The song that led me home

Making a foreign city home

Then, in 1996, everything changed.

As China's economic growth accelerated, my company decided to send me to Wuxi to establish a new factory.

The news came as a surprise with a strong sense of excitement.

Before leaving Dalian, my colleagues organized a farewell gathering. They asked me to sing, and without hesitation I chose Mushaku Ryojo. Coincidentally, it was the song's 10th anniversary.

As I finished singing, an unexpected thought crossed my mind: perhaps my connection with Wuxi had begun long before I ever set foot there.

Legend has it that when songwriter Daizaburo Nakayama first visited Wuxi in May 1986, he joked over drinks that, like the great Chinese poet Li Bai of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), he needed a little wine to spark inspiration. Writing a tourism song about a foreign city was something he had never done before, and he was genuinely inspired by what he saw.

The result was a song that would outlive its era.

While he visited the city only briefly, I was fortunate enough to live there for 23 years.

Over more than two decades, the city became far more than a destination on a map. It became home.

I grew to love Wuxi's local drinks, especially Yuqi baijiu (a potent white liquor) and Huishan tehuang (a mellow yellow rice wine). Many times, after sharing a few cups with friends, I felt inspired to write something about the city myself. Yet during my years in Wuxi, work always came first, and the idea remained unfinished until I retired and returned to Japan at the end of 2019.