Mieko Nishijima -- Self-Portrait

(16:31)

It's been a good few days in terms of introducing some of these formerly long-lost songs from my memory. First, I was able to get Junko Ohashi's "Canadian Lullaby" onto the blog, followed by last night's "Yakusoku Dake Romantic" by Yukari Ito. Now, both of those songs are notable in that they were a little out of the usual zone that those two ladies sing in.

However, for Mieko Nishijima（西島三重子）, "Self-Portrait" is just the comfortable, old café-friendly song that I'm accustomed to hearing her sing. I first heard it on "Sounds of Japan" and was instantly soothed by the intro and the soft vocals. I guess it was the New Music equivalent of chamomile tea. The instrumental bridge with that sax and the strings took me out of that old café and into that sunset air via hang glider. Written by Kenji Kadoya（門谷憲二）, the lyrics pretty much describe what everyone in the working world would like to do once (or twice) in a while: just leisurely lounge about in bed on a rainy day. However, there is also a message about that ungrateful significant other who just comes for romance once in a while.

Mieko Nishijima provided the warm-blanket melody. "Self-Portrait" was another one of those songs that I'd searched for years, finally tracking it down to an album of hers titled "Yume no Hajimari" (夢のはじまり...The Beginning of a Dream） that I found at Tacto during one of my shopping runs. It came out in October 1986, according to a discography listed on a fan website but I'm pretty sure the song itself had already been released in an earlier album some years earlier (October 8 2023: Just found out that "Self-Portrait" had originally been on Nishijima's "Image" album from May 1982, so mystery solved!).