; April 10, 1911 – March 17, 1945) was a Japanese composer of ''

ryūkōka is a Japanese music genre, musical genre. The term originally denoted any kind of "popular music" in Japanese, and is the East Asian cultural sphere, sinic reading of ''hayariuta'', used for commercial music of Edo period, Edo Period. Therefore, ...

'' and ''

gunka is the Japanese term for military music. While in standard use in Japan it applies both to Japanese songs and foreign songs such as "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", as an English language category it refers to songs produced by the Empire of Jap ...

''.

Biography

Shimaguchi was born in 1911 in the village of Kaizuka (today part of the city of Kamogawa),

Chiba Prefecture is a prefecture of Japan located in the Kantō region of Honshu. Chiba Prefecture has a population of 6,278,060 (1 June 2019) and has a geographic area of . Chiba Prefecture borders Ibaraki Prefecture to the north, Saitama Prefecture to the ...

. He was the third son of a family who ran a fishery. Upon finishing elementary school, Shimaguchi moved to

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

where, with the assistance of an older brother, he enrolled at a music school. During his professional career, Shimaguchi was signed exclusively to Nippon Victor, for whom he composed a number of songs which were popularized by the label's singers such as Fujiyama Ichirō, Haida Katsuhiko, and

Nitta Hachirō (October 14, 1908 – July 3, 1989) was a Japanese singer of ''ryūkōka'', ''gunka'', and opera. Biography Nitta was born in the village of Shussei (today part of Tsugaru, Aomori, Tsugaru), Nishitsugaru District, Aomori Prefecture in 1908. His ...

. Shimaguchi also wrote a primer, , which was published by in August 1938. His most famous song was , which was released in 1940. However, it gained wider popularity postwar as , a renamed

contrafactum In vocal music, contrafactum (or contrafact, pl. contrafacta) is "the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music". The earliest known examples of this procedure (sometimes referred to as ''adaptation''), date back ...

devised by demobilized Japanese military personnel formerly deployed in the Nan'yō region. After the start of the

Pacific War The Pacific War, sometimes called the Asia–Pacific War, was the theater of World War II that was fought in Asia, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and Oceania. It was geographically the largest theater of the war, including the vast ...

, Shimaguchi was drafted by the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

. He was first deployed to

Tateyama Air Base is a military aerodrome of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. It is located outside the city of Tateyama in Chiba Prefecture, Japan, at the southern tip of the Bōsō Peninsula. Operations JMSDF Tateyama Air Base is currently the headquarte ...

, then later to

Iwo Jima Iwo Jima (, also ), known in Japan as , is one of the Japanese Volcano Islands and lies south of the Bonin Islands. Together with other islands, they form the Ogasawara Archipelago. The highest point of Iwo Jima is Mount Suribachi at high. ...

. Shimaguchi died on March 17, 1945, during the

Battle of Iwo Jima The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945) was a major battle in which the United States Marine Corps (USMC) and United States Navy (USN) landed on and eventually captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Imperial Japanese Army (IJ ...

. His remains were never found, but he left behind a pair of incomplete songs, including .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shimaguchi, Komao 1911 births 1945 deaths 20th-century Japanese composers Japanese male composers People from Chiba Prefecture Victor Entertainment artists Imperial Japanese Navy personnel killed in World War II Battle of Iwo Jima 20th-century Japanese male musicians