Tomoko Kuwae -- Watashi no Heart wa Stop Motion （私のハートはストップモーション）

Tomoko Kuwae （桑江知子）had an initially brief career in singing before returning to her native Okinawa to become a DJ. Her first 4 or 5 singles were released in the period 1979-1980 after which she took a decade off before she released another single in 1990 and then very sporadically after that.

Her debut single, "Watashi no Heart wa Stop Motion"(My Heart Stops), released in January 1979 was her only significant hit, peaking at No. 14 on the Oricon weeklies and selling around 150,000 copies at the time. It also got television exposure since it was used as a commercial jingle for Pola Cosmetics. The song was written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by Shunichi Tokura（都倉俊一）.

Kuwae may be considered a one-hit wonder but this one hit still seems to have a place in a lot of people's hearts. It often pops up on those seasonal TV retrospectives about music in Japan, and Kuwae herself pops in to perform the song. At a turn of a decade in which there were some rather interesting hits by female singers such as Judy Ongg and Saki Kubota（久保田早紀）, "Watashi no Heart" can be placed in this group for the fact that perhaps it's not easy to categorize. One Japanese blogger asked that very question and whether Kuwae was an aidoru. Just judging from the song itself, it's possible since she sang a rather fizzily pleasant pop tune about falling in love but then again the arrangements seemed a bit more solid than the usual aidoru stuff...perhaps on the level of New Music. But once again, a lot of the early hits by aidoru-turned-superstars can also be thrown into that debate. Still for me, I'll be happy to place it as a nostalgic cute pop song.