Word: hattori
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Osaka, which is Japan's No. 1 commercial city, grew naturally with the progressive expansionism of her hustling merchants. Nagoya, industrially the child of the Greater East Asia War, grew artificially, by military fiat. Fifty-five-year-old Junji Hattori, manager of a Mitsubishi plant in Nagoya, put it this way: "When the military sticks its nose into civilian affairs, it makes horrible mistakes. Look at us now-no money, no initiative, no incentive. I'm afraid Nagoya's flower has bloomed and withered. Whether new buds will appear, only time will tell...
...fishmonger, Hattori grew up in brawling Osaka, the New Orleans of jazzu. At 16, he landed with a boy's band employed by a rich eel merchant to drum up business. By 1925, Hattori was so expert on flute and oboe that the Osaka Symphony Orchestra hired him. But jazz looked more profitable, and Hattori quit the symphony to organize the most famous of early Jap jazzbands, "Hattori and His Manila Red-Hot Stompers...
Down with the Green-Blues. One day in 1947, Hattori saw some Japanese couples trying to jitterbug to the slow, sickly sort of green-blues which most Jap jazz-composers were turning out. He decided "to break away from kurai ongaku [dark music]," wrote Tokyo Boogie-Woogie. It hit, and boogie began to beat all over Japan...
...however, does not mean much to a Jap songwriter. Because of a record shortage and slow sheet-music sales, Hattori makes only about 7,000 yen ($16.66) a song. Last month he wrote 20, including several for his movie biography, Eternal Enthusiasm...
...Hattori sometimes writes his own lyrics, but often leaves the chore to others, who have that strange poetic touch which knocks the Japanese for a loop, but leaves a Westerner vaguely feeling as if someone has been beating him over the head with a chrysanthemum petal. The lyrics to Hattori's hit of the week, Aoi Sammyaku...