Drunken Angel: Sanada’s song

Does anyone know what that song is that Sanada keeps singing? The lyrics go “The hilltop we climbed together, had a view of the harbour”. I don’t think we hear more than that at any point.

The picture these two lines paint is of course very idyllic, and a stark contrast to the scenery that we actually see in the film. But is there more to it? Is this a well-known song?

Some of the literature may well discuss this, but I can’t remember reading about it and haven’t unfortunately yet had the time to re-read the Drunken Angel bits for the film club discussion. I’ll do so shortly.

Any news on the song?

I was wondering also about this one.

And I watched recently The Most Beautiful, during which a patriotic song is often sung, and presented as the “song of the country” by the characters.

Given that the film is more or less realistic and all about 1944 Japan war-time propaganda, I believe that this song was really sung during the war, but I can’t find any information about it with web research; it may be due to the really bad translation Mei Ah gave us.

(More than four hundred provinces / To fight against the enemies / More than hundred thousand soldiers / The country is facing constraints…)

Anybody knows about it? Or knows a web site or other document with references to traditional or historical japanese songs?

That song which Dr. Sanada sing is minato ga mieru oka 　(港が見える丘)

港が見える丘

Welcome here, Kevin.

Great find, especially since the song is subtitled (even with furigana…)!

Thanks, sudarshan!

The name of the song helped me do some quick googling. If I understand the Japanese Wikipedia page correctly, the song was a major hit for singer Aiko Hirano in 1947, the year before Drunken Angel came out.

This page has the original Japanese lyrics, as well as some discussion of the song.

I still don’t know if it has any deeper meaning, but it’s great to finally find the song, four and a half years after I originally posed the question! 🙂

Thanks again, sudarshan!