Chapter 24 Misora Hibari in Kōhaku Utagassen: From Modernity to Immortality
In: Handbook of Japanese Music in the Modern EraSearch for other papers by Shelley Brunt in
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Abstract
This chapter examines the shifting status of Japanese singer Misora Hibari (1937–1989) in Japan’s long-running televised song contest Kōhaku Utagassen (Red and White Song Contest). We begin by discussing Hibari’s significance in Japan’s postwar music history before presenting a chronology of her live Kōhaku song performances. Next we consider how she has been memorialized in death, typically via video montages, cover songs, substitute performers, and posthumous duets in Kōhaku. This memorialization culminates in the 2019 digital resurrection of Hibari for the 70th Contest through the holographic “AI Hibari,” created using Vocaloid technology. We show how AI Hibari’s performance of the custom-composed song “Arekara” (Ever Since Then) serves to perpetuate a sense of her immortality.