Singer Sen Masao appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on October 14th. He talked about how he became an apprentice to composer Minoru Endo and his feelings towards his mother who was always working.
He dropped out of high school and moved to Tokyo, and although he had no connections, he visited the home of composer Endo Minoru. At the time, it was the era when you would train under a composer and then be introduced to a record company. However, about 100 to 150 aspiring singers came to Endo's house. The one who skillfully handled them was the maid. He figured out what not to say from the conversations between the maid and the aspiring singers, and continued to visit for three days. "Of course, no one would come for three days," he recalls.
On the third day, the maid remembered me and said, "You've come again. No matter how many times I come, I never get to see you again." I could sense her accent, so when I asked her where she was from, she said, "Niigata." When I replied, "Niigata? Isn't Niigata one of the seven prefectures in Tohoku?" she replied, "No, it's not in Tohoku," but still smiled. I felt like she had become friendly with me.
When the maid was called by Endo's wife, she explained that there was a persistent child who had been coming all the way from Iwate for three days, and the maid seemed annoyed but promised to come around 3:30 tomorrow. "Later, after I became his apprentice, I heard from (Endo) sensei that he had gotten angry at his mother, saying, 'Don't say anything unnecessary.' And that's how I ended up becoming Endo sensei's apprentice," he revealed.
Sen was born in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture. When she was eight years old, her father, a plasterer, passed away at the age of 48 while working in Hokkaido. "My mother never remarried and raised me and my three siblings. She would work in the fields early in the morning and then travel by steam locomotive at the time, which took about an hour to go to work at the cider factory in Kesennuma. Seeing her like that, she apparently said something precocious like, 'Mom, I'm going to make you happy,'" she recalls.
His mother passed away at the age of 99, just six months away from turning 100. "I was only eight years old when my father passed away, so I don't remember much, but even after he passed away, my feelings for my mother have only grown stronger," he said.
