Over the last couple of days, co-administrator and writer Larry and I received notices that Blogger had placed a red flag on one of our articles for "offensive content". Surprisingly, it was the first article that I'd written for aidoru Maiko Ito（伊藤麻衣子）and her song "Aki no Hohozue"（秋のほほづえ）back in October 2012. Y'know...we both checked it and saw nothing there. Was the font looking a little too suggestive? Maybe the question mark was appearing a little too hot in the curves. Was Ito's smiling visage just over-the-top sexy for a 19-year-old at the time?
All kidding aside, I think that there is a mistake here and when I treat all of the 10,000+ articles on the blog as my own kids in a way, I'm not really going to sit still and have little Maiko get accused of something that she hasn't done. So I've sent an inquiry email to the Blogger team to find out what happened. Interestingly enough, this has happened before when an entire article here wasn't allowed to be shown at all for no apparent reason which got a similar email from me and a correction made. With "Aki no Hohozue", I was simply told that there would be a warning message given to the reader asking if it were still OK to reveal the article. When I first tried to access the article this morning, I got the warning but subsequent accesses allowed me through with no problem so perhaps a correction is being made although the red triangle is still appearing beside the article on the administrator's screen.
See...even Maiko looks miffed in the thumbnail!
In any case, this weird situation has made me decide to put up another Ito article not so much as a Take That against the Blogger team (and I've been grateful to them for letting us talk on Japanese popular music for a dozen years) but as an inspiration to post something on her since it's been a while following her previous article.
Why not go for her debut single "Binetsu ka na" (I Wonder If It's a Slight Fever?) which Ito released in February 1983? Written by Masao Urino（売野雅勇）, this is an innocent and wistful tune about a girl pondering about these new feelings stirring within her because of a boy. Takao Kisugi（来生たかお）was the one behind the melody and listening to the song, I wasn't surprised that it was him. It was just yesterday in fellow aidoru Naoko Kawai's（河合奈保子）"Straw Touch no Koi"（ストロー・タッチの恋）which had also been made by Kisugi that I showed some surprise at how nakedly upbeat that song was, considering the composer, and that was because I have been accustomed to Kisugi creating these pretty lush and contemplative melodies like the one we have here for "Binetsu ka na".
I think I'll be hitting the hay soon. Allow KKP AI representative Kayo Grace Kyoku at the top to sing you to sleep.
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