Is It Really Goodbye?

A further volume of ryūkōka recordings, covering the end of the 1920s though to the late 1930s, supplementing the recent Longing for the Shadow collection... Emerging during the early stages of the recording industry in Japan, the ryūkōka style adopted western classical, blues & jazz elements into traditional and classical Japanese music. Is It Really Goodbye? further collects pre-war ryūkōka records which capture the hauntingly unique sound of a cultural merging that was starting to reflect itself via popular song, ahead of the widespread influence of western pop music during post-war US occupation.