Akiko Kosaka -- Anata （あなた）

Over the decades, "Anata"(You) by Akiko Kosaka（小坂明子） has been played repeatedly on music retrospective programs and been sung once in a while by some of my past female colleagues at the karaoke boxes in Tokyo...those with the really high voices.

Kosaka was born in Hyogo Prefecture in 1959 and attended the Osaka College of Music. In 1973, as a 16-year-old, she entered the Yamaha Music Festival with this song she composed and wrote, titled "Anata"....a bittersweet, wistful and proud story of a young girl whose beau had already passed away dreaming of what life would've been like had they gotten married. The last line was sung especially poignantly: "Anata ga ite hoshii"(あなたが居てほしい....I want you here with me). The plaintive way she sang "Anata"won me over, and millions more back then.

The teenager ended up winning the Grand Prize for that festival and it was released in December 1973 as a single. It spent 7 weeks at the top of the charts and earned Kosaka an invitation to the 1974 Kohaku Utagassen. By the end of the year, it was the 2nd-ranked song and was a mega-hit with 2 million records sold. Since then, it was covered by her contemporaries at the time such as Saori Minami（南沙織）and Ayumi Ishida（石田あゆみ）, and then some decades later, singers such as Chara and Hideaki Tokunaga（徳永英明） have covered it.

After such a beautiful song, it's hard to believe that this was Kosaka's only major hit.