Recently, I came across the above video on YouTube and got instantly fascinated. It consists of an aidoru singer called Masako Takeda (武田雅子) singing a song called "Sayonara Binanshi" (or "Sayonara Meinantsuu"). First of all, I did a little research, but couldn't find many satisfactory meanings for the word meinantsuu (maybe an stylised Chinese word?). Then, I looked up for the definition of binanshi (美男子) and learned that it means handsome man. I searched for some images, but mostly got delicate Chinese guys with Imperial clothes, so I don’t really know if the word can be a generic term applied to all types of handsome men in Japan or is some kind of old word that came directly from the Chinese language. Well, I can only conclude that, if it's something specifically related to Chinese men, we can go with "Goodbye, handsome Chinese man".
Moving on to the song itself, it’s a cute late 80s Eurobeat inspired tune that features what I like to call stereotypical Chinese synth melodies. Masako Takeda, as I could see, didn’t release many songs, and was probably just a tarento that happened to release a couple of singles. She may be cute and wear nice shorts, but was very bad in the vocal department. I’m not complaining as, in the end, I liked her very much (well, that’s probably because I’m a sucker for weak and obscure aidoru singers, but whatever).
In this link, we can see a picture of the song's lyrics. At first, I assumed that binanshi was the right word to be used here, but Masako actually says meinantsuu in the first verse, so I had to consider it..., but, in the end, I must confess that this was a very hard article to write. As my Japanese language knowledge is extremely limited, I'm open to discussions here.
“Sayonara Binanshi (Meinantsuu)” was Masako's debut single, which was released in June 1990.
I discovered this idol/song months ago in a japanese user's account who uploaded tons and tons of obscure/rare jpop 80/90s songs! (unfotunately such user is not longer available). This song is so damn catchy with all those heavy synths and that chinese feel... love it! By the way, this idol has another song called Bandit Girl, which is not so dancey like the aferomentioned song.
ReplyDeleteKeep the work! Love your blog :)