Ryoko Yano -- Harahara Summer Time（はらはらサマータイム）

 

I've got quite a few summertime kayo in the backlog that I am saving for beyond June 21st, but literally feeling that the hot season has been creeping into my room all day today, I have decided to put one up on the blog as an early sign that summer is around the corner. Following a long cold winter, though, I'm not one to complain much, but I do have to dust off the fan.

To start off the more summery stuff, I have here "Harahara Summer Time" (Thrilling Summer Time) by an aidoru who didn't have too much time in the spotlight. The song is Ryoko Yano's（矢野良子）2nd single from June 1981, and it has a brief elegant intro before it not only maintains that elegance but the arrangement gets mixed in with some near-City Pop influences and an upbeat aidoru refrain. It's quite an interesting tune made for an aidoru by Taiji Nakamura（中村泰士）, the same composer who had come up with the classic elegiac "Kassai"（喝采）for Naomi Chiaki（ちあきなおみ）about a decade before, and the lyrics about a teen girl potentially experiencing that first intoxicating summer romance were written by none other than Yu Aku（阿久悠）, one of the legendary kayo lyricists. That is some pedigree backing Yano up.

According to her J-Wiki profile, the Kyoto-born Yano herself has some pretty nice vocals to apply to those words and music, so it's too bad that she only released four singles up to February 1982 and no albums, although her songs did get included onto various aidoru compilations. There had been little hope that she was even going to get any spotlight in showbiz although as a high school student, she had applied to the NTV audition program "Star Tanjo!"（スター誕生!...A Star is Born!）. Just when Yano had begun working at a fabrics shop, a notice finally came in the mail from the program to try out for an audition.

Assuming that she would be dropped anyways due to her "advanced" age, Yano was surprised to find out that she passed the audition, and at the age of 21, she made her debut in March 1981 with "Chotto Koukishin"（ちょっと好奇心...A Little Curious） as an aidoru. Her label promoted her under the catchphrase of "Neatest Girl of 1981".