Credits

I would like to give credit where credit is due. Videos are from YouTube and other sources such as NicoNico while Oricon rankings and other information are translated from the Japanese Wikipedia unless noted.

Monday, August 9, 2021

Yukie Sato -- Kyoto, Hatsukoi(京都、初恋)/P.S. Sabishii desu(P.S.淋しいです)

 

(from Sankei News)

Well, I'm going through the annoyances of a summer cold right now (and I'm hoping that it is merely a cold). I think that I've gone through half a box of Kleenex already.

Anyways, I'm trying to remember that day in Kyoto during our school graduation trip there in July 1981. We tried to watch the Gion Festival parade in a crowd that was three people deep from the curb in weather that would be charitably described as broiling. By the time, I returned to my room, I literally dropped on the bed and slept for a few hours. The former capital of Japan could make the current capital look like an iceberg in comparison during the summer.

Speaking of Kyoto, I found this aidoru number by Yukie Sato(佐藤雪絵)called "Kyoto, Hatsukoi" (First Love in Kyoto). Sato was another one of the many teenybopper singers who tried to hit it big in Japan only to quickly disappear, and "Kyoto, Hatsukoi" was her second single from 1988, according to her page on "Idol.ne.jp".

Written by Masao Urino(売野雅勇), composed by Hiroaki Serizawa(芦澤廣明)and arranged by Kazuo Otani(大谷和夫), the song sounds a little more old-fashioned than an aidoru tune from the late 1980s, and in fact, there are times during "Kyoto, Hatsukoi" when I thought that the singer was delving close to enka. The only other bit of information that I could get from "Idol.ne.jp" is that despite her affections for Kyoto in this tune, Sato actually hails from Maebashi, the capital of Gunma Prefecture.

The B-side is "P.S. Sabishii desu" (P.S. I'm Lonely) which was created by the same trio behind the A-side of "Kyoto, Hatsukoi". This one sounds more like the conventional aidoru ballad and I think it's here that I start to enjoy Sato's voice. One commenter for the video even posits that she sounds like the late Yukiko Okada(岡田有希子), and I have to say that he's not wrong. Incidentally, two singles were all she wrote for Sato.

2 comments:

Feel free to provide any comments (pro or con). Just be civil about it.