Tokiko Kato, who is celebrating her 60th year as a singer, will be appearing on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi), which will be broadcast at 1:00 pm on April Getsuku.
While studying at Tokyo University, her father applied for a chanson competition without her permission. At the time, she was more interested in acting than singing, but when her father told her that the prize was a trip abroad, she became motivated. After that, she discovered the appeal of chanson and won the competition, but for some reason, her debut was a mood song, which made her feel uncomfortable. At that time, her father asked her, "Why don't you write your own song?", which became the trigger for her to start writing songs.
My father went to Harbin to study Russian, and spent his married life there. At the time, Harbin was an attractive city with people from various countries who had immigrated there after the Russian Revolution. Then the war began, and after the war ended, my mother and her three children returned home. When the food in the camp ran out and they were about to starve to death, my mother left the facility alone, found work as a dressmaker, and secured food for her three children. I'm grateful to my mother, and I want to think about how many people across borders were kind to us so that we could survive, and think about peace again 80 years after the war.
