Akiko Kosaka --Hohoende Ai （ほほえんで愛）

I knew that Akiko Kosaka's（小坂明子）career went far beyond her huge 70s pop hit, "Anata"（あなた）, but I just didn't know what the career was shaped like. For me, my image had always been set on that young teenager behind the piano giving that heartrending and high-pitched ANATA!

Well, just by fortuitous happenstance, I found this song in the past several minutes. The YouTube video had the title of "Love Is Smiling" but when I checked out the album that is featured on the image freeze above at this site, "Again" from February 1983, I didn't see that English title but there was a track whose title was "Hohoende Ai" which is a pretty darn close translation.

"Again" was her 5th studio album, and it was actually her first album in about 6.5 years so perhaps the album title was a proclamation of sorts that she was coming back with a new sound. And that new sound was quite J-AOR/City Pop with Kosaka's vocals sounding considerably more mellower and huskier. There was something quite Junko Yagami/Ami Ozaki（八神純子・尾崎亜美）about her delivery. Ironically, the other singer who I had sensed was something of a second Yagami in her early years, Miharu Koshi（コシミハル）, was also undergoing some changes of her own in that same year into an avant-garde technopop ingenue.

Kosaka did write and compose the music for the happy-go-lucky "Hohoende Ai". I'm not sure how rare or plentiful "Again" is at this late date but I would certainly make a search for this new Kosaka.