Kato Kazuhiko

[Aaron Gerow]

The big news yesterday in Japan seems to be that the musician and  
producer Kato Kazuhiko was found dead yesterday in a hotel at  
Karuizawa of an apparent suicide. He was 62.

I mention this on a film list because, even though Kato started out in  
the folk boom of the late 1960s as a member of the Folk Crusaders,  
that was also the beginning of a long association with film. It was  
the Folk Crusaders who were the stars of Oshima Nagisa's Three  
Resurrected Drunkards (Katte kita yopparai), a film named after the  
Crusader's big hit (that movie is thus generically a "kayo eiga" or  
pop song film). The Crusaders soon broke up and Kato formed other  
bands such as the Sadistic Mika Band and had other big hits such as  
"Ano subarashii ai o mo ichido" (which has appeared in a lot of  
movies), but he also started working as a songwriter and music  
producer and provided music for films. The most famous recent example  
of the latter is Izutsu Kazuyuki's Patchigi, which not only uses  
Kato's music, but is somewhat based on Kato's experience, when a  
member of the Crusaders, of trying to release a single of the North  
Korean folk song "Imujingawa" (that's the Japanese title), but having  
the company refuse the release for political reasons. (The Crusader's  
next hit, "Kanashikute yarekirenai" is apparently "Imujingawa" with  
the melody in reverse and rearranged.)


Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Associate Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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