Yaya -- Onna Myouri（女冥利）

 

The last time I wrote about Yaya（やや）, aka Yaeko Kojima（小島八重子）, was last August when I posted an article on what was arguably her most well known song "Yogiri no House Mannequin"（夜霧のハウスマヌカン）from 1986. It had the feeling of a Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）Mood Kayo with some of that boisterousness of a Checkers' tune.

Well, a couple of years later, Yaya came out with another single, "Onna Myouri" (The Joy of Being a Woman). Written by Yoshiko Oga（雄鹿美子）and composed by Minoru Komorita（小森田実）, this one is quite different in arrangement. Just my opinion, but the song strikes me as one of the latest examples of exotic kayo or Fashion Music that I've ever come across. Usually for either of those two types of music, I have to go back a decade prior or around the early 1980s, not really 1988. 

There is something rather refined and kayo about "Onna Myouri", a song describing the complex feelings of a woman after another heartbreak. Through Oga's lyrics, I picked up on signs of defiance and resentment and rationalization of the situation. Maybe the setting is a sophisticated café somewhere in Aoyama but the roiling feelings inside prefer a plain nomiya in Yurakucho.