Haruko Sagara -- Tokyo Marionette（東京マリオネット）

by Basile Morin via Wikimedia Commons

Just a small matter but here I was thinking that I had plenty of female singers named Haruko up on "Kayo Kyoku Plus", only to realize that I merely have the one: Haruko Kuwana（桑名晴子）. Mind you, she's a fine soulful chanteuse so not complaining there.

However, there are now two on the blog. Haruko Sagara（相楽晴子）had her initial time in the limelight for about a decade...between 1984 and 1995...as an actress, aidoru and a tarento. Her family originally hailed from the city of Koriyama in Fukushima Prefecture but following the premature death of her father and growing business debts, her mother promptly closed down the store and took everyone to Tokyo. In 1980 when she was around 12, she was scouted out in Shibuya by a photographer and young Haruko became a successful model.

In the mid-1980s, acting and singing arrived on her entertainment doorstep with the latter part of her career beginning with her debut single "Virgin Heart"（ヴァージン・ハート）being released in May 1986. For this article, we have her 7th single, "Tokyo Marionette", from April 1989. Written by Goro Matsui（松井五郎）and composed by Masato Ishida（石田正人）, the song was arranged by Satoshi Takebe（武部聡志）as this fairly dramatic number with a bit of rock n' roll which had me thinking of a teenage gang moll riding on the back of her boyfriend's Kawasaki as they are fleeing something or someone. Her fate is his fate.

Fortuntely, Sagara's fate was far more benign. In 1992, she started a relationship with one of the staff while she was in Los Angeles on a location shoot for one of her photo books. A few years later, they would get married in the United States and in 2019, there was a move to the state of Hawaii.