Ryoko Shinohara -- Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokorozuyosa to （恋しさとせつなさと心強さと）



In the months before I left for Japan in the early 90s, I'd heard bits and pieces from some of my anime-loving buddies about this song. As far as I recollect, my friends loved their anime and computer games but were not too much into the music. However, that seemed to have changed when they spoke about "Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie", and its theme song.

I'm not sure what the circumstances were but one night, either my anime friends were having a small presentation of some of their favourite programs or the Japanese drama-viewing segment of the Japanese-Canadian Students Association was having their regular Wednesday-evening meeting at the International Student Centre at the University of Toronto. I stepped into the room and saw a Japanese music video playing in which some fetching young lady was dancing and singing in front of a set of curtains that made it look like she was performing on the set of "The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkCjqIPh-FQ

Two decades later, Ryoko Shinohara（篠原涼子） is now a firm fixture on Japanese TV but solely as a dramatic actress and commercial pitchwoman. She was recently the tough-as-nails detective on "Unfair" and had a recurring role in that other police show franchise, "Odoru Dai Sosasen"（踊る大捜査線....Bayside Shakedown）. However, back in the early 90s, she had been just out of the girl dance-pop group, Tokyo Performance Doll, and making her foray into the solo business. She hit pay dirt with her 4th single, "Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokorozuyosa to"(With Yearning and Misery and Reassurance) when it was released in July 1994. It was made for that "Street Fighter" movie, but I think it just took on a life of its own outside of the anison field.

By the way, the above video is Shinohara plugging the "Street Fighter II" game. As I said, "Itoshisa to Setsunasa to Kokorozuyosa to"became a monster hit in J-Pop in general. It hit the top spot on Oricon, and was the 3rd-ranked song of 1994 with only Mr. Children and Kohmi Hirose（広瀬香美） topping her. In fact, Shinohara and her most successful hit ultimately topped the 2 million mark in sales, becoming the very first female solo singer to do so. The song also earned a Japan Record Award and an invitation for the ex-TPD member to appear on that year's Kohaku Utagassen for the first time. Considering where she is now, it seems an eternity ago when she was a commercially successful pop star.

For those who are very familiar with J-Pop of the 90s, the song has that distinctive Tetsuya Komuro（小室哲哉） techno touch which would become the representative pop sound for several years in that decade. The single was also a track on Shinohara's 2nd album, "Lady Generation", released in August 1995. It would also hit No. 1 and be the 45th-ranked album of that year.

Strangely enough, in my early years in Japan in the 90s, although I knew Shinohara's success as a singer and would know her later career as a full-time thespian, I first saw her mostly as one of the zany sketch players in "Downtown's Gottsu 'A' Kanji"（ごっつええ感じ....Downtown's Feelin' Good), the wildly popular Sunday night Fuji-TV comedy show of the wildly popular Osaka manzai duo, Downtown. Far from the sexy figure on that music video, Shinohara usually played the (victimized) straightwoman or a cutesy-cutesy character.