Momoko Kikuchi -- Yokohama City of Lights

 

Back on Saturday, I wrote up "Yokohama Fantasy"（横浜幻想） -- Disc 1, an article on the first half of the 2-CD set that I recently purchased focusing on Japanese pop songs based on the bright lights and big port city of Yokohama. I also mentioned that the Mood Kayo representatives of the metropolis were missing, but then again, there are just so many songs about the city in kayo history that I gather it was inevitable that a good chunk of songs had to fall by the wayside in the decision-making process.

This song, though, is by no means a Mood Kayo at all but it also didn't make the cut onto "Yokohama Fantasy" on either CD. However, I was glad to hear that it did make in onto Tetsuji Hayashi's（林哲司）enormous compilation album since that's where I first heard it. Indeed, Hayashi composed the shuffle-happy nighttime-friendly "Yokohama City of Lights" for City Pop aidoru Momoko Kikuchi（菊池桃子）for her May 1987 album "Escape from Dimension".

Shiro Sagisu（鷺巣詩郎）also provided the kakkoii arrangement of a night in Yokohama while Masao Urino（売野政男）wrote the lyrics of Momoko having a romantic evening right by Yokohama Harbour sometime in the winter months. There are no horns to be heard in "Yokohama City of Lights" but the synths and a nice harmonica solo still give off that feeling of sophisti-pop in the port city. 

I think "Yokohama City of Lights" can join Yasuha's（泰葉）"Fly-Day Chinatown"  (フライディ・チャイナタウン) among others as one of those wonderful City Pop highlights in Japan's 2nd-largest city by population. And I guess for Momoko, this is her representative urban contemporary tune for Yokohama to go alongside her equivalent number in Tokyo via "Shibuya de Go-ji" (渋谷で5時）.