Fujimal Yoshino & Haruko Kuwana -- Who Are You?

Halloween, and therefore October, are just a few hours from becoming history. So, let's finish tonight with a nice little bit of City Pop. Considering the holiday, I'm sure there have been a few relevant parties over the last few nights where the costumed folks were asking the question "Who are you?"

Well, City Pop has the answer in the form of a question (just like on "Jeopardy"), and it is "Who Are You?" by guitarist-singer-composer Fujimal Yoshino（芳野藤丸）. I've seen Yoshino among the pages of "Japanese City Pop" all these years and he was in the band SHOGUN and has been a contemporary of fellow guitarist and City Popster Makoto Matsushita（松下誠）in the band AB'S. In 1982, he released his first solo album titled "Yoshino Fujimal" in which the first track is "Who Are You?"

The duet with fellow City Pop singer Haruko Kuwana（桑名晴子）is a relaxing but bouncy piece which seems to have concentrated all that genre goodness in its 5 minutes and change. There is Yoshino on guitar, his buddy Matsushita on bass, Jake H. Concepcion on sunny sax and even EPO helps out on backing vocals with Yoshino, Kuwana, Matsushita and drummer Naoki Watanabe（渡辺直樹）. We might be well into autumn but summer comes back nicely with this one, and I can't help but feel a bit of Tatsuro Yamashita（山下達郎）as well.

Yoshino composed it with Kazuko Kobayashi（小林和子）providing the lyrics. My respect to commenter Gen who kindly steered me toward a list of City Pop favourites by Brazilian musician Ed Motta, and that is how I found out about "Who Are You?".