Onyanko Club -- Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide （セーラー服を脱がさないで）

Y'know....when I first heard "Sailor Fuku wo Nugasanaide"(Don't Make Me Take Off My Sailor Uniform) on the radio program "Sounds of Japan" back in the 80s, I thought it was a cute-enough tune with a whole classroom full of aidoru....the intro had a very passing resemblance to "We Go Together", the final song in the "Grease"movie. Then, I read the lyrics, partially translated here:

Don't make me take off my sailor uniform
Not now! Get a grip!
Don't make me take off my sailor uniform
No way! You can't! Not in this place!

Well....goes to show how much I pay to lyrics. Quite a debut for Yasushi Akimoto's （秋元康）new approach to aidoru-dom, having a few dozen young girls sing and dance together. The day before the single's release on July 5, 1985, an event was supposed to have been held at Ikebukuro's Alpa Plaza at the Sunshine City complex in Tokyo. The plaza was meant for 500 people; 4,000 showed up which terrified the girls so much that the event was summarily cancelled. It could've been a promotions disaster except that that incident sparked the boom in The Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）, translated as The Kitten Club.

The song peaked at No. 5 on the Oricon weeklies, and became a must-perform song at every concert the Club held during their brief 2-year history. Ten singles and 5 albums resulted from the group's efforts. "Kick Off" was the debut album, which held the single, and it reached No. 2 on the charts. Incidentally, Jun Sato（佐藤準）was the one behind the jumpy music. A few years later, he would provide a lot more mellower stuff.

The above is the original studio-recorded version of the song. Yasushi Akimoto provided the lyrics. From the Club, a number of members became individual aidoru and tarento (TV personalities) over the decades. Arguably the most famous one is Shizuka Kudo（工藤静香） who became a popular singer and ended up marrying Takuya Kimura（木村拓哉）of SMAP fame. Minayo Watanabe（渡辺美奈代）and Marina Watanabe（渡辺真理奈） also had minor careers in singing before becoming regular faces on variety shows, and Sanae Jounouchi（城之内早苗） has been an enka singer for many years.

Of course, Akimoto wasn't done with creating girl groups. Two decades after he created the Onyanko Club, he started up another mega-group: AKB 48. I decided to put up this entry since today was the annual AKB 48 "Election".