He was born in Shinno village in Nagano Prefecture, today's Nakano City. His family was an old house that had produced village heads, but after his father's sudden death life became hard. His mother raised him single-handedly while raising silkworms. Even in poverty, he was a boy who loved to sing.
After completing a course at the Nagano normal school, he became a substitute elementary school teacher. He loved school songs and was fondly called the singing teacher by the children. His passion for music grew day by day, and he came to cherish the dream of studying music in earnest.
He quit his teaching job at home and went to Tokyo. Through a connection with Shimamura Hōgetsu's younger brother, he lived in the home of Hōgetsu, a man of letters and theater leader, studying while working as a houseboy. His meeting with Hōgetsu would later open the way to his destiny as a composer.
His wish came true when he entered the preparatory course of the Tokyo Music School. The next year he advanced to the piano department of the main course and studied Western music in earnest. Studying while working as a houseboy was hard, but the musical foundation he gained here became the strength that would produce many famous songs.
He graduated from the main course of the Tokyo Music School and became a specialist music teacher at Senzoku Elementary School in Asakusa, Tokyo. While teaching children songs, he continued composing. His experience singing with children in class is thought to have helped him later write children's songs close to a child's heart.
He joined the Geijutsuza theater troupe started by Shimamura Hōgetsu with Matsui Sumako and others, and composed Katyusha's Song, sung in their staging of Tolstoy's Resurrection. Sung by Matsui Sumako, it became a nationwide hit, and Shinpei became famous overnight. It is said to be one of the starting points of Japanese popular song.
For the Geijutsuza staging of Turgenev's On the Eve, he composed the Gondola Song, which sings "Life is short, fall in love, maidens". This song too became hugely popular. It was later used in a film as well and became a classic sung across generations. Shinpei's melodies captured people's hearts.
With lyrics by Kitahara Hakushū he wrote songs such as the Wanderer's Song for a stage adaptation of a Tolstoy work. Among the songs of this period was one whose record was banned from sale because its lyrics were deemed a problem. Together with the Geijutsuza stage, Shinpei's songs were widely hummed by the people of the Taishō era.
Shimamura Hōgetsu had died the previous year, and the Geijutsuza disbanded. Having lost his benefactor, Shinpei began publishing children's songs in the children's magazine Kin no Fune. Since children's songs were still little known and he was a school teacher, he reportedly published them under another name out of discretion. It was a time of seeking a new path.
Teaming up with the poet Noguchi Ujō, he published many children's songs in Kin no Fune. Children's songs still sung today, such as Soap Bubbles, the Tanuki Music of Shōjō-ji and Teru Teru Bōzu, were born one after another. He also devoted himself to new folk songs about local places, with lyrics by Ujō, Saijō Yaso and Kitahara Hakushū, writing over 140 of them.
He resigned as a teacher at Senzoku Elementary School, where he had long worked, choosing to devote himself to composing. He produced one song after another across a wide range, from children's songs and new folk songs to popular songs. His bright, approachable and distinctive melodic style came to be called the Shinpei style and was loved by many.
He became an exclusive composer for Victor Japan. Through the singing of world-class opera singer Fujiwara Yoshie and Satō Chiyako, he produced many hits such as Habu Harbor and Harbor of Departing Ships. In a new age of spreading records and radio, Shinpei's songs reached the ears of ever more people.
Tokyo March, made with Saijō Yaso and sung by Satō Chiyako, sold a record-breaking 250,000 copies. Around this time collections of his popular song scores were also published, selling very well, helped by the popularity of Takehisa Yumeji's cover art. Shinpei became the leading figure in Japanese popular song.
Two years earlier he had become chairman of the Japan Music Culture Association, a musicians' body. As the war intensified, he evacuated to Atami this year. That same year he also became chairman of JASRAC, which protects composers' rights, later serving as its president. After the war he composed hardly any songs.
At New Year this year he served as chief judge of NHK's Kōhaku Uta Gassen. Near year's end, the day after seeing in a cinema the film Ikiru, which used his Gondola Song, he collapsed and died in a hospital in Atami. In his last moments he is said to have been humming his own children's song That Town, This Town. Katyusha's Song was sung at his farewell ceremony.
Shimamura HōgetsuNoguchi UjōTakehisa YumejiKitahara HakushūMatsui Sumako
Matsui SumakoYamada KōsakuHagiwara SakutarōTanizaki Jun'ichirōKikuchi KanKagawa ToyohikoKishida RyūseiKanakuri Shisō
People of the Taishō period ・ People by period
Based on facts found in textbooks and biographies. Uncertain points are marked as such.