What "woh woh" Taught Me — From My Twenties to My Seventies-in-Waiting

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Meeting the Song

I first heard this song when I was still in my twenties. Around that time, I had just made a major decision about the direction of my life, and I was living day to day without any clear answer for how I was supposed to go on. Stopping, faltering, uncertain of everything — and yet, simply having someone nearby was enough to somehow keep me moving forward.

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An Idea I Couldn't Have Held in My Twenties

Listening to Kazumasa Oda's "woh woh" brings that air right back to me. Running through the song is a quiet but unwavering wish — the desire to gently hold someone close. Sorrow and uncertainty can't always be put into words, but the simple fact of being near someone doesn't change. In my twenties, I only ever mapped those lyrics onto romantic relationships and friendships. The idea that it might be about something larger wasn't yet available to me.

A Small Question About Living

Buddhism has a concept called "shogyo mujo" — the idea that all things are in flux, and nothing stays fixed. In my twenties, I only ever connected that idea to sad events and partings. At sixty-six, I understand it a little differently. The lyrics of "woh woh" haven't changed a single word since then. And yet what they mean to me shifts, subtly, every time I hear them. What changes isn't the words themselves — it's me, the one listening. Impermanence, I've come to think, isn't only about loss. It can also be the richness of the same words shining differently each time.

What I Hear Now, at Sixty-Six

Decades have passed since then, and I'm now sixty-six. After years abroad, I built Japanese food businesses across several countries, worked in acupuncture and herbal medicine, gained experience investing in property and stocks, and in 2025, at sixty-five, I retired. Splitting my time now between Japan and the UK, I spend more of my time than before thinking about extending healthy life expectancy, and about living each day with care. And it was then that I realised: what "woh woh" sings about — wanting to be near someone — was never only a love song. It was, I think, a feeling about life itself.

Living in the UK, I've come to know a culture that puts the feeling of "being there for someone" into clear, spoken words — a habit of saying love and gratitude out loud. In Japan, by contrast, there's a strong aesthetic of understanding without needing words at all — just sitting quietly side by side is often enough. The title "woh woh" itself — a wordless sound carrying a feeling — might point to a third way of communicating, neither fully Japanese nor fully Western.

Honestly, from my fifties onward, I noticed tiredness starting to linger into the next day, and even the day after. I also began hearing more often about the deaths and illnesses of people my own age — a period when death itself started to feel closer than it once had. Still, I think there's value in putting these changes into words rather than hiding them. Not aiming for a reaction, but simply having the record exist — that alone might become a small light for someone, somewhere.

Oda himself was in his late forties when he wrote this song; he's now in his late seventies. Watching him continue to sing it, decades on, in a voice and melody that still feel unmistakably his own, something occurs to me. The idea that "the same lyrics sound different now" isn't only true for me, the listener. Oda's own voice, his own body, have genuinely aged over these same decades. And yet the act of singing the same words, to the same melody, again and again — that itself feels like a quiet act of resistance within impermanence. Singing an unchanging song with a changing voice and body: it suggests that the meaning of a song isn't only in its lyrics, but in the life of the person who keeps singing it.

I happened to be rereading Oda's book "Toki wa Matte Kurenai" (Time Won't Wait) around the same time I was thinking about this song. In words quite different from a lyric, it explores how to face the passage of time. Kindle Edition　Paperback

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Closing

In my twenties, I listened to this song as a wish to be near someone. At sixty-six, I hear it as gratitude for having been near someone. Same lyrics, entirely different sound. That, perhaps, is exactly why a good song keeps being sung across generations. My body and memory will keep changing, little by little, from here on. And yet the wish to stay near the people who matter to me — that, I think, will never change. Every time I hear "woh woh," it reminds me of this. Life is worth living. Quietly, but unmistakably, this one song keeps telling me so.

Reference Links

• "woh woh" (official audio provided by Sony Music Labels / watch on YouTube)

Read the Lyrics (Uta-Net): https://www.uta-net.com/song/12629/Note: please enjoy the full Japanese lyrics on the external lyrics database site linked above — they are not reproduced here.

• "Christmas no Yakusoku" (2001–2003) digest video, via Kazumasa Oda's official site (Sony Music) — Note: the direct YouTube link previously listed here proved unreliable, so we've linked instead to Sony Music's official announcement page, which will always point to the current video.

About Kazumasa Oda

Kazumasa Oda was born on September 20, 1947, in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. He has an unusual background for a musician: he studied architecture at Tohoku University's Faculty of Engineering, graduating in 1970, and went on to study architecture at the graduate school of Waseda University, completing his master's in 1976. In 1969, while still a student, he formed the band that would later become Off Course, and from 1970 he began pursuing music professionally in earnest. He produced a string of hit songs, including "Ai wo Tomenaide," "Sayonara," and "Yes-No," and in June 1982 gave what is considered the first ten-consecutive-night concert run in the history of Japanese concerts, at the Nippon Budokan — one of many records he has left on the history of Japanese popular music.

After Off Course disbanded following a concert at the Tokyo Dome in February 1989, Oda spent some time focused on production work before returning to activity as a solo artist. His 1991 single "Love Story wa Totsuzen ni" sold more than 2.7 million copies and made his name widely known throughout Japan.

He has continued to be musically active ever since. Since 2001, he has produced the annual December television special Christmas no Yakusoku, beloved across generations. His 2002 best-of album, Jiko Best, shipped more than 3 million copies and achieved an unprecedented feat: a cumulative 500 weeks in the Top 300 of the charts over the eleven years following its release.

From May 2018 to January 2019, he undertook his first national arena tour since turning 70 — 48 shows across 21 venues, drawing an audience of roughly 400,000. Then, in 2024, at age 77 and seven months, he opened a national arena tour that broke the record for the oldest artist ever to do so, and in 2025, at 78, he completed it. His continued presence on the front line of music, even as he grows older, stands as living proof to many fans that growing older is never the same thing as fading away. He remains musically active to this day.