialized countries in not only the acceptability of guide dog use in everyday life, but also in the number of dogs available to the blind. And the shortage of guide dogs, which is largely due to cost, (somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000 to breed/train a single dog) is extremely severe.

We at Eye-Ai are happy to pass on Nobue-san’s message here:

It is estimated that while currently some 7,800 Japanese people need a guide dog, only 850 trained dogs are available. This means that approximately 10% only of the blind living in Japan have any real hope of receiving a trained guide dog. Many Western countries, on the other hand, have brought into force laws relating to the provision of guide dogs and in those countries up to 50% of blind people are now supplied with such dogs. Advocates for the blind in Japan contend that if the government would only do more to assist blind people, more blind people could be supplied with guide dogs. But as it is, the blind rely entirely on donations and on the goodwill of ordinary people. If more people appreciated this situation, they might be prepared to donate money to help alleviate the problems faced by the blind.

Many guide dog users in Japan cannot live comfortably with their dogs in Japanese society and experience rejection at restaurants, hotels, in taxis and elsewhere despite a law banning such facilities from refusing dogs assisting disabled people that was passed in October last year.

We can only salute you, Matsubara-san, in your great and kind efforts to increase public awareness of this important issue!

by Cole Weber