Shinji Tanimura is 69 years old this year. He said twice: "This year means a lot to me. ”
Why it is important, he does not explain, but "wants to convey the last mood of the 'six' character at this moment through singing." Just like more than 700 songs in his long 46-year creative career, no matter how the musical style changes, timeless, deep, brave to gaze at the black hole of time, the meaning of the words remains unchanged, and the keen perception of the meaning of the meaning of life has not changed.
"Star" is indeed the common memory of the People of Asia
At the age of sixty-nine, Shinji Tanimura sang "Star" again in Shanghai. He also sang this song not only at the "38 Years of Stars" concert at the Shanghai Grand Theatre on the evening of September 21, but also at the "45th Anniversary of Shinji Tanimura's Acting Career" concert last year.
Shinji Tanimura Concert Images in this article are provided by the organizers
This song, which he has sung countless times, is not only a must-sing at concerts overseas, but also re-recorded in the new album "38 Years of Stars" released this year. "The arrangement is exactly the same as it was then, except that the sound is noticeably older. A song is like a bottle of wine, when it is first brewed, the fragrance is fierce, and it will slowly become mellow with time. ”
You can say that he is conservative, or you can understand it as the love and protection of precious things by precocious people. He cherished the song, "'The Star' is the key to opening the door to all of Asia, connecting everyone." ”
The self-titled album containing Stars was released in April 1980. It is a lonely song, on the cover of Tanimura walking down the night road with his head bowed under the blue street lamp, and the city is silent with him like a wilderness. The album was a success, especially Star, which was adapted into different languages and circulated in Asia, with Kwan's Star (lyrics by Cheng Kwok-giang) and Teresa Teng's Japanese and Cantonese versions especially well-known in the Chinese-speaking area. In the Chinese mainland, Shen Xiaocen's Japanese version of "Star" included in the second album is like a hole in the rock wall, and fans began to try their best to collect Japanese songs, resulting in curiosity about the outside world.
Concert poster
In this sense, "Star" is indeed the common memory of the Asian people. Its loneliness and brilliance do not require the transmission of words to hit people's hearts. Shinji Tanimura's melodies combine the melancholy of traditional Japanese songs and the sparse, open, and distant mood of Tang poems, which are more resonant in cultural proximity.
On the stage, this thin and happy old man had long been able to glimpse the mystery of fate. When imagining the vast yellow meadows, the distant mountains, and the cool breeze, Shinji Tanimura did not know where it was. It wasn't until the song was written that I remembered that "such a scene must be in China." When he wrote this song (1980), Shinji Tanimura was only 32 years old.
The cold wind blowing into his chest and the passionate dreams are intertwined; the scattered stars of destiny are both the object of his farewell and the eternal existence that will usher in more latecomers.
The original Japanese translation of "Star" as "Pleiadian", which has been covered by many people, is more accurate. The Pleiades are one of the brightest in the night sky, especially in autumn and winter. Tanimura's "Pleiades" is not optimistic or pessimistic, but a narrative of "not seeing the ancients before, not seeing the comers after, reading the heavens and the earth slowly, and being alone but drooling". It is like the unspeakable fate itself, confused, lonely, contradictory, and still hopeful and bright.
He called the song "Happy Song."
The collision of Eastern and Western cultures began as a teenager
When interviewing Shinji Tanimura, his eyes were always drawn to his slender fingers. The hands themselves have a rich vocabulary, compared to Tanimura himself is not so talkative. His people are as quiet as the song.
What is not contradictory is the strong Showa legacy of Shinji Tanimura, whose diligence is evident in the figures of more than 4,000 concerts and more than 30 million records sold. He is a typical representative of the generation in post-war Japan, confident, energetic and friendly to his neighbors, and has always been committed to caring for children and music education. This uncle is beyond reproach and is a structured and well-respected predecessor of the Japanese music scene.
Shinji Tanimura concert scene
He is a man of concentration. No matter how the political trend changes, he always promotes the friendship between China and Japan with the conscience of an artist. Teng Junjie, who was the director of the opening and closing ceremonies of the Shanghai World Expo, and Tanimura are old friends for nearly two decades. He remembered Tanimura's almost naïve sincerity: "When Abe and Koizumi were unable to get by, [Japan] and China could not get by, so he went directly to Koizumi and told him that his attitude toward China must change." Japan must stand with China, and our two countries in Asia must shoulder this responsibility. ”
In the era when Shinji Tanimura was active, the vigorous and abundant Showa era was coming to an end, but it was also bursting with brilliance. The opening chapter of The Legend of the Galactic Heroes, Yoshiki Tanaka's "Forward! Go ahead! "To this day, the exuberant and exuberant spirit of the "Ultraman" series, as well as the spirit of reflection on society, technology and one's own situation, are all true portraits of Showa. At the time, this optimistic national spirit was known as the "100 million total middle class", that is, 100 million people considered themselves to be middle class.
