Ako Midorikawa/Mari Sono/Keiko Fuji -- Yume wa Yoru Hiraku（夢は夜ひらく）

Looking at the cover for this 45 rpm record, I was rather intrigued by this picture of Ako Midorikawa（緑川アコ）, whom I had never seen nor heard of before, with the rose. I definitely did not consider this an enka record. Visions of bars and clinking glasses of whisky started dancing in my head.

"Yume wa Yoru Hiraku" directly translates as "The Dream Opens At Night". At first thought, I was thinking of translating the title as "The Dream Comes Alive At Night" but considering Tetsu Mizushima's（水島哲）lyrics at the back of the cover sheet about what seems to be a night of passion, perhaps the initial translation may be more appropriate if somewhat more salacious.

The original composer was Koumei Sone（曾根幸明）but it looks like there was quite a feeding frenzy starting from the song's birth year of 1966 among lyricists including Mizushima and record companies such as Polydor, Teichiku and Crown Records to release it. For example, in 1966, no less than 6 singers, including Midorikawa, who released "Yume wa Yoru Hiraku" as her debut song at around the age of 19, put out versions of the song: Mari Sono（園まり）, Herb Satake（バーブ佐竹）, Tatsuo Umemiya（梅宮辰夫）, and Isao Fujita & Machiko Ai（藤田功・愛まち子）, with Fujita actually being the pen name for composer Sone.

Listening to "Yume wa Yoru Hiraku", I was first surprised to hear how similar Midorikawa sounded to Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）, who basically cornered the market on down-and-out-in-Shinjuku Mood Kayo. This was a teenager who had the voice of someone much older and much more world-weary. Just for a bit more information on the singer, Midorikawa was born in Tokyo in 1947 and was the daughter of a Japanese mother and a Spanish father. She released a number of singles well into the 1970s after which she retired and managed her own nightclub. Currently, she runs her own clinic although the J-Wiki article doesn't go into any detail.

Mari Sono's version came out in September 1966 with Taiji Nakamura（中村泰士）providing the lyrics. Debuting in 1962, she had already released 23 singles by the time of her "Yume wa Yoru Hiraku". Her version was a huge hit for her, and her vocals are a bit more in the delicate range. Although from what I heard from her version above, there still seems to be that feeling of smoldering love, the J-Wiki article for the song has Midorikawa's version hinting at a more love/hate situation than her take. Incidentally, an issue of a TV guide back in that year footnoted in J-Wiki has stated that Sono's "Yume wa Yoru Hiraku" is the original with all others being cover versions.

In January 1967, the song was the seed for a movie starring Sono.

Considering my comparison of Midorikawa to Keiko Fuji earlier, I guess it is no surprise that the latter did indeed cover the song under the official title of "Keiko no Yume wa Hiraku"（圭子の夢は夜ひらく...Keiko's 'The Dream Opens At Night'）with Masao Ishizaka（石坂まさを）providing lyrics. According to the Wikipedia article for the song, Fuji's cover is seen as being the most well-known version and one of her trademark numbers. Ishizaka's lyrics have Fuji singing about a melancholy life of transient flings without any sort of lasting love to anchor her down.

"Keiko no Yume wa Hiraku" was Fuji's 3rd single and a track on her very successful album "Shinjuku no Onna/ 'Enka no Hoshi' Fuji Keiko no Subete"（新宿の女/“演歌の星”藤圭子のすべて... "Woman in Shinjuku/ 'Star of Enka' All of Keiko Fuji"）from March 1970 that stayed at No. 1 on the album charts for 5 straight months and ended up becoming the No. 1 album of the year. The single didn't do too badly either; released in April 1970, it stayed at No. 1 for 10 consecutive weeks.

I went down the list of singers who have officially covered "Yume no Yoru Hiraku" over the decades and counted 54 folks. According to JASRAC records as of 2016, more than 20 lyricists have provided their stories under that same title. Perhaps the song deserves its own category here.

On the Midorikawa 45, there was an inclusion of her 3rd single in 1967, a cover version of Eto Kunieda's（エト邦枝）"Casbah no Onna"（カスバの女）which was a hit for the singer.