Mayumi Hara -- Bye, Bye, September

September is here once again! Can't believe how quickly summer came and went, and to prove that, when I woke up this morning, it was just 9 degrees Celsius (48 or 49 degrees F). Trees should have just shivered themselves into colour on that pronouncement.

Perhaps this is just me but I think when it comes to kayo kyoku and the months, September seems to be the favourite among singers and songwriters for some reason. Maybe the Japanese seem to feel especially poignant when it comes to this particular change in the seasons, although I think the Tokyo area really doesn't get autumnal until October nowadays. But I digress...I've already written about a few songs concerning the month in the past.

So here I was looking for another kayo about September to write about since I'm simply that sort of whimsical guy, and I was expecting to find something more along the enka or Mood Kayo line. Instead, I found this aidoru tune from the 1980s by a young lady named Mayumi Hara（原真祐美）. "Bye, Bye, September" was Hara's 3rd single released right on September 1st 1983...yep, it's 34 years today.

Launching like a jet airplane on disco fuel, Hara doesn't quite meet the same ambitions as the music by Yasuo Kosugi（小杉保夫）vocally speaking but I think this is where the theory that folks like Marcos and others have talked about comes into play. This is the one where the songwriters have provided that decent safety net for the aidoru who may not have the greatest voices. Instead, "Bye, Bye, September" takes the aidoru and us for a fun little ride through the last few days of the summer holiday before having to return to work/school. Veteran lyricist Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）provides the story of saying goodbye to that seasonal romance.

"Bye, Bye, September" didn't exactly soar up the Oricon charts, though, peaking at only No. 89. However, this was her biggest hit and apparently it still got quite a few accolades. It won Hara Best New Artist awards at the FNS Kayo Festival and the Japan Music Awards, plus Silver prizes at the Shinjuku Music Festival and the Ginza Music Festival, and a few others as well. J-Wiki reports that it also hung between the 101st and 200th rankings on Oricon for about 6 months, so although it wasn't a huge hit that put Hara on the route towards stardom, it was considered to be a long-running success (although with those rankings, I'm not quite sure how many records would have been sold).

Hara was born Mayumi Taneda（種田真祐美）in Sapporo, Hokkaido in September 1966. She was first scouted while shopping in her hometown, and became a model and appeared in commercials before making that foray as an aidoru in early 1983 with her debut single "Kesshin"（決心...Resolution）. Hara also did some acting as well. But after 8 singles and 4 albums and graduating from high school, she quickly retired from showbiz.

I also read that Hara had even done a cover of Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）haunting "Kuro no Clair"（黒のクレール）on one of her albums. Would love to hear that one.