In that era, people believed that struggle could lead to a better life, and believed in the uniqueness of their culture. Whether on the screen or in literary images, men and women are sword-eyed, healthy and cheerful. Although not every man in the Showa period was Ken Takakura and every woman was Momoe Yamaguchi, they are indeed the most memorable figures in modern Japanese history.
The inherent "mourning" and "Bushido" of Japanese culture, the adherence to traditional culture and the high acceptance of foreign culture were balanced in the late open Showa period, and were fully reflected in Tanimura.
He also has a fusion of two very different cultures, and the collision of Western and Eastern cultures has begun since his youth. There is a legend that he went to tokyo budokan at the age of 17 to see the Beatles' Tokyo premiere (July 1, 1966). When I asked, I realized that this was a figment of the matter. But one thing is true, at the age of 16, Shinji Tanimura and his friends formed the first orchestra Rock Candie, "style more rural folk".
Shinji Tanimura concert
Even crazier, in 1970 the band did a "tour of the Americas." The reality is very different from what it sounds, "We first went to Vancouver, Canada, and then because we were poor, we had to take the bus across the North American continent all the way to New York, and everything we slept on the road was solved in the car." "All the way to the performance, the stage is the side of the street, and it took ten days to really arrive in New York."
In New York, in addition to the performance, of course, you have to watch the performance. Shinji Tanimura watched a lot of rock performances and found that "music can be shouted or shouted." "I shed tears at Janis Joplin' scene, and it turns out that music is still possible."
The following year, he returned to China and formed a new band, Alice. The band lasted about a decade and saw Tanimura go from an unknown teenager to a superstar known to all of Japan.
In 1976, he set a record for 303 performances in Japanese music history in a year. By this time he had laid down his own style, and the restlessness of youth flowed into the great river. "People are affected differently at different times, so the music is constantly changing. But what the lyrics express, has not changed in these decades. They are the result of the accumulation of my outlook on life. ”
With a keen sense of the contradictions in life when he was young, and a more realistic thinking as he grew older, Shinji Tanimura' creations, which debuted for 46 years and sang more than 4,000 scenes, have always revolved around this same theme.
"Cultivated Chang Shilei" is a beautiful misunderstanding
Shinji Tanimura first stepped onto the Chinese stage on August 23, 1981. At the Beijing Workers' Gymnasium, she participated in the concert of "Hand in Hand Beijing" with Chinese singers. The trip also set his sights on the entire Asian region.
His first visit to Shanghai was at the 1994 Concert Tour in Asia at the Wan ti Guan, where he represented Japan.
At last year's concert, he once again talked about the great wish of Tan Yonglin and South Korea's Cho Yong Bi like Taoyuan Sanjie to make music and Asia one.
He was a naïve man, and such a wish sounded too much wishful thinking for artists, and even in the politically rich 1980s, there was not necessarily a soil to take root.
But he never stopped building bridges of communication between China and Japan.
Video screenshot of Shinji Tanimura's performance at the opening ceremony of the 2010 Shanghai World Expo
At the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, Teng Junjie wanted to invite Shinji Tanimura to take the stage. Unfortunately, during that time, Tanimura had more than twenty performances throughout Japan, and the Expo was stuck in the middle of the tour. Tanimura hoped that Teng Junjie would give him three days to think about it, and who knew that after a day he replied: "Yes." For this reason, he made many phone calls to persuade and apologize, and made a lot of compensation before he could make the trip.
What also impressed Teng Junjie was Shinji Tanimura's dedication as an artist. "Star", which has been sung countless times, "for every important Chinese invitation, he must have taken the stage seriously." And he must have sung directly every time he walked on the stage, absolutely not perfunctory. ”
In addition to the glamorous stage and political exchanges, Tanimura is also willing to spend time face-to-face with Young Chinese people, trying to teach Chinese students music that is difficult to pass on in words.
From 2004 to 2008, during his tenure as a visiting professor at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Tanimura "spent a week in Shanghai every month." Mr. Tanimura's class is very practical, he asks each student to write lyrics, and then helps them complete the whole process of composing, arranging, and going on stage. "I pay a lot of attention to grasping the personality of each student."
The rumor that "Chang Shilei was cultivated" in the outside world is a beautiful misunderstanding. "In the first class I arrived, the students gave me a welcome ceremony, and Chang Shilei sang a song for me and said to me: I am very happy that you can come." "He was a very talented musician, and I was surprised that there were still so many talented musicians in Shanghai at that time." Chang Shilei already knew everything at that time, and he hardly came to class. Our whole intersection was that welcome ceremony. ”