Hiromi Iwasaki/Akina Nakamori -- Shishuuki （思秋期）

I have been hearing this song by Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美） as one of the best in her repertoire for years, but until today, I hadn't known that she had first performed it so early in her career. Mind you, this was her 11th single released in September 1977. However, back in those days, kayo kyoku aidoru singles came out at the rate of once every few months, so this was still just a couple of years since her debut.

One of the reasons that I'm surprised is that "Shishuuki"translates as "The Autumn of My Years". The lyrics by the legendary Yu Aku（阿久悠） express some major regrets about how youth and the once-strong bonds of friendship have managed to slip through the fingers as the person realizes that he/she has reached middle age. As one of the verses go:

The autumn that makes my heart shiver has come. My bitter tears.
Youth is a fragile thing. Even if I love, I get hurt.
Youth is a forgettable thing. I only notice it when it's gone.

Time to grab that bottle of Jack Daniels! Anyways, the surprise is that Iwasaki was all of 18 years of age when she first approached this song. Apparently, she had to stop the recording process several times because she couldn't stop crying....probably due to some frustration. Afterwards, she told Aku, "I just couldn't do it because it was strange how men in their forties could understand their lives and emotions." Of course, Iwasaki being of a different age and gender, how could she know?

And yet this teenager probably had mid-level corporate section chiefs running for their telephones to see about getting that old school reunion planned and executed. Takashi Miki's （三木たかし）composition comes off as something resembling distinctly European, almost chanson-like. And with Iwasaki's amazingvoice for someone her age at that time, I couldn't be surprised for believing "Shishuuki" was a song that was released far later into her career. In J-Wiki, this was labeled as an "aidoru kayo kyoku", but I don't think there is anything remotely aidoru about this song, which turned out to be her first ballad single.

People probably took some good notice of her talent when this song started to make the rounds on radio and TV. It was such a tenderhearted delivery, and I could imagine her tearing up whenever she performed this on the tube or on the stage. It did presage that part of her career as a musical actress later on.

To a certain extent, the timing of the song may have been perfect. The first postwar generation to reach that certain age and status in life was probably around that decade.....to work that hard to bring Japan up from the ashes and then looking back at what they had been able to achieve and what they'd had to sacrifice.

The song peaked at No. 6 on Oricon, and quickly became the 38th-ranked song for 1977. It was also a track on her 5th album released in October of that year, "Shishuuki Kara....Otoko to Onna"（思秋期から。。。男と女/From The Autumn of My Years...Men and Women) which peaked at No. 3 on the album charts. It also won a couple of music awards as well.

For her first cover album, "Utahime"（歌姫,....Diva) released in March 1994 and peaking at No. 5 on Oricon, Akina Nakamori（中森明菜） did her own version of "Shishuuki". At the time, she was not yet 29 years of age, so even she was nowhere near the age that Yu Aku had probably been aiming at when he came up with the lyrics. But as a lot of Japanese music fans probably know, Nakamori had gone through quite a bit of trial and tribulation in the last number of years, so she could probably dig up the gravitas needed to successfully navigate the song. And by that time, her voice had also gained that richness, so even at that young age, she could probably convince the company kacho to sigh and look up at the sky.

I just wonder....what could Momoe Yamaguchi have done with this song?