1934, February 24 – TOYO AND MASAFUMI WED IN TOKYO

Isami’s considerable investment and sacrifice in his daughter’s education and presentation was beginning to pay off in the social class aspirations of the family ….his investigation of  Ishikawa Masafumi including conversations with his family’s neighbors had confirmed that he came from the “right” famiily…his was a traditional samurai family and like his daughter he had been educated at Japan’s preeminent Tokyo Imperial University Bin’ichi; he was an engineer at the prestigious Mitsubishi Trading Company…his father Ishikawa Masayoshi was a career military officer and war hero who had died valiantly in the 1920 Siberian Expedition…that grand day, Toyo wore a red kimono made of the finest silk; Masafumi wore stripped pants, vest and tails and was carrying white gloves…the ceremony was partially held at the Shinto shrine General Nogi Maresuke, hero of the Japanese-Russo war who had been the embodiment of traditional samurai spiritual values; when his emperor Meiji had died, he and his wife had committed  ceremonial Seppuku….

***

Toyo and Masafumi shared one other thing, a love of tango and in fact during their one year engagement they had taken tango lessons at the renown Baron Tsunami Megata’s tango academy; it was Baron Tsunami Megata who introduced tango to Japan…in 1920 he had gone to Paris to treat a skin condition on his feet but became so enamored with the night life that he stayed for six years…in the Club Garron where the Manuel Pizzaro orchestra was playing, he became ensnared by tango; he went on to become an accomplished dancer…upon his return to Tokyo he opened a tango academy and it quickly became  fashionable for the aristocracy to learn tango…he later published a book “A Method to Dance Argentine Tango”…the first Argentinean orchestra to visit Japan was that of Juan Canaro; later, several home-grown orchestras developed, prominent among them was Shimpei Hayakawa’s, Typical Orchestra of Tokyo

________________

• CLICK HERE – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ebfeKwEPeo to hear Ranko Fujisawa sing “Cristal”, composed by Mariano Mores…Ranko was born on July 21, 1925 in Japan became a noted tango singer in Japan during the golden era

2011

02/24

CATEGORY

Dancers
Orchestras
Special Events

Write comment