Toshihiko Tahara -- Kimi ni Kettei! （キミに決定！）

I have literally not heard this one in nearly 32 years! I was scouring my memories of 1981 to see what else I could dredge up in terms of old Japanese pop music to put onto the blog when the last several bars of "Kimi ni Kettei!" (You Are The One) by Toshihiko Tahara（田原俊彦）suddenly popped into my head.

Tahara was one-third of The Tanokin Trio, the media and/or fan-created name for the three popular male aidoru consisting of him, Masahiko Kondo（近藤真彦） (Matchy) and Yoshio Nomura（野村義男） (Yocchan). Tahara's pet name was Toshi-chan. "Kimi ni Kettei!" was his 5th single, released on July 1 1981, just a few days before my fateful arrival in Japan. During my month there, the Trio's popularity was at a fever pitch as their movie "Blue Jeans Memory" and the titular theme song by Matchy was blazing up the charts. But Toshi-chan was not to be outdone; I remember catching him on the music shows there hoofing it on the stage while singing this particular song, and later on back in Canada when I was watching video tapes of those same programs.

Not knowing how Japanese teens acted at the time, watching Toshi-chan and his comrades dancing and prancing in those eye-searingly bright colours, and then seeing their female fans grabbing their faces and screaming in near-orgasmic delight, I just kinda wondered if young Japanese were only just emulating the 50s only in Harajuku.

"Kimi ni Kettei!" was written and composed by a woman named Tomo Miyashita （宮下智). It peaked at No. 2 and was the 39th-ranked single of 1981.