Riho Makise -- Kokoro ga Nemuru Umi（心が眠る海 ～Heart in blue～）

 

The Riho Makise（牧瀬里穂）file on KKP isn't a huge one up to this point and it won't ever be as such because her singing career didn't last too long. I had thought that she was being treated as an aidoru but there has been no such designation given to her on her J-Wiki article and considering the relative brevity of her time behind the mike (1991-1995) and the mere five singles, one original album and one BEST compilation, I've taken off the aidoru tag.

Strangely enough, I came across this coupling song to Makise's May 1992 2nd single, "Sasagetai, Anata ni..."（ささげたい、あなたに…）purely by accident in the concert video below which was the only thing that I could play on YouTube for several minutes due to some Internet trouble several days ago. While I was grumpily handling the situation and getting things back working, I was listening to "Kokoro ga Nemuru Umi" (The Sea Where the Heart Sleeps) being performed by Makise on stage and found it rather comforting.

Well, let's chalk this one up to turning a negative into a positive then. The official English title for "Kokoro ga Nemuru Umi" is "Heart in Blue" which I have to admit is a more concise and romantic moniker for the song than my direct translation, and Yumi Yoshimoto's（吉本由美）lyrics relate the story (I believe) of a woman trying to get the man she loves to reveal more of his true feelings for her way down inside of him. I have to say that I enjoy this one better than even the main song of "Sasagetai, Anata ni..." because of the inclusion of some of that urbane sophisticated pop arrangement via Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）, who we know was one-half of Tohoku Shinkansen（東北新幹線）. The original melody was provided by keyboardist and songwriter Taisuke Sawachika（澤近泰輔）who was once part of the group NSP in its final year before it finally broke up in 1987.