Songs of Heartbreak: Noriko Awaya and Jun Hayama

English translation of the prose

AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Originally published: 7 July 2024.

Material from the Japanese website. Dates and references reflect the original publication. Quoted lyrics remain in Japanese.

Noriko Awaya and Jun Hayama: songs of lost love, sung through tears

Seishu Hamano

Listening to the surviving recordings of Noriko Awaya, I feel as though I am looking at her self-portrait.

The sorrow of parting from a lover presses upon the heart. Is Jun drawn to Awaya because her way of singing reveals the ending of Jun’s own tangled love?

I do not know Jun’s past, still less the heartbreaking scenes left by a failed love. Yet that consummate singing leads me to imagine even such things.

Let me trace a distant memory from when Awaya was still alive.

Awaya and Jun Hayama are at least two generations apart, their eras far removed. Clearly Jun was not in a position to have Awaya confide the feelings behind her days of weeping. Yet Jun is so devoted to her as to be moved to tears, which fascinates me.

When Awaya finished singing “Wakare no Blues” or “Ame no Blues” and returned to the wings, there was always a glimmer of tears in her eyes.

Hibari was the same. Before singing “Midaregami,” anticipating her tears, she would blink and gently wipe the corners of her eyes before leaping into the whirl of powerful lights.

I was still a university student then.

I worked as a singer at a cabaret in Shimbashi—a kind of part-time job. I sometimes opened for Dick.

Only eighteen and just starting out, I was nevertheless dressed in a stylish, gleaming black-silk tuxedo and, feeling rather pleased with myself, sang grown-up songs.

With an innocent voice that could never imitate the beautiful tone of Dick, my senior, I also sang his songs. When I performed Isao Hayashi’s “Dance Party no Yoru” toward the darkened hall for the last dance, couples pressed together at its center, kissing passionately and moving their bodies: enviable, and the height of decadence.

Awaya did not perform late at night. Her voice would sound drenched in tears, as though she had lost another love. “It is all coming out again today,” Dick would laugh in the wings. Resenting that, I stood discontentedly beside the curtain operator.

Perhaps having fallen deeply in love with Awaya’s singing, Jun Hayama, formerly a professional singer in Ginza, sings in her manner and likewise becomes tearful.

Awaya’s repertoire includes a woman’s song of resentment with lyrics written by a man. It is called “Yoru ga Suki na no,” and 平田謙二’s words skillfully portray a woman’s feelings.

夜が好きなの

　　ふたりの夢が　もえるから…

It opens this way, suggesting a man and woman’s nighttime intimacy, and then says:

夜が好きなの

　　あなたの嘘が消えるから…

The writing is skillful; it truly reads a woman’s heart. Yet perhaps because a man’s hand draws that heart out so directly, neither Noriko nor Jun cries.

Perhaps a blunt depiction of a woman’s feelings has the opposite effect and leaves one cold.

The opening of the second verse of “Ame no Blues,” however, is irresistibly effective:

くらいさだめに

　　うらぶれ果てし身は

　　雨の夜みちを　とぼとぼ

　　ひとり　さまよえど

　　ああ、ああ、帰り来ぬ

　　心のあおぞら

　　すすり泣く　夜の雨よ

At this, tears surge up. I think it must be because both Awaya and Jun have experienced the anguish of lost love, wandering along a small path on a rainy night, soaked through. But is that really so? I leave discerning readers to judge from the singing.

Having written this far, I sent it as an email attachment to receive the subject’s “censorship” (a joke), and a reply came.

“As for heartbreak, I have now reached a state of prayer…”

There were a few lines to that effect.

It had the depth of a life fully lived, and was characteristic of Jun Hayama’s exceptional cultivation. As I reread it, the faces of Jakucho, Sawako Ariyoshi, and Shinobu Terajima came to mind one after another.

End.