Masao Koga

was a Japanese composer, mandolinist, and guitarist of the Shōwa era who was dubbed “Japan’s Irving Berlin” by Universal Press Syndicate. His melancholy style, based upon Nakayama Shimpei’s yonanuki scale, was popularly known in Japan as . He was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Fourth Class) and the People’s Honor Award for his contributions to Japanese music. Life Koga was born in 1904 in the village of Taguchi (today part of the city Ōkawa) in the Mizuma District of Fukuoka Prefecture; he was the sixth of eight children. In 1910, Koga’s father, Kitarō, died. As a result, Koga, his mother, older sister, and younger brother moved to Korea in 1912, where his eldest brother had migrated for work. His family first traveled to Incheon, before settling in Keijo (today part of Seoul). During this period, Koga was gifted a taishōgoto from his cousin; then later, while enrolled at the Keijō Good Neighbor Trade School, a mandolin from an older brother living in Osaka. He was regarded as a notable figure for establishing the genre enka, though Koga considered that he was a ryūkōka composer. He wrote numerous songs for Ichiro Fujiyama and Hibari Misora. Koga’s songs have been heard