Mari Amachi -- Wakaba no Sasayaki （若葉のささやき）

As I mentioned for my posting on the "Tora-san" movie series, my family used to spend a Sunday afternoon watching a number of the movies at the old Japanese-Canadian Cultural Centre here in Toronto. However, once in a blue moon, we ended up watching something completely different. One such example was a Mari Amachi（天地真理） movie. I can only remember just the barest of snippets now, but I'm pretty sure it was one of those run-of-the-mill romantic comedies. In fact, there are only two scenes I can remember with any clarity. One was a running gag where Mari's character always seems to drop something from her window on an idiotic co-worker. And the other scene involved Mari singing this song near the end of the movie.

"Wakaba no Sasayaki"(The Whispering of the New Leaves) involves the blossoming of love just when the leaves are about to open in the spring. Written by prolific lyricist Michio Yamagami （山上路夫）and composed by Koichi Morita（森田公一）, Amachi gives a wonderfully innocent delivery to the words, and the melody seems to describe her skip through the woods with the strings representing some turbulent wind activity.

Released right on the first day of spring in 1973 as Amachi's 6th single, "Wakaba no Sasayaki" was her 4th No. 1 hit. It stayed at the top of the charts for about a month. It would earn a prize in arrangement at the Japan Record Awards that year, and become the 9th-ranked song of 1973, selling almost half a million records.