Today, in 1961, Koji Kondo was born in Nagoya.

When he was five, he began taking lessons on the electronic organ. These lessons made him fall in love with music. He followed his passion by joining a jazz band when he was in school.

During his school years, he also fell in love with video games.

To his luck, he was able to follow both these passions when a Nintendo was recruiting a sound programmer and music composer in 1984. He applied to the company, was hired, and the rest is history.

He would go on to create some of the most beloved Famicom/NES soundtracks, including the themes for Super Mario 1, 2, and 3—including Doko Doko Panic, which became the USA version of Super Mario 2—and The Legend of Zelda.

Sometimes in early games he would be credited as "Konchan". Programmers in those days often used nicknames instead of their full name.

and many others.

He still works at Nintendo, but these days works with others instead of doing the entire soundtrack himself. He's at the Japanese retirement age, so he may be retiring soon.

Today is butsumetsu (仏滅), the most unlucky day of the rokuyō, the Buddhist horoscope. It's all general bad luck today, so be careful out there!

(Read more about the rokuyō here)

On the old calendar, today would have been the the sixteenth day of the seventh month. It is Evening Cicada Sing (higurashi naku, 寒蝉鳴), the second microseason of risshu (立秋).

Incidentally, I just published a post yesterday all about cicada in Japan.

Here's a haiku from Issa:

The cicada do still do their singing into Autumn, but it grows less and less as they die off. Issa must be imagining that the bugs aren't happy about their fate as they sing their final songs. Do not go gentle into that good night, eh? Maybe that's the cicada's final song: them raging against the dying of the light.

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

If this blog post has entertained or helped you, please follow/upvote/reblog. If you want to further support my writing, donations are welcome